But it's still not in the being-fixed stage. This millennial anxiety has its genesis in the early computer age, when programmers preserved once-precious memory by using only two digits to signify the year in a date. In 2000, those computer clocks will roll over to 00 and read the new year as 1900. That could confound computers and many services that rely on computers. Fixing the flaw involves scanning billions of lines of software code, a colossal undertaking in both the private and public sectors.
Many experts believe it is too late to get the job done by the end of next year.
He said he is worried about medical machines in hospitals and also raised the specter of riots in counties that fail to deliver welfare checks. And in the event of power outages, we will know what houses we could go to. The community approach is the one Wells and his neighbors are trying to take in Lowell, which has a population of nearly 100,000. Nobody knows exactly what's going to happen in the year 2000. He said he learned something about the value of disaster planning when he and his son, now 15, went to help out during the Mississippi River floods in 1993.