Page 96 - 2000

98
THE FUTURE IS NOW!
Hawkes, Jonathan · Haynes, Amanda Henderson, Amanda Hepbum, Justin Higgins, Natasha Hillier, Michael Hiltz, Warren
Hogg, Christopher Holton , Mike Hopkins, Zachary Horner, Kristen Houston, Simon Howard, Rjchie Huff, Haley
Hunt, Julie Hunt, Randy Hurcom, Holly Hurst, Ashley Hutchesson, Mchael Huchings, Shalleah Jackson, Lauren
Jardine, Chris Jardine, John Jarvis, Justin Jones, Kristy Kalenuik, Tenasha-Lee Keast, Amanda Keller, Miriam
Kennedy, Josh Kennedy, Matt Kershaw, Ian Kieffer, Olivier Kinsey, Karen Kitchen, Christopher Kolbe, Nicholas
(A Report On The Millennium Bug)
When the clock stuck midnight on Dec. 31 1999; the millennium bud was going to
wreak widespread havoc - in the computers on your desk, at your bank and everywhere else. The millennium bug, sometimes referred to as the year 2000 problem or simply Y2K, had its origins in bygone days of computer programming. Since memory and disks were much more expensive than today, programmers wrote code to minimize the computer's use of those resources - including date fields for the years that used only two digits, turning "1978" into "78."
Nobody gave much thought to the implications of that then. Today, with the far more ubiquitous use ofcomputers, the resulting problem is mind-boggling in scope. Computers with the bug will read the year 2000 as 1900. The cost to "retrofit" this problem could be somewhere in the range of $600 billion to $1 trillion.
Auditors and accountants were huddling to come up with methods to protect their clients in the event the millennium bug causes serious financial problems, and to ensure that the estimated costs to fix the problem are described and fully disclosed to investors. The SEC has issued guidelines on how to report this problem toshareholders.