91av

AS MOST computer users get back to work with nothing more serious to show
from Y2K than a post-millennial hangover, Ross Anderson has good reason to feel
smug. Shortly before Christmas, the Cambridge University computer expert posted
onto the Net a report entitled: 鈥淭he Millennium Bug鈥擱easons not to
笔补苍颈肠鈥�.

His optimism appeared justified as 91av went to press.
There had been a series of glitches with computer systems throughout the world.
But none had serious consequences, and those countries that had spent little on
averting the bug appeared to escape just as lightly as nations such as Britain
and the US, which nurtured a multibillion-dollar Y2K industry.

Cambridge University, which owns assets worth 拢1 billion, took
Anderson鈥檚 advice and spent just 拢100 000 correcting the bug.
Provocatively, Anderson鈥檚 website now asks: 鈥淗ow much did your organisation
spend, and are you so much larger (or more complex) than us that the expenditure
was justified? Is this perhaps the first time in human history that company
bosses will be sacked for doing due diligence, following the crowd, and heeding
the over-prudent advice of their lawyers?鈥�

Anderson stresses that the millennium bug was real: if nothing had been done,
many computer systems would have failed. And for critical applications such as
aviation, nuclear missile control systems and vital medical equipment, fixing
the bug was of paramount importance.

But Anderson鈥檚 report concluded that organisations spending vast sums of
money were wasting their cash. At Cambridge, most non-compliant systems could be
fixed by manually resetting the date after the millennium. For others,
manufacturers supplied software fixes for free.

So where does that leave the doom-sayers? Peter de Jager, the Canadian IT
consultant credited with raising the alarm, says he was 鈥減leasantly surprised鈥�
by the bug鈥檚 initial failure to bite, but he isn鈥檛 yet declaring a false alarm.
De Jager says that businesses operating on monthly cycles may not suffer until
they next attempt to issue bills or invoices. And having survived January, an
obstacle is lurking next month because 2000 is a leap year. 1900 was not, so
systems that have reset their clocks back a century could hit problems.

Anderson agrees that the bug hasn鈥檛 gone away, but he predicts few serious
consequences. 鈥淭hey are either problems no one cares about or stuff that can
easily be fixed,鈥� he told 91av.

The problems that have emerged so far bear out this analysis. Asian economies
were reckoned to be at high risk. But South Korea suffered only minor glitches
such as the failure of a heating system at a block of flats in Pyongchon, which
was fixed within hours. It was a similar story in Japan: at the Onagawa nuclear
plant, computers monitoring information about radiation failed, while railway
ticket machines at 22 stations stopped working. But these and other reported
problems were neither safety-critical nor long lasting.

Nevertheless, de Jager could have the last laugh, by selling a Web domain he
has used as a clearinghouse for Y2K bug information. The site
www.year2000.com, owned by de Jager and Tenagra, a company in Houston, had
attracted a bid of $10 million as91av went to
press鈥攁lthough it was unclear whether this was a hoax or from a genuine
buyer.