Some of you won't recall Y2K
I was sat in a hostelry close to the City of London recently, and was reminiscing with a pal about Y2K.
Aside from the sudden realisation that it's essentially 20 years since peak Y2K I was reflecting my own situation in particular, living as I did at the time in Sydney.
To those unaware of the circumstances but, back in 1999 the world was going to end as the Y2K bug was going to kick in.
Simply for some systems, when the clock ticked over from 31st Dec 1999 to 1st Jan we were not quite sure what was going to happen as a lot of systems were not geared to going back in time.
There was a huge amount of press speculating about the impact with stories of food shortages, water running out and planes falling from the sky!
Within the industry, we knew it was coming years before and by the time we rolled over into 2000, most systems had been upgraded and/or were shiny new. There is a theory that one reason why tech investment slowed (along with the dotcom bubble) was that it was unnecessary due to being up to date.
The pal I was chatting with took some great cash and spend the night on standby, in a data centre.
I decided instead to watch some spectacular fireworks across Sydney harbour. Some experiences are priceless besides which, as the Aussie new year kicks in before almost everyone else, we already knew that Y2K was a non-issue. [JN]
|