With the doom-mongers’ cries of Y2K sounding increasingly familiar, computer industry Cassandras have seized upon a new potential IT calendar catastrophe. September 9 is the latest doomsday date. It is represented as 9999 by some older computer mainframes, the same number used to denote the end of a piece of storage tape. This makes the next day as hazardous, or so the skeptics would have us believe, as the January 1, 2000 date itself.
Harry Blakey, director of Cap Gemini UK’s Y2K program is less than impressed. He dismissed forecasts, saying It’s not an issue. If it is an issue I’ll be gobsmacked. It’s one of these myths that’s just crazy. We don’t anticipate any problems. Blakey said that the September date is represented as 09/09/99, so the next day should present no roll-over problems. 9999 is, he said, a totally unfeasible date.
