************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** "The Time Warp," that highly danceable song from /The Rocky Horror Picture Show/, goes "Time is fleeting / Madness takes its toll." I can imagine a large number of programmers working on the Year 2000 problem (AKA Y2K) will be adopting "The Time Warp" as their rallying cry in the next 18 months. The song seems particularly relevant for those who didn't head the advice of experts back in 1996 to begin a massive effort to go through millions of lines of ancient code and eliminate two digit date calculations. That a lot of the computer industry is going to miss the Y2K deadline can only partially be blamed on sloth. Programmers in general recoil from anything that smacks of the brute force method. They prefer savvy to savagery. It has long been the case in the software world that non-trivial problems get solved at the 11th hour with some brilliant kludge. Unfortunately, it is the 11th hour and no magic bullet has emerged. Anyone who has so much as dusted around a mainframe computer is suddenly in high demand, being offered five year contract at a rate of $200 K a year. Naturally, the software industry would like to avoid these kinds of expensive boondoggles in the future. One cute solution is the Zero Year Campaign. You can read all about it at www.go2zero.com. On January 1, 2000, the Zero Year Campaign proposes we should reset the year to 0. The current system lacks a 0 AD. We went from 1 BC to 1 AD. Hence, decades and centuries don't really begin on the zero year. The '90s really began 1991. Despite what the New York City tourism office will tell you, the new millennium really starts January 1, 2001. With the Year Zero system, however, decades and centuries will begin on their psychologically satisfying zero year. The campaign organizers realize their simple solution only requires getting the entire world to agree. Simple enough. They suggest proponents should sponsor essay contests to raise awareness and gain acceptance. Acceptance hasn't come easily for the Year Zeroists. They've archived a number of, errr, less-than-positive responses at their web site. Most respondents seem to suggest the Zeroists need to get lives. The Zero Year Campaign began and remains purely tongue-in-cheek but there's an interesting subtext. If lots of stuff blows up and you lose your life savings one second past midnight 12/31/99 don't blame the programmers. At least they had an idea. Many programmers are very afraid Y2K foul ups are going to turn the software industry into the latest in a long line of generational scape goats. The Nixon generation demonized politicians. The '80s Reagan generation blamed the liberal media for morality's ostensible slide. In the next millennium you can blame Bill Gates for your bounced checks. While the Zero Year Campaign is at best semi-serious, there are some that are serious movements, past and present, to reform the rather lame calendar Pope Gregory saddled us with back in the 16th-century. The page at ecuvax.cis.ecu.edu/~pymccart/calendar- reform.html gives a good overview of many the better mouse traps that solve problems like the need for leap years, months with different number of days, and having to buy a new Dilbert calendar every year. One of the best arguments for change is large parts of the world don't actually use the Gregorian system anyway. Asian and the Middle East use lunar calendars. For example, today (May 10, 1998) is MuHarram 10, 1419 according to the Islamic Calendar Converter at wwwcgi.umr.edu/cgi- bin/cgiwrap/msaumr/hijri. If you were in Asian, according to the lunar calendar converter at www.ifcss.org/china/lunar.html, today is March 10 in the year of the Tiger. If they can get along with a different calendar, can't we?