If you were among the people bunkered down for disaster as clocks rolled over to 2000 across the globe’s 24 time zones, you may be a bit disappointed. Personally, I’m from the optimist camp that breathed a collective sigh of relief as 2000 arrived ? and nothing happened. No cataclysmic glitches, just a larger-than-ever New Year’s party.
There were a few reports of computers gone wrong: stories of U.S. spy satellites going down for three days and the duplication of credit card transactions in England. These were resolved quickly and left few remnants of destruction.
As for Y2K’s affects on medical imaging? There were none that effected the operation of diagnostic equipment, as far as I can tell. My informal phone survey of hospitals and vendors turned up nary an anecdote, not even a budding urban legend. (Not that I’m disappointed.)
Y2K preparedness paid off, it seems. Sure, radiology – and the rest of the hospital – paid handsomely to stave off doom (and so did the purchases put on hold). While no figures have been compiled as to the exact cost for medical imaging, global spending to squash the Y2K bug is estimated at $1 trillion to $2 trillion. One news report put it in perspective: that’s more than the combined market capitalization of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies, nearly twice the cost of the Vietnam War and more than enough to fund 10 Apollo space programs, adjusted for inflation.
But the spending may not be over. Lawyers are prepping for suits lodged by corporations that believe they were over-charged by their information technology consultants, with hints that the consultants induced Y2K work that was unnecessary. It’s believed other companies may seek to recover the huge sums they laid out for new computers they really didn’t need.
While Y2K’s dawning proved to be a big yawn, there are still experts who cling to the belief that we’re not safe yet. Among the dates that could trigger computer failures, there’s Feb. 29, 2000, which may not appear on some calendars because of the complicated scientific formula developed in medieval times which designates the years marking the start of a century to be leap years once every 400 years. 2000 is such a year. Oct. 10, 2000, is another trouble spot for some, being the first date in 2000 with eight digits (10/10/2000).
A little delving into date danger turned up a trigger we may have created for the future, 2020 to be precise. This so far theoretical problem is due to the “windowing” technique often applied to cure software disposed to millennium bug attacks. Windowing was a cheap fix. You kept your old software and ordered your computers to add “19” before two-digit years greater than 20, and “20” before years less than 20. Thus, ’94 became 1994 and ’05 became 2005. (Microsoft Office products use a version of this trick.) Unfortunately, windowing will come home to roost in 2020, when it turns back the computer clock to 1920. But hey, we’ve got 20 years to prepare for that one!
Finally, my favorite Y2K preparedness story comes from New Zealand where the Reserve Bank recently shredded $1.34 billion (NZ$2.6 billion) worth of bank notes after the millennium bug failed to hatch and New Zealanders didn’t drain banks of cash. The 85 million banknotes, weighing 101 tons, were buried in a landfill. That’s some rich soil!
Mary C. Tierney
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