So do police departments, missile defense systems and air traffic controllers. Some programs might start producing erroneous data. Other programs might simply stop working, dying a death of a thousand unexpected errors. There's also no guarantee that the various Y2K patches programmers are using will be compatible with each other. Though thousands of programmers are working long hours fixing billions of lines of code, everyone familiar with the problem agrees they can't possibly solve all the problems before January 1, 2000.
Nobody can say for sure.
Others, including some computer programmers, are taking their money out of the bank and moving into the country to ride out what they fear will be the end of modern society. De Jager, once considered an extremist, now sounds altogether moderate when he predicts enough breakdowns to cause a worldwide recession. But he's also assuming government and business leaders will begin addressing the problem with a sense of urgency that many now seem to lack. If the pace of Y2K preparation doesn't increase, however, he fears that even the most basic government and business services won't be available after January 1, 2000. Tomorrow we'll launch a site devoted to the topic, beginning with a detailed explanation of the problem and the various techniques programmers are using to solve it.