Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 828

The spectators are laymen after all, and those who know the inside story will not think that the demonstration is screwed up just because the test system crashes; on the contrary, it reveals the real existence and possible harm of the "Year [-] Bug".

Looking at the real target group, all of them looked solemn, and the richest man, who led all of this, was unavoidably secretly happy.

There are as many banks in Xiangjiang as the crucian carp crossing the river. Although a group of banks were eliminated during the banking crisis in the 1980s, most of them belonged to Chinese-funded banks with irregular operations. The status of one of them has not changed - almost all major banks in the world have branches in Xiangjiang.

This makes it easier to convey the results of this living experiment in front of you to the headquarters of all banks around the world—you need to upgrade your existing computer systems to prevent the harm of the "Year [-] Bug".

It has to be said that in order to create this IT business opportunity, Tang Huan took extraordinary painstaking efforts.

You must know that it is not easy to find a financial center with international status like Heung Kong as a demonstration platform; and let Hang Seng Bank and Sun Hung Kai Bank, which are recognized as excellent operators, take the risk of affecting their reputation and jointly serve as experimental products. It's not that simple - but how can it be convincing without finding such a weighty example?
The reactions of the representatives of the various banks proved that the demonstration achieved the desired impact.

The so-called "millennium bug" stems from the inherent way that computers process data - numbers in nature are continuous and infinite, while computer space can only be expressed discretely and finitely.

For example, using 1 byte or 8 bits to represent a positive integer can only describe a total of 0 numbers from 255 to 256.

The essence of this phenomenon is that when compiling software programs to solve practical problems, bugs often appear when dealing with extreme data, such as data overflow and so on.

In such cases, if the positive integer 1 represented by 255 byte is added to the top by 1, if the computer does not take the initiative to report an error, the returned result is often 0 - because the real binary number string carries to the highest bit The "1" in the computer cannot be represented, so it is directly truncated, leaving only the "8" in the next 0 bits.

This is just the most abstract and basic principle, and the actual situation is much more complicated.

Before the mid-1980s, especially in the 1950s and 1960s when mainframes began to flourish, storage devices, regardless of memory or hard disks, were very expensive; acceptable cheap solutions were punched cards and magnetic tape.

To give an example that is most accessible to ordinary people, the Atari 1977, a home video game console that was launched on the market in 2600, has a memory of only 128 bytes.

Due to such heavy cost pressure, computers usually only have 6 digits to represent the year, month and day, such as "1970" on January 1, 1, and the first two digits of the year, "700101", are omitted.

To give another more widely known example, that is the first-generation resident ID card in China in the original time and space-compared with the 18-digit code of the second-generation resident ID card later, there are 3 digits less, of which 2 digits are omitted The first two digits of the 4-digit year number.

Based on the principle of digital overflow, this method of computer representation of time, by the time of 2000, the result is likely to be 1900.

How serious is the resulting harm?
As far as the banking field is concerned, sorry, you are going to go bankrupt, and depositor interest will increase for decades out of thin air; as far as the tax field is concerned, I am sorry, you are bankrupt and owe the country 100 years of taxes; as far as the telecommunications field is concerned, if you dare If you make a 1999-minute cross-century call at 12:31 on December 23, 59, then congratulations, the bill given to you by the telecommunications company is likely to be the bill for a lifetime call - "2 years minus 100 minutes".

Situations like these are only predictable hazards caused by the automatic execution of programs by computers, and human errors due to programmers who use loose mathematical algorithms to calculate leap years, etc., will make the specific situations even more unpredictable.

In addition, in the software system, there is also a habit of using limit numbers such as "99" to express special meanings such as "deletion" and "abandonment" of files.

So, once the year 2000 approaches, the problem isn't limited to inexplicable miscalculations, but also possible inexplicable data loss.

In fact, as early as decades ago, ASCII--the father of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange--Bob Bemo first raised the "Year [-] Bug" problem, and hoped that big companies like IBM, ISO Such international organizations, as well as governments, came to pay attention to its harm, but there was little response.

