Year 2000 issue

An electronic sign at the Ecole Centrale de Nantes showed incorrectly the year 1900 instead of January 3, 2000.

The logo created by the Council of the President of the United States. for the conversion of the year 2000, used in the web address already disappeared y2k.gov

The Year 2000 glitch, also known as the Y2K glitch, Millennium bug, Year 2000 glitch b> or by the numeronym Y2K (where Y=year, 2=two and K=kilo or 1,000), it was a bug or software error caused by because of the habit that programmers had adopted of omitting the century in the year for the storage of dates (generally to save memory), assuming that the software would only work during the years whose numbers began with 19XX. The fear was that computer systems could fail and cause chaos and serious damage of all kinds in countries and companies.

Finally, when Saturday January 1, 2000 arrived, only minor problems were detected, almost anecdotes, which did not cause any significant human, material or economic damage. This was due to the large economic and technological investments made by the governments and companies in previous years as prevention, updating these systems to more secure ones. Worldwide, close to 214,000 million euros were invested to avoid the "Year 2000" effect.

Expected problems

The most feared was undoubtedly a "cascading effect" that would cause some primary systems to fail, such as energy supplies or transport, causing serious failures in other systems. Banking companies could lose the data of all customers and bank balances, everyone would see their balance reduced to zero. Computer-controlled transports would not respond, phones would stop working, emergency services would collapse.

In older systems, such as Windows versions 1.x, 2.x and 3.x, the problem was the omission of these digits. In this case, the problem was a bit more complex, since when the first second of the year 2000 expired, it would be 1/4/1980 (that is, the year in which the MS- DOS, operating system of these environments).

For its part, Apple, Inc., in 1998, had affirmed through its spokespersons that its existing units, from the classic Apple I to the current one at that time, iMac, did not represent any danger, since their systems operating systems (Mac OS 9) represented 2019 as the last year, although there was the possibility of configuring it.

September 9, 1999

Some very old applications used "9999" as end of file, however there were no major problems on Thursday, September 9, 1999.

January 1, 2000

Web page screenshots showing the problem of the JavaScript.getYear method (), which describes the problem of the year 2000.

An Apple Lisa that does not accept the date.

Juno's Internet Service Provider, with the CD labeling pointing out compliance with the prevention regulations on "effect 2000" (Y2K).

When January 1, 2000 arrived, the problems were generally seen as minor. These did not always have to occur at exactly midnight. Some programs were not active at the time and would show that error only when opened. Not all reported issues were directly related to Y2K as the cause; Minor interference in technology is a common occurrence, as anyone who has had to reboot a personal computer will not recognize it.

Reported issues include:

• In Ishikawa, Japan, a radiation monitoring team failed at midnight, but officials said there was no risk to the public.
• In Onagawa, Japan, an alarm sounded on an atomic power plant two minutes after midnight.
• In Japan, two minutes after midnight, Osaka Media Port, a telecommunications company, found errors in managing dates in part of the company's network. The problem was fixed at 2:43 a.m. and no service was interrupted.
• In Japan, the NTT mobile communications network (NTT DoCoMo), Japan's largest mobile phone operator, reported on 1 January 2000 that some mobile phone models deleted the new messages received, instead of the old ones, when the memory was filled.
• In Australia, two-state bus ticket validators could not work.
• In the United States, 150 slot machines on the race tracks in Delaware stopped working.
• In the United States, the naval observatory, where the main clock that marks the official time of the country works, had a Y2K interference on its website. Due to a programming problem, the site reported that the date was 1 January 1900.
• In France, the national weather service, Metéo France, said that a Y2K error had made your website show a map with the meteorological part of Saturday with date 1/1/1900.
• In the UK, some credit card transactions were either rejected or failed together while certain systems worked reciprocally.
• In Italy, Telecom Italy sent the first two months of accounts, dated January 1900.
• In Pennsylvania, the United States, a primary school library computer overcooked the student body for borrowing books for 100 years.
• In Spain, minor problems were detected in two nuclear power stations, at a gas station and in the traffic data collection system.
• In Spain they failed some parking meters, which simply rejected parking tickets before midnight.
• On some web pages of transport companies, some packages were found to have taken 17 101 years (19 100 minus 1999) more some day, and these days are the ones that really took a while.
• On many websites of the world, where time and date were used: time misunderstood and date with January 1, 1900 or 19100. In the event of the hour, if it were 2 a.m., the clock was thus interpreted: 92:60:14, making reference to the second.
• In some versions of MAME, some roms do not charge properly, as for Y2K effects, they run the date commands with only two digits. In higher versions, this error is corrected, but the game does not charge the correct year, but the year corresponding to the centuryXX.. In simple words, if the game was executed on March 4, 2009, these games calculated March 4, 1909.
• In Germany there were some drawbacks with credit cards for this same problem. However, in 2010. 30 million bank cards stopped working due to a microchip software error of such cards.
• In the Netherlands, the NPO’s Nederland 3 public television network had made a final count for a new year. When it was already midnight the screen is cut and the channel adjustment card appears with the twisted colors, the disfigured screen and an interference with the adjustment letter with Georgian characters as the channel logo. After two and a half minutes of the above, a woman appears (possibly also a channel host) holding a cup for the new millennium. Until today it has not been verified by them if that visual interference was real or simply a channel trick because they already knew about the Y2K.

