Uncertainty surrounds next week’s “pre-millennium bug”. When clocks roll over
to 9 September 1999—09/09/99—some programmers believe this could
cause system failures because computers will interpret it as 9999, which means
“end of file” in some programming languages. But sceptics dismiss this, saying
there would only be problems if computers read a date consisting of six
nines—99/99/99. Either way, both camps agree that the date change serves
as a good test run for 1 January.
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