seems people are GREATLY mistaken on this issue.
it was a VERY REAL problem. but we actually took action and fixed the issue.(like ol' Gnomon there) it wasn't a rumor, poor reporting or hype. it was real.
remember though, the end of the world claim IS hype, but it being a real computer bug that would cause tremendous problems in society WHERE real.
computer clock systems and BIOS-es did not accomidate for the time stamp of a full year. meaning instead of using 1986.... for the year, computers only used 86.
when the clocks cycled back for 00 (meaning 2000) people where concerned that the computers might assume it was 1900, or 19100 which it basically would.
this means, some computer programs might glitch as it tried to communicate with other networks, programs, or databases, about its time, their time, and the time needed to organize data.
not only was this a problem with BIOS but also a problem with programs since they only used the system time of the bios.
the fix ---------- write updates and patches that would flash/upgrade the bios or update the programs themselves.
it wasn't a problem because most world governments ran updates on their systems and many private companies and corporations took the same action.
THANKS Gnomon!!!
problems that might have happened where power outages, lost goods, poor logistics, interrupted food supply and delivery, mis-organized electronic communications other infrastructure breakdowns, lost credit transactions, disturbances in traffic, financial market hiccup, (loosing BILLIONS of dollars for investors), and basically mass chaos.
the only problems that did happen, where a few credit companies didn't upgrade and many credit transactions were misplaced.
this dropped their value and stock temporarily, but they regained their standings as the re-organized their DB of transactions and recovered the transactions..... they where at the bottom of the list, lost in the year 1900.
plus
In Ishikawa, Japan, radiation-monitoring equipment failed at midnight, but officials said there was no risk to the public.[10]
In Onagawa, Japan, an alarm sounded at a nuclear power plant at two minutes after midnight.[10]
In Japan, at two minutes past midnight, Osaka Media Port, a telecommunications carrier, found errors in the date management part of the company's network. The problem was fixed by 2:43 a.m. and no services were disrupted.[11]
In Japan, NTT Mobile Communications Network (NTT DoCoMo), Japan's largest cellular operator, reported on January 1, 2000, that some models of mobile telephones were deleting new messages received, rather than the older messages, as the memory filled up.[11]
In Australia, bus-ticket-validation machines in two states failed to operate.[12]
In the United States, 150 slot machines at race tracks in Delaware stopped working.[12]
In the United States, the U.S. Naval Observatory, which runs the master clock that keeps the country's official time, had a Y2K glitch on its Web site. Due to a programming problem, the site reported that the date was Jan. 1, "19100."[13]
In France, the national weather forecasting service, Meteo France, said a Y2K bug made the date on a webpage show a map with Saturday's weather forecast as "01/01/19100"
again. this wasn't a bunch of nutcases, and we only recovered because people took it seriously and acted with updates.
2012 is nothing like this. 2012 IS created by a bunch of nutcases
there IS another predicted problem with time and how computers deal with it happening again in 2038 and other years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem