This may be the nth article on Y2K. But with a difference. It is all about the beginning of the countdown to Y2K.
Apart from the numerological point of view, 9 September 1999 is significant because it is written in short as 9-9-99. Experts feel that it may be misread as 9999. No problem yet. But the older systems may confuse the date with the "end of file" marker, a tab signifying the end of file.
There have been previous such "problem dates" and they have passed without much trouble. This includes 1 January 1999, and 9 April which signify the 99th day of the century's 99th year.
Programmers say that this (9-9-99) may be a non-issue, because most systems read month and day as two digits, rather than one. That is, Thursday's date may be translated into the machine code as 090999 --which is safe, not to be confused with the "end of file marker."
But there is another side to the story- if a Y2K patching software finds the real "end of file marker," it will go through the program and try to fix it. This may result in the program not stopping when it has to stop. Trouble either way?
However, any glitches that may arise now will be minor compared to the big day - new year's eve. There is a chance infrastructure disruption as non-compliant computers boot up in the early days of 2000.
Let us keep our fingers crossed and wait for new reports.
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