Word: bug
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...deadline? Some sort of cultish prophecy, perhaps? Nope. He's talking about the famous Year 2000 computer bug, or Y2K, as the acronym-happy computer industry has dubbed it. On Jan. 1, 2000, May and many other software experts believe, millions of computer systems could go haywire, shutting down life as we know it and turning our information age into a digitally dysfunctional society. Electric and phone service could be lost. Banks and supermarkets shuttered. Life savings could vanish and lives be imperiled...
...bug at the center of the Year 2000 mess is fairly simple. In what's proving to be a ludicrously shortsighted shortcut, many system programmers set aside only two digits to denote the year in dates, as in 06/15/98 rather than 06/15/1998. Trouble is, when the computer's clock strikes 2000, the math can get screwy. Date-based equations like 98 - 97 = 1 become 00 - 97 = -97. That can prompt some computers to do the wrong thing and stop others from doing anything...
...millennial storm clouds? Mainly because the Year 2000 bug is what Paul Saffo at the Institute for the Future calls a "low-probability, high-consequence event." Says Saffo: "There is great danger in our cross-dependencies with computers, but there are also lots of humans in the loop making judgments." In the end, says Saffo,"the most likely scenario by far is that we'll muddle through...
...future governor was first bitten by thepolitical bug during his years at Hill and Barlow.But Weld lost big in the 1978 race for districtattorney--he won only two towns against thepopular Frank Bellotti...
...media bug bit me in my sixth year of working at Xerox," Brown says. "I had no idea of moving into it. It shows the value of Harvard training--it's a good dictionary education and I have no complaints. My life has been very fulfilling thus...