Remember Y2K?

[SamAdams76]

I was remembering today the big Y2K scare we had during the late 1990s. Does anybody remember that? All the computers in the world were to shut down at midnight January 1, 2000 because apparently the computers would not be able to recognize "2000" as a valid year and go haywire, thinking it was 1900 instead.

As with many conspiracies, there was a grain of truth to this. There were many software programs at the time that had to be re-programmed to accept 2000 as a valid year. My wife was a COBOL programmer at the time and she had a few banner years as a contractor, fixing this bug. One one project, they were paying her nearly $150/hr.

I remember many Freepers here that were stocking up on canned goods and such, expecting the modern world to come to a sudden halt, forcing us back to a more agrarian way of life.

I was a Y2K skeptic but I do remember my heart skipping a beat as we turned the clock to midnight on December 31, 1999.

[BobL]

The biggest part of that scare was the government saying that nothing bad would happen. Scared the crap out of me and made me a prepper, for life.

[discostu]

When I renewed my drivers license in ‘97 or ‘98 and it was good until 20whatever I knew it was all fine. If freaking ADOT can handle everybody can. I remember arguing with somebody about it and I actually took my license out and threw it on the table “when’s that expire?!” They didn’t have a counter.

[Chode]

yeah... i made a small fortune

[kaehurowing]

This was a scam by the computer manufacturers. Because of the hysteria, the federal government promulgated regulations which required businesses across the country to have to scrap their computer systems and put in new ones that were “Y2K” compliant. Since my law firm had federally regulated financial institutions as clients, we had to completely replace the firm’s computer systems.

[VanDeKoik]

Before Y2K it was the Michelangelo Virus that was going to to down the planet. Which in hindsight of the level of tech that existed back then, is actually pretty adorable that they thought that.

[Dutch Boy]

I think you nailed it.

[PIF]

Y2K, the year we were all gonna die.

[Telepathic Intruder]

For a long time years were stored as two digits because computer memory was expensive and limited back in the 80’s and early 90’s, and space had to be carefully conserved. The problem was known all along, but the typical excuse of programmers was “I’ll be retired by the year 2000”. But of course, dreams of retirement are usually premature.

[kaehurowing]

The only scam worse than this was “Cash for Clunkers.”

[ProtectOurFreedom]

It was absolutely no scam. I was in the utility business and there were countless control system computers, back office computers, telecom gear, and embedded systems that were going to do unpredictable things. The industry spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars getting ready. The remediation projects were huge. The reason nothing happened is industries took it seriously and had professional programs launched by the mid 90s to get things fixed.

[George from New England]

I still have a program I use rarely where I have to set my PC clock back before 2000 to run.
It was a compiler basic program where I lost the source code so I couldn’t fix it. Just got the .exe

For coders, the program created a log file with a date in the filename and used the 1985 dos method of processing dates. So in 1999 the ‘9’ incremented to the next ascii character, which is I think a quote of something that. It is illegal in a filename.

[Nifster]

Between this and cemeteries taking over the world

You have waaaay to much time on your hands

[DLfromthedesert]

The hospital I worked for had us go into a room and turn out the lights to prepare us. Like we never experienced interruption of electricity.

[Drew68]

I remember this well. I owed thousands of dollars in defaulted student loans and credit cards that I had charged off. My credit score was in the dumps and I couldn't even write a check because I had bounced so many of them.

I wasn't worried. "Y2K is going to wipe out everything! I'll start over with a clean slate!"

Yes, I believed this.

[George from New England]

I also read months later in 2000 that some military radar global defense interface went down for 5 days into January. Nobody was told, media kept in the dark, and we lived into the 21st century.

[TexasGator]

“Since my law firm had federally regulated financial institutions as clients, we had to completely replace the firm’s computer systems.”

Someone conned you!

[IC Ken]

I sure do. It was a scam just like Climate change. They had everyone scared and many people made a lot of money.

Accordingly it was said that all the computers would crash. I was in Power Houses that had Y2K Compliant water fountains.

Why would anyone EVER divide by zero? I was criticized for asking this.

[Artemis Webb]

I remember it well. I couldn’t resist trolling the “Y2k, the end is near” threads. MOST of the “true believers” simply disappeared as soon as it was over.

[Telepathic Intruder]

It’s actually a myth that it was a scam. I worked on the Y2K problem back in ‘97 and ‘98. Our company had thousands of Y2K bugs that had to be fixed or the company’s entire system would have crashed. It took months of hard work to correct.