Certain kinds of biomedical equipment, including patient-monitoring devices, are also in danger of malfunction. Because many electric utilities have gotten a late start, localized power outages are a threat. When the test clock turned over to the year 2000, a safety system mistakenly detected dangerous operating conditions, and the power generators completely shut down. Programmers worked on the problem for three days, then reran the test. A different sector failed, shutting down the system again.
Technicians have yet to fix the problem.
Fixing the program that runs one piece of equipment can have disruptive effects on other parts of the system. While Asian countries are distracted by economic woes, the Y2K problem has taken a back seat. But if Y2K isn't fixed overseas, cautious trading or delays caused by bad data could cause profit losses across the entire global financial system. While most large banks, insurance companies, and financial investment companies have spent lavishly to prevent massive Y2K problems, smaller ones may abound. In the end, prices of goods and services rise to pay for fixing the bug, for the inevitable failures afterwards, for legal costs and lost productivity.