The Millennium Bug
Tuesday, 24th February 1998Earth [NotS]
Has anyone else had enough of this particular stoopidity yet? Apparently not. Things have become worse than ever.
For those who don’t know [both of you] there’s this funny litte concern over the calendars in modern computers. Many years ago, when computers were first created, they were built to record time in a 2/2/2 format. That is to say that any given day would be measued as, say, 01/01/61, and not 01/01/1961. And that was fine, because computers don’t really last that long, and a computer in use in 1961 wasn’t expected to be in use by 2001. And that was a pretty good prediction: in 1998, it’s difficult to find a computer made in 1991 being used, let alone anything forty years old.
But the Millennium bug is still a viable concern, right?
Wrong.
Somewhere in history, someone got the bright idea to start measuring computer time in a 2/2/4 format. And that was some time ago. How long? Let’s see. My old Helwett Packard 200LX from 1992 measures time as 01/01/1980. Anyone out there using a six-year-old computer for anything these days? Possibly. It’s possible that somewhere, someone is still using a six-year-old mainframe. A truly expensive computer might not be upgraded within six years. We’ll go back a bit further…
I have an Amiga500 from 1985. It’s thirteen years old now. It measures time as 01/01/1985. So: who else has a serviceable computer that’s thirteen years old. Anyone?
Maybe. There might be someone out there who hasn’t bought a new computer since the Reagan Administration–but probably not NORAD. Call it a hunch: the WOPR of 1983 might have been replaced by somethng bigger yet smaller yet faster in the last fifteen years.
In fact, I can’t think of any computer in a position of power that hasn’t been replaced by a newer, smaller, better one within the last five years. HAL, the mythical supercomputer in Clarke’s 2001, was recorded as having come online on 12th January 1997. In the film, the date had been in 1992, but Clarke knew better than to send a nine-year-old computer to Jupiter. Even still, the HP200LX is going to be nine years old in 2001, and it will know that the year is 2001, and not 1901, as so many idiots currently fear.
So, is there a Millennium Bug? Sure there is. And it’s right here:
This is the Millennium Bug. And that’s actually sort of an approriate name for it, I think. I’m a bit biased: I had a 1968 Beetle, and it wasn’t a bad car. This thing fails to impress me much. Front engine, airbags, a warranty; it’s just not the same car. They tried this with the Chevy Nova in the eighties, and it didn’t work then. I’m not in favour of this whole retro fad to begin with–the seventies were a bad idea the first time; but trying to sell new cars with old names just isn’t fair…it’s like selling reprints of XMen#93 for more than about two bucks.
Of course, we’re assuming that the new Beetle will still be manufactured at the turn of the millennium. And that’s not as easy as you might think. The 1999 model is out now, and there may well be a 2000 model; but will there be a 2001 model? Possibly. Why does it matter? Because people are stoopid, that’s why. Because people suck at math. When does Millennium Three begin?
To answer this question, let’s set the wayback machine to the year One. Monday 1st January 1. Not that 1st January 1 was necessarily a Monday; no one really knows, now that the calendars have all been Caeserised. But that’s irrelevant to this. The point is that you couldn’t go back to 1st January 0, Saturday or otherwise, because it never happened. 31st December -1 skipped happily into 1st January 1, literally overnight. There was no year zero. Ever. At all.
So, let’s try something new. I call it mathematics. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.
If 31st December -1 became 1st January 1 in a matter of seconds, then, without a year zero, we have to assume that the first century, and, simultaneously, the first millennium, began at 24.01 1st January 1. Now, add thirty centuries to that, and you’ll get 24.01 Monday 1st January 2001, which kicks off the twenty-first century and the third millennium. Meaning?
Meaning: though approximately ninety-six percent of the world will go coocoo for cocoa puffs on the night of Friday 31st December 1999, and they’ll all claim that the new millennium is arriving within minutes, the other four percent of us will be recording your names for use at a later date. Because we have a theory: if Christ were to return at the beginning of the third millennium, which we doubt, then he’d probably be less concerned with working out who’d been naughty or nice, and instead be interested in eradicating anyone as dumb as the Romans were last time he was in town. We are the Deciples of the Working Brain.
Actually, we’re not. But wouldn’t that just scare the hell out of you twits to think that, just as you were concerned that your state-of-the-art little Intel toy might get a bit confused at the end of 31st December 1999, we were lurking about in the shadows, ready to turn you in for being another bloody lemming? It would make a great film, I think.
But first, we have to deal with the other films: there’s actually a film in production concerning, you guessed it, the millennium bug–this big mean nasty Oops that’s going to wipe out minkind unless it’s stopped; and the Powers That Be don’t want it stopped because the Powers That Be are always that stoopid. Wow. Who knew the secret origin of Cyberdyne was actually a miscalculation of human intelligence back in the late fifties, when the first computers were being built from tubes and wires.
The real Millennium Bug? Within twenty-four hours, beginning at 24.01 ZuluTime on Saturday 1st January 2000, ninety-six percent of homosapiens–those who picked up their brains at a firesale at BestBuy before 1992, are all going to malfunction and cause mass amusement for those of us who aren’t so easily duped into giving a damn about any of this.
Of course, that’s just my opinion; time will tell….
–Gremlin