Word: y2k
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What happens when the computer society meets the litigious society at some Y2K-breakdown point next year? Horrified by the possible multibillion-dollar answer, the high-tech industry, joined by the wider business community, convinced Congress to pass legislation earlier this year limiting company liability in the event of Y2K disruptions. But faced with a threatened log-off from the White House by way of a presidential veto, congressional negotiators sat down with White House aides in the past few weeks to address the President?s concerns that consumers not be shortchanged by the legal system should they come...
...this ain?t Y2K, either. The Melissa virus affected 19 percent of U.S. corporations; Taylor doubts Explore.Zip will come anywhere near that. "It?s not nearly as infectious," Taylor says. "Of course, those that it hits, it hits much harder. Still, it?s just a matter of shutting down the network and deleting the virus, computer by computer," he says, and that didn?t take long even for big dominoes like Microsoft (down a few hours) or Boeing (a few days). As for the perpetrator, all we know is that he?s an expert programmer who knows long-dead language...
There's little doubt that the Main Event has grabbed our collective attention--guides on how to save yourself from Y2K line the shelves of book-stores, Web sites analyze various predictions about the future of the world and those little millennium countdown clocks are ubiquitous. (And, need I remind you, this newspaper has chosen to devote an entire section to the topic...
...what's the point, exactly? Laying aside the possible technological implications of Y2K, what is so important about a new year, a new century, a new millennium? Our world is one constantly taking stock, measuring itself against arbitrary (and self-imposed) standards of achievement and progress, and time is an easy standard by which to measure...
...Y2K questions dominate the press and countless books emerge on the history of the human race, Harvard's course catalog is following suit...