Many companies and agencies, though, are working on a fix. Fifth Third Bank started a few years ago studying the problem and how to solve it, said Gary Yeager, a bank vice president. The bank's goal is to fix all its programs by the end of 1998, Mr. Yeager said. Of course, he has a bit riding on being right about the world's response to the millennium dilemma. The Millennium Bug, also known as Doomsday 2000 and the Y2K crisis, is a technical problem many computers face when the year 2000 rolls around.
Many computers keep track of the date by using only the last two digits of the year.
So it's 96 instead of 1996. The year 2000 poses a problem because 00 will confuse those computers. What it means Some computers could think 00 means the year is 1900. For other computers, time begins in 1980, and they will think the year is 1980. Either way, it's a problem for many systems that rely on dates, such as banks.