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2. Things to Avoid at the End of 1999

Most of these problems are truly inexcusable as it is easy to avoid the problems with just a little bit of forethought. The problems seen on recent PC-based sytems display an utter lack of foresight (and arguably of competence) on the part of the people that managed the creation of these computer systems. In the interests of saving a few thousand dollars worth of disk space for a few years, nightmares that will cost literally billions of dollars to fix have been created.

Mainframe-based problems will be as difficult to resolve, but the arguments do not show designer incompetence quite as readily:

Other problematic dates:

I'll likely be collecting up a minor stock of "stuff" so as to avoid problems; it does little damage to have a bit of extra bottled water, canned goods, and other such stuff so as to avoid doing too much shopping during days when the more gullible are likely to be panicking.

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