After all, it was still far away from the year 2000, and the cost of memory was really unbearable.

Now, the "Year [-] Bug" issue has been formally raised again, and the situation is obviously very different from before.

First of all, the influence of the richest man is not comparable to that of Bob Bemo, an engineer; second, this year is far away from 2000; finally, the unit cost of both semiconductor memory and electromechanical hard disk is falling sharply , enough to accommodate those seemingly redundant data.

Tang Huan gathered representatives of various banks around the world to watch a vivid example. As a result, everyone was terrified and expressed that they would report the impact of the "Year [-] Bug" problem to the headquarters.

Since "Y[-] Bug" is an obscure issue, stakeholders can understand it from the perspective of harm and pay attention to it, but when the media reports it, they must not be so professional.

As a result, many depositors of Hang Seng Bank and Sun Hung Kai Bank began to panic.Then ran to the counter to withdraw money.

This scene makes those who are unhappy with Tang Huan gloat - let you show off, let's get rid of it, the reputation of Hang Seng Bank and Sun Hung Kai Bank is about to be destroyed, and there may be a panic run wave.

Mr. Richest Man, who has been prepared for a long time, will definitely not let those with ulterior motives get what he wants. He immediately issued a joint statement with Hang Seng Bank and Sun Hung Kai Bank-the two banks just used old equipment to conduct a test, which does not mean that the entire system really exists. "question.In fact, through cooperation with manufacturers such as Zheru and Fangyuan, the "Millennium Bug" problem has been reliably prevented.In order to give depositors peace of mind, I will give away a "Millennium Bug" insurance to ensure that their deposits are foolproof.

With this reassurance, the number of depositors of Hang Seng Bank and Sun Hung Kai Bank has not decreased but increased.

In this way, following the "Year [-] bug" issue, which was brought to the public by the richest man, various tricks related to it, such as "Year [-] bug" insurance, emerged one after another.

The most exaggerated thing is that the "millennium bug" is obviously similar to the "computer virus" and belongs to a computer problem, but it is described by liars as a real disaster similar to the plague.

Media Asia TV reported a piece of social news - a famous woman thought that the "millennium bug" was a bug growing in her stomach, but was fooled by three scammers and bought 100 pills of "millennium bug killing insect medicine" at a unit price of 300 Hong Kong dollars. , together with cash, bracelets and rings, was defrauded of more than 30000 Hong Kong dollars.

There are even tobacco interest forces who are in conflict with Tang Huan, taking advantage of the situation to play a satirical advertisement-smoking a cigarette kills the millennium bug.

Mr. Richest Man, who only focused on the responses from big households such as banking, insurance, securities, futures, telecommunications, electricity, government, etc., was speechless after hearing his subordinates tell him the news as an anecdote—— There are so many wonders in this world that scammers can even get a ride on the "millennium bug".

According to Tang Huan's original intention, he hoped to maintain the mystery of the "Year [-] Bug", so that the big players in the world would further abandon the old-fashioned system that was stable but outdated, and turn to the Fangyuan computer system, so as to create a years-long computer system. As for the driving force of sales growth, I never thought that before the social elite could cut their flesh, the general public would be fooled by the bad guys.

The more he stands at the top of the world's food chain, the more Tang Huan pays attention to accumulating yin virtue.

So, he thought about it, and then decided that since he hyped the concept of "Millennium Bug", it is necessary to use his own influence to do some popular science on this issue.

Talking about binary and mathematical algorithms to a large number of computer science laymen is tantamount to playing the piano with a cow.

Based on this consideration, Tang IT simply pointed out in his article the time points when the probability of the "Yearn Year Bug" outbreak was the highest.

比如，1999年1月1日、1999年4月9日即1999年的第99日、1999年9月9日、1999年12月31日、2000年1月1日、2000年2月28日、2000年2月29日等等。

Once this article was completed, it was officially released in eight languages: Chinese, English, Japanese, French, German, Russian, Spanish, and Arabic, and was quickly reprinted and quoted by major news agencies around the world.

