COMPUTERS STAY FREE OF SNAGS ON SEPTEMBER 9.Byline: Phillip W. Browne Staff Writer Despite all the paranoia, Sept. 9, 1999, came and went without a hint of the ``9999'' computer problems although experts said Y2K See Y2K problem and Y2K compliant. Y2K - Year 2000 still could pose a significant threat, experts said. ``For people with concerns about Y2K, it's true we are not yet out of the woods,'' said California State University, Northridge CSUN offers a variety of programs leading to bachelor's degrees in 61 fields and master's degrees in 42 fields. The university has over 150,000 alumni. It's also home to a summer musical theater/theater program known as TADW (TeenAge Drama Workshop) that leads teenagers through an , computer science professor Steven G. Stepanek. ``The 9999 problem and Y2K are very different issues, and Y2K is exponentially more complicated to fix.'' Officials had predicted the date rollover to 9-9-99 would not disrupt computers - being a glitch easy to identify and fix - so governments and businesses nationwide used the date as a dress rehearsal for the Year 2000 problem Year 2000 problem, Y2K problem, or millennium bug, in computer science, a design flaw in the hardware or software of a computer that caused erroneous results when working with dates beyond Dec. 31, 1999. . ``Our group at the Emergency Operations Center The Emergency Operations Center, or EOC, is a central command and control facility responsible for carrying out the principles of emergency preparedness and emergency management, or disaster management functions at a strategic level in an emergency situation, and ensuring tested all of our communications and monitoring programs and everything went smoothly,'' said Frank Martinez, executive director of the city of Los Angeles' Y2K Compliance Office. ``We had no 9999 problems overnight and we didn't detect any outside the city.'' All of the city's 147 mission critical systems passed without even a blip, Martinez said. Still, extra police had been assigned throughout the city to keep an eye out for everything from ATM failures to gasoline pump meltdowns and grocery store rushes. ``But we have nothing to report. There were no problems or disruptions of any services that we could see,'' said LAPD 1. LAPD - Link Access Procedure on the D channel. 2. LAPD - Los Angeles Police Department. Officer Robert Eisenhart. Police and Y2K planners also tested their global communications system beginning early Wednesday, monitoring places around the world where the bug might have hit first. ``Everything went smoothly,'' Eisenhart said. Thursday's fear was that computers might have translated Sept. 9, 1999 - 9/9/99 - into an old computer programmers' phrase for ``stop'' - 9999. Additionally, it could have caused computers to erase old database records because ``9999'' also had been used as a file expiration date Expiration Date The day on which an options or futures contract is no longer valid and, therefore, ceases to exist. Notes: The expiration date for all listed stock options in the U.S. , experts said. By contrast, the Year 2000 problem is built into computer program codes and older microchips which use only the last two digits to define the year - 00 in the case of 2000. USC An abbreviation for U.S. Code. technology officials said because the ``9999'' problem existed in databases it was easy to diagnose and fix. It's much more difficult to fix the Y2K problem because it is built into millions of lines of programming code and embedded in countless microchips, making it a ``major undertaking,'' said Dennis Smith, director of supercomputing at the University of Southern California The U.S. News & World Report ranked USC 27th among all universities in the United States in its 2008 ranking of "America's Best Colleges", also designating it as one of the "most selective universities" for admitting 8,634 of the almost 34,000 who applied for freshman admission . Utilities used the occasion for a nationwide drill, coordinated by the North American North American named after North America. North American blastomycosis see North American blastomycosis. North American cattle tick see boophilusannulatus. Electric Reliability Council, to test preparedness plans and backup systems for Jan. 1, 2000. More than 500 electric utilities participated in the drill, testing everything from electric and water services to emergency communication, contingency plans and business programs, said John Dennis, director of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Y2K Project. ``We had no interruptions anywhere,'' Dennis said. ``Everything went smoothly and our emergency communications worked very well.'' |
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