Bug-watchers predict quiet time at work

By EUGENE BINGHAM

Glitches, rather than large-scale meltdowns, are expected when thousands of businesses begin their first working day of the new millennium today.

New Zealand's Y2K watchdogs will crank up their monitoring operation at the Beehive, in Wellington, but are "cautiously optimistic" the day will pass without much fuss.

Computers around the world have eased into the year 2000 without much problem, but the Y2K Readiness Commission will be on standby to observe the effect of extra demands on the banking, communications and power industries.

The skeleton staff which has been at the Beehive since January 1 will be increased today in case any difficulties arise.

Key industries are expecting a smooth start to the business year. The Reserve Bank said yesterday that all banks had declared themselves bug-free.

Some minor problems, such as systems not recording the date correctly, are expected to appear today.

Auckland lawyer Zahir Mohamed said his fax machine was showing the year as "0" rather than "00" on its printouts.

"It appears that on January 1, I lost zero," he said. "Who cares? Zero means nothing. I don't mind losing nothing."

He thought the machine was about 15 years old and doubted it would be around in 2010, so he was not worried.

International millennium bug watchers are winding up their operations, satisfied the immediate danger has passed.

"We continue to have no reports of serious disruptions anywhere in the world," the director of the International Y2K Co-operation Centre, Bruce McConnell, said yesterday.

"We have now received 'all green' reports from 135 countries."

Mr McConnell said the centre expected localised hiccups, but he was confident they would be easily handled.

"This is because they will be localised and will occur sporadically, not simultaneously," he said.

"Although they will, in some cases, temporarily degrade quality of service, we do not expect them to proliferate or interact to cause any serious disruptions."