May 1999 Column
Y2K
AND YOU
Have
you heard about the Y2K millenium bug that is supposed to be responsible for
wreaking havoc everywhere? Unless you are living on a deserted island somewhere
- I know that you have. Although you won’t find me on any airlines at midnight
on January 1, 2000 (and I probably will have a stash of cash set aside, maybe
some bottled water also) I don’t believe a word of it.
But that is beside the point. I
am sure you want to know how the Y2K bug will affect you and your business,
specifically your computer systems. The answer is probably not much at all. Most
of us are using PC’s as opposed to midrange or mainframe equipment and
thankfully, PC’s come more Y2K compliant that the other platforms.
There
are three components to having a Y2K compliant PC system. One is your BIOS,
another is your operating system, as in Windows/3.1, 95, 98 and MS/DOS. Last is
the application software you use as in you recruiting software, MS/Office
applications etc.
What
is the Y2K problem? According to American Megatrends, Inc., one of the largest
manufacturers of BIOS chips: “When your PC keeps track of the year by using
only the last two digits of the year, you have a Year 2000 (Y2K) problem. This
means your PC is non-Year 2000 compliant. This is a problem because when the
year becomes 2000, your PC may compute that as 1900 or 1980. For example, if
your PC is attempting to determine how much time has elapsed between January 1,
1998, and January 1, 2000, it will see the year 2000 as 1900, which is
incorrect.”
Your
system’s BIOS resides on a chip on your motherboard. It controls all your
motherboard components and although it is user configurable. The BIOS settings
for your PC are set by the PC manufacturer and normally not changed by the user.
BIOS’s are odd in the sense that although they are manufactured by many
companies, mostly overseas, they are configured for your specific motherboard.
This means that the manufacturer of your BIOS may not be able to assist you with
any BIOS problems. You need to contact the company that sold you your PC to get
updates for your systems BIOS.
Here
is the AMI guarantee: “All current versions AMIBIOS 95, core date 7-15-95, and
future versions of AMIBIOS are year 2000 compliant. All previous OEM versions of
AMIBIOS can be changed only by the system OEM to support the year 2000 feature.
This change can be given directly to the system OEM from American Megatrends.
Year 2000 compliance means that the internal BIOS date and time clock will
continue above the date 1999. It will not reset it self after 1999 to the date
of 1980. It will continue to the date of 2099 before resetting to 1980.” The
AMI “Year 2000 Resource Center” can be found at http://www.megatrends.com/y2k.
AMI
provides a diagnostic program you can download from the internet, which will
test your system's BIOS. I ran this test myself and discovered my system was Y2K
compliant. It was very simple to download and run. You can download the free
diagnostic program at the AMI website: http://www.megatrends.com/amibios/ami_2000.html
A
Y2K compliant software program / operating system will (providing other
software, hardware and firmware are Y2K compliant):
·
not produce errors processing date data
in connection with the year change from December 31, 1999 to
January 1, 2000
·
recognize the Year 2000 as a leap year.
·
properly exchange date data with other
Y2K compliant software products
Microsoft
has several categories to describe the level of Y2K compliance. Included are
Compliant – which means “the product fully meets Microsoft's standard of
compliance but may require a patch or service pack for compliance”; and
Compliant with minor issues – which means
“the product meets Microsoft's standard of compliance with some
disclosed exceptions that constitute minor date issues.”
For
example, MS/Office 2000, 97 and 95 are fully compliant. MS/Outlook 2000, 98 and
97 are compliant. MS/Windows 3.1 is compliant with minor issues. MS/Windows 95
(including OSR 2.x and OSR 1.x, are compliant with minor issues. Windows 98 is
fully compliant. DOS 6.22 for those of you that are still using that type of
database program is compliant with minor issues.
The
”Microsoft Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure & Resource Center” site,
including welcoming statement by Bill himself can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/year2k/default.htm.
The site contains a full listing of all Microsoft software that is compliant and
non-compliant with Y2K.
If
you run an Internet search using the keyword Y2K you get over one million
matches. There are a few interesting Y2K websites to look at, some
informational, and some alarmist including:
http://www.sightings.com/ufo/y2kdatapage.html
http://www.co-intelligence.org/y2k_isitreal.html
http://www.countup2000.com/y2k.htm
http://www.y2ktimebomb.com/Tip/Lord/lord9834.htm
from Angela J. Adair, Producer, Y2K Information Center, www.year2000.com:
FAA PASSES THE TEST - Newswires are reporting on the successful FAA Y2K test
performed at Denver International Airport over the weekend. Looks like we can
all fly without fear at the end of the year!
TOO LATE TO CONCEIVE - If you wanted to try for a millennium baby, it's
too late as the prime conception date has passed. Consider yourself lucky,
though, because some hospitals use electronic pumps to dispense epidural
drugs...pumps that may not be Y2K compliant (OUCH!). And, some are predicting a
shortage of hospital delivery rooms. (See 'A Millennium Baby?
That's Inconceivable' in Angela's A-List below.)
So, we have Baby Boomers, Generation X'ers, and now the Millennium Spawn!
SAFE DEPOSIT BOX SHORTAGE? -
Some banks are converting entire branch offices into safe deposit box centers.
You don't need a safe deposit box if you just leave your cash in the bank!
Check out the best sellers at: www.year2000.com/y2kbooks.html
How To Survive Y2k Chaos In The
City - A Preparedness and Self-Reliance Handbook
Y2K Risk Management:
Contingency - Planning, Business Continuity, and Avoiding Litigation
Y2K Survival Handbook for the
Urban Family
Whatcha Gonna Do If the Grid
Goes Down? - Preparing Your Household For the Year 2000
Time Bomb 2000
BUG
BYTES! Details on where the y2k bug has already bitten...
Food stamps in Denver - http://insidedenver.com/news/0410retu7.shtml
System Shutdown - http://www.techweek.com/articles/4-5-99/feedback.htm
Axent Technologies Inc. stock
plunges - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-04/08/256l-040899-idx.html
For more bugbytes, including
business closures, stock meltdowns, credit card mishaps, software failures,
utility bills and so much more, visit: http://www.year2000.com/y2kbugbytes.html
Don’t
worry. Be happy.
REVIEW
I
received an unsolicited, emailed offer to “Find resumes on the Internet
FAST!” (always an attention-getter) from flipsearch.com (http://www.flipsearch.com),
an interesting service. Not being able to turn down an offer like that I
previewed their service via their free trial offer. Although they do not have
their own resume database (yet), they make it easy for you to search a number of
the Internet search engines in one swoop. You can search for resumes on Alta
Vista, Snap, HotBot, Yahoo, MSN, Excite and Northern Lights all at once by
typing in your search string on the flipsearch.com main page. Although you can
go to all of these sites individually and type in search strings, flipsearch.com
has come up with a great way to search all these sites at once. The results
appear in their own browser window, another nice feature. Also, using the
‘link’ command you can also locate resumes that are linked to specific
websites. For example you can type in ‘link:generalmotors.com and get all the
resumes that have a link to that site. The
charge for this service is a one time fee of $995.00 (price increase July 99)
with monthly access fees at $19.95 per user per user per month
(price increase July 99). Call Steve Gibson in the sales department at
704-660-1408 or 800-722-7614 or email him at flipsearch@flipsearch.com
for more information.
Question
Arthur Gluzman asked me if I knew of any software packages that can post job/candidates to multiple sites. My answer was NO but if any readers know of any software with this capability, please let me know asap.