Our world is overpopulated with threats and dangers that are the stuff that sleepless nights are made of, but when you’ve exhausted the potential of that noise of running water, whether or not you left the gas on, the horrors that might flow from Wimbledon’s stunning victory in the FA Cup on Saturday and the possibility that George Bush may pick a seer with an apocalyptic crystal ball as First Astrologer, you might care to lend a worry to the concern that is inducing insomnia in Barnaby J Feder: Mr Feder reports in the New York Times that the year 2000 is likely to give thousands of computer programs that record years in two digits and know no time but the 1900s a millenial hangover since as things nwo stand, many computers would malfunction or miscalculate because they rely on programs that fail to recognise that the day after December 31 1999 is January 1, 2000.
