Millennium bug -- Experts say it's too early to claim victory

Millennium bug -- Experts say it's too early to claim victory
REUTERS

SINGAPORE, JAN 2: The world's computers appear to have ridden out the millennium bug without a sneeze, with experts turning their focus to Monday when big financial markets and businesses re-open.

As revellers watched the sunrise on 2000, they found that lights still shone, bank machines spat out cash, telephones functioned and planes stayed airborne.

Predictions of cyberspace chaos proved as empty as the prophecies of Christian doomsday cultists in Jerusalem, leaving experts to question whether the 600 billion Dollar price tag to immunise business and government against the Y2K bug was necessary.

The fears were that computers would read 2000 as 1900 and shut down. But industry and government officials warned against premature celebrations. Until millions of workers switch on their computers on Monday, air-traffic control systems handle a full load and global banking systems pump money smoothly through Tokyo, London and New York, they cannot know whether the Y2K bug still lurks in networks, ready todisrupt ordinary life. ``The best laid plans of mice and men are apt to go astray, but this seems to have worked out fine,'' said Michael Dorfsman, spokesman for the US Bond Market Association.

The Chicago Futures Exchanges will be the first major international market to start electronic trading at 5.30 pm local time (23.30 GMT) on Sunday. Officials said tests on trading floors on Saturday went without a hitch. Stock markets in Oman and Bangladesh traded smoothly and posted gains on Saturday. Earlier, no digital disaster struck any of the world's stock or bond markets or banking systems when the date tripped from 1999 to 2000.Stock markets in Australia, New Zealand, Manila and Bangkok reported passing grades in Y2K testing. ``We've done our testing and as far as we know we're okay, I'm sure of that,'' New Zealand Stock Exchange official Bill Malthus told Reuters, adding that he expected normal operations to resume on Wednesday. In fact, so smoothly were US systems operating overall that the federalgovernment on Saturday evening began scaling back from its virtual war footing.

``It is possible that as early as Wednesday we could go just to the day shift,'' said Y2K trouble-shooter John Koskinen after sending home half of the 800 people on 24-hour shifts. Even countries where chaos and disruption can be daily ordeals reported plain sailing.

Venezuela, engulfed by deadly mudslides and floods earlier this month, said its oil industry operations were working normally. So were oil operations in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation where experts feared its chaotic Of the 170 countries reporting their Y2K status to the International Y2K Cooperation Centre, 133 of them said 11 sectors, including power and telecommunications, were operating normally, according to the Washington-based centre.

Some feared a nuclear nightmare. At Peterson Air Force base in Colorado, Russian and US military experts were elated after working around the clock in an unprecedented show of cooperation to prevent missiles frombeing launched by a Y2K computer bug.

``It was a great success,'' said Maj Gen Thomas Goslin, director of operations of the US space command. ``Everything has gone just as we though it would.'' Operations of a US spy satellite were disrupted, however. For several hours, the Y2K bug idled intelligence gathering until a ground back-up system kicked in, US Deputy Defence Secretary John Hamre said.The nearest hint of a problem in the international energy systems came in Turkey's monitoring of a pipeline from Iraq. Oil was kept flowing by switching the computer date back to 1995 from 1999. Other than that, ``It's a green light across the world,'' said David Knapp, head of the markets division of International Energy Agency.

In London, home of the Greenwich meridian, ministers said the bug could still strike. Margaret Beckett, the minister in charge of navigating Britain through any potential millennium bug problems, said that any bugs were more likely to surface over the coming days as people went back to workand indeed up until the leap day on February 29when computer crashes have also been forecast because of the unusual date, which occurs only every four years.

Microsoft chief predicts problems for computers
NEW YORK: Microsoft ceo Bill Gates has predicted that international computer systems will experience ``snafus'' in the next several weeks, despite the absence of ``Y2K bug'' problems on the first day of 2000.``In the months ahead, you are going to hear about failing systems. It's not going to be catastrophic, but there will be a lot of snafus,'' he said on CNN's Larry King Live talk show on Saturday. The world's richest man and inventor of Windows operating system, said he was not surprised by the relative absence of problems early in the new year, pointing out that technicians had months to prepare for the arrival of 2000. ``In terms of infrastructure like elevators, planes, missiles, I thought people would be able to do a great job,'' he said. ``If they had ignored the thing, then you'd haveseen more impact,''he said.