In the entertainment media

A member of the Emergency Support Team monitors the events of the year 2000 throughout the country at FEMA headquarters on 29 December 1999.

The emergency support team at FEMA headquarters made a teleconference on 31 December 1999 with all FEMA regional offices and key government agencies throughout the country in preparation for the year 2000.

• In the animated series The Simpsonsa segment of the House of the Tree of Terror (The House of Horror in Hispanic America), season 11 deals with this phenomenon.
• In the first season of the animated series DilbertEpisode 10 deals with the theme of Effect 2000.
• Chris Jericho, a professional fighter, took advantage of this issue to call himself "Y2J" (changed the K for J of "Jericho".
• Rumbo at the beginning of 2000, Cartoon Network released a short film in which, Pinky and Brain claims that it will take advantage of Effect 2000 to control all computers and thus dominate the world.
• In the video game Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (commonly abbreviated as MGS2) it is mentioned that when correcting this problem, the Patriots installed software control on all computers in the world.
• In the series My name is Earl, a complete episode deals with the effect 2000, in which the protagonists believe that humanity has become extinct only because of the same effect, so they decide to go to rob a shopping mall.
• In the television series The Kenan & Kel Show At the start of the program they say they are "Y2Kenan" and "Y2Kel" referring to this phenomenon and joking with the Number Y2K.
• In the television series FuturamaIn the episode Jurassic barkingPhilip J. Fry's father has a compulsive paranoia in the face of this error (repeated constantly "Y2K").
• In the television series Family Guy (Family Father) the Da Boom episode focuses entirely on the phenomenon. It was premiered on 26 December 1999, just five days before planned.
• In the video game GTA: LCS if you go to the entrance of the airport in Shoreside Vale you can see an ad that says “Y2K Is Coming” (‘Y2K is coming’); furthermore, the video game takes place in the year 1998, where it was believed that this phenomenon was about to happen.
• In the movie Entrapment (taptated) The trap in Spain and The ambush In Hispanic America, they try to steal an object by helping the 2000 effect.
• In the television series The NetworkChapter 18 is called Y2K: Total System Failure and talks about the possibility of the Y2K effect. That chapter was issued on 30 January 1999 in the United States. U.S.
• In the television series Millenium USA. The U.S. is frequently spoken of in the third and last season that came out in the air.
• In the "King of the Hill" animated series, Hank is the voice of consciousness during the holidays while his friends and neighbors are wrapped in the millennium fever.
• In the music video Waiting for tonight Jennifer Lopez is celebrating a party on the occasion of the new year. When the counter arrives in 2000 it goes off and the electricity goes away, all in the dark, but seconds later it returns and the party continues.
• In the Chōriki Sentai Ohranger series (a series in which it later adapted to Power Rangers Zeo) part of the series plot was related to the end of the world as the events of the series occur in 1999 (indirectly something similar to the 2000 effect).
• In the series Wizards of Waverly Place (known in Spanish as The wizards of Waverly Place and in Spain as The Wizards of Waverly Place), in a chapter of the last season, in a recollection of Alex to his past, her father had a t-shirt that said "I survive to Y2K effect", which in Spanish would be "I survived the 2000 effect".
• The Japanese anime Digimon Adventure 1999 refers to effect 2000 indirectly, such as digital monsters, and the existence of a virtual world, and the Diaboromon and Millenniummon characters are based on this phenomenon.
• In the series Mad About You in the chapter in which Jamie is returned to the laundry dress with a whitening stain, Paul dreams that he is in a bookstore with Albert Einstein and this gives him a formula which would be the solution to effect 2000.
• The members of the French group "Daft Punk" took advantage of this event to pass through robots and thus to be able to hide their identities to the public.
• In episode 8 of the first season of the "Fuller House" series, transmitted by Netflix, DJ Fuller-Tanner, who shared a Chinese dinner with his new co-worker (and current romantic interest) mentions that he had no appointments since 1999, and that he could not enjoy them because he was very concerned about the "Y2K".
• The movie Y2K (Terminal Countdown) (1999), led by Richard Pepin, deals with how several soldiers and a hacker attempt to prevent the activation of a nuclear missile because of the 2000 Effect.
• Telefilm Y2K (1999), led by Dick Lowry, deals with widespread chaos as a result of Effect 2000.
• The record producer, Ari David Starace, is named "Y2K"
• In the anime Steins;Gate is mentioned the Y2K phenomenon and in the universe itself of the series this is arranged with a patch of update by Suzuha on one of the lines of divergence.
• In the movie Trascendence (2014), with Morgan Freeman and Johnny Depp, the Y2K is mentioned in a conversation at the bar scene with Agent Donald (Cillian Murphy).