"Ming Pao", which has been taken down by Weng Jingjing, published the Chinese version of this popular science article as soon as possible, and got an extra warm reminder from the richest man - describing the "millennium bug" as a The lie about a "worm" that actually exists in nature is the easiest to dispel. We are afraid of deceptive tricks that are cloaked in specious and unscientific principles, such as hiding the "millennium bug" in credit card numbers, etc. Everyone must remain calm and rational.

"Ming Pao", which seldom uses exaggerated headlines that shock readers and does not have a "wind and moon version", has long been a serious newspaper and has been subscribed by many middle and primary schools in Xiangjiang.

As a result, as soon as this article was published, a science popularization movement covering the whole of Hong Kong was immediately formed from the school to promote a correct understanding of the "Year [-] Bug" issue—primary and middle school students often bring this issue home and study it with their parents.

This situation made those liberals who were bombarding Tang Huan very depressed. When they returned home, they were haunted by their children and recited the popular science articles of Mr. Richest Man. In this regard, he posted an article complaining: "Mr. Tang, can you not harm our next generation? Paragraph X of your popular science article has obvious grammatical errors."

This kind of noise is not within the scope of the richest man's attention at all. What he wants to see most is the reaction of the "big households" around the world.

Not to mention, Tang IT's influence is really powerful. Following the joint field test conducted by Hang Seng Bank and Sun Hung Kai Bank, other industries and institutions that will obviously be affected by the "Year [-] Bug" problem have also been evaluated accordingly.

For example, the Hawaiian Electric Power Company of the United States conducted an experiment, that is, input the data of the year "00" to see what would happen.

As a result, power plants shut down automatically, and transmission networks experience changes in voltage and frequency in some cases, causing total blackouts for consumers, electrical failures and even burns.

Expanding from this, the instruments in nuclear power plants around the world may go out of control due to the impact of the "Year [-] Bug", causing disasters such as nuclear radiation leaks.

As another example, Bank of America, headquartered in San Francisco, tested the automatic scrapping system of domestic cars in the United States and found that some cars with a high degree of automation leaving the factory this year, the built-in engine control chip, once it crosses the year 2000, will be out of operation. More than 90 years of wrong results, and then think that the service life has been exceeded, and refuse to start the car.

In addition, some professional organizations conducted preliminary surveys and found that although the booming personal computers since the 1980s have led to a continuous reduction in the price of hardware memory, due to the inertia of thinking, programmers are still generally in the software system. Use two digits to indicate the year.

Taking the personal computer itself as an example, the CMOS used to store the time in the IBM-PC compatible machine uses 4 digits to represent the year on the surface, but in fact, there is no relationship between the first two digits and the last two digits.

That is to say, add 1999 year to 1, the result of CMOS processing is: "19" with the upper two digits remains unchanged, "99" with the lower two digits becomes "00", and the final result becomes "1900". , which is a typical "millennium bug" problem.

In contrast, the young Fangyuan Computer Company does not seem to be affected by such thinking inertia, and Fangyuan personal computer products do not have such problems.

The existence of the "Year [-] Bug" problem is so common, and the harm is so horrifying that it is estimated that at least hundreds of billions of dollars in IT costs will be spent globally to solve this thorny problem.

In the process of "big households" investigating the "millennium bug" problem, there are also typical cases of successfully avoiding its harm.

For example, China has confirmed that the resident identity card system, which has been implemented since the mid-1980s and involves hundreds of millions of people, correctly uses 4 digits to process the year and can directly span the year 2000. However, the banking and other systems associated with its data still need to Further communicate with solutions provider Fangzheru, Fangyuan and other companies.

Ever since, all parties who have noticed the news are concerned about the itinerary of the richest man—welcome Tang Dajia to come and guide us how to deal with the "millennium bug" problem.

(End of this chapter)