Who says there are 19 months left to solve the problems?
I'm a programmer (and yes, my rate has increased in the last couple of years as demand for programmers has increased) and I had a call-out one Saturday morning at the beginning of February for a program that went into a loop and started eating up disk space like nobody's business. What was it doing? Looking ahead two years and not managing to get from 1999/12 to 2000/01 but going back to 1900/01 again and again and again until an operator stopped it.
Dates in 2000 are already with us. Just look on the bottom of most of the cans in your kitchen cupboards. Then think about the warehouses who have had problems with stock rotation, or have even dumped goods because a computer has said that they are "too old". A supervisor would probably override a computer directive to dump goods stamped with a 2000 expiry, but one wonders how many stock rotation problems haven't been noticed and how much stock will genuinely require dumping because the stuff dated 2000 has been shipped out first and the older stuff has sat on the shelves until it really is past its expiry date.
Of course, a whole lot more shit may hit the fan when we reach 2000 if anybody has forgotten anything, but I say there are already little brown speckles on the walls where the fan has already been in contact with the smelly stuff:-)
Helen
Last Revised: 15th July, 2001.