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for the year 2000. Because of the way some computer
programs were written, some people think that
computers all over the world will turn their clocks
back to the year 0 or 1900 at this time. Some people
even think this will cause mass chaos all over the
world. People are working on making computers
"Y2K compliant" so this doesn't happen.
The year 2000
(also known as "Y2K") raised questions for
anyone who depended on a program in which the year
was represented by a two-digit number, such as
"97" for 1997. Many programs written years
ago (when storage limitations encouraged such
information economies) are still being used. The
problem was that when the two-digit space allocated
for "99" rolled over to 2000, the next
number was "00." Frequently, program logic
assumes that the year number gets larger, not
smaller - so "00" was anticipated to wreak
havoc in a program that hadn't been modified to
account for the millennium.
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