The millenium bug.

KOI ANUNTA/YH

Everywhere you turn, there are dire predictions about the end of the millenium. Recently, though, these predictions have not come from Nostradamus-quoting fanatics or cult leaders. Some computer experts are foreseeing the end of the world on January 1st, 2000. On that day, these doomsayers claim, the computerized systems that run city power grids, banks, ATMs, and even the computers that run the US' and Russia's nuclear arsenals will suddenly crash and cause chaos. Credit card bills will be incorrect, bank computers will show empty accounts, and the world might experience a nuclear winter.

What could possibly cause this incredible catastrophe? Quite simply, the double zeroes at the end of 2000. Back in the early ages of computing, engineers decided that it would save a lot of space if information about years was saved as the last two digits. Thus, 1955 became 55, 1963 became '63. However, when the calendars show 2000, computers encoded in the two digit fashion will think the year is 1900, not 2000. So, a back computer might think that an account is empty, since no transactions had been made since 1900. Computers will become confused with the incompatibility of their internal clocks and the input data they receive, and a domino effect will result, affecting the interpretation of all other data. At a university such as Yale, financial aid, registration, and other integral systems could be affected. AY2K-affected financial aid computer, for example, might lose important registration information. In addition, anything that is operated by computer is under fire: heating systems, key card access, etc.

The computer industry, nations, and business alike have all spent millions and millions of dollars in order to fix all existing computers that have the Y2K bug. Software companies like IBM and Oracle now sell packages that offer total solutions to the Y2K problems.

Yale has also begun its own project that will make all systems Y2K compliant. However, Yale is taking a slightly different approach than most institutions. Instead of simply going around and fixing each instance of a Y2K bug with a "patch" or an upgrade, Yale has instead decided to upgrade all of its aging financial and registration systems. This broad project is titled "Project X". According to the Project X website, ITS administrators had "come to recognize that our obsolete computer systems and outdated business practices impede the efforts of faculty well as staff." Thus, the Y2K bug, for Yale's ITS, has become a sort of excuse for upgrading the entire human resources system.

The centerpiece of Project X is new software from Oracle that will "modernize [Yale's] financial aid and human resources systems and services," according to the website. The same Oracle system has also been purchased and implemented by Harvard, Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, and Darthmouth.

Project X was initiated in the summer of 1996, when Provost Allison Richard and Vice President for Finance and Administration Joseph P. Mullinix formed a Steering Committee to oversee the implementation of Project X, which will take place in phases. The first phase, which was completed in the summer of 1998, gave Yale's departments and administration a new set of financial analysis tools. hPhase II, scheduled to be completed in January of 1999, will update software for accounts management, payroll, claims benefits, and the rest of the financial systems. Thus, by 1999, Yale will not only have a completely Y2K-compliant computer system, but also a new financial aid and human resources system.

However, Project X focuses on the computer systems of the administration, with the goal that improving financial and human resource-type systems will improve the flow of inoformation within the university. Thus, each of Yale's many academic departments have been solving their own Year 2000 problems, slowly updating older computers and uploading patches since 1980. In terms of the hardware that runs heating systems and other physical machinery, Yale has been dependant on manufacturers. For example, last year, one manufacturers of Yale's heating systems began offering Y2K fixes for its machines.

For now, most people walk about the campus without much worry about Y2K. If Project X and its associated undertakings go as planned, there will probably be very little need to worry. January 1, 2000 won't be the day where Yale is plunged into chaos and darkness. As for the rest of world...

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