A calendar of doomsdays

Jan. 1, 1999: Year 2000-noncompliant programs that forecast a year in advance will jump from 1999 to 1900, causing shutdowns and system failures. This error is already occurring in insurance and financial software that forecasts farther ahead than three years.

Sept. 9, 1999: Programming convention holds that 9/9/99 is used as code for forever-that is, for products and services that have no expiration date. Also, this date is used for trial code often left inactive within software; on 9/9/99, this code will activate with possible calamitous results.

Jan. 1, 2000: The date.

Jan. 3, 2000: The first work day of the new millennium, when many people will first detect errors. Also, since the days of the week in the year 1900 differ by date from those in the year 2000, expect weekend/weekday-based systems to behave contrary to their programmers' intentions.

February 29, 2000: 2000 is a leap year. Unfortunately, 1900 was not a leap year. Thus many systems may skip completely over this date, causing problems with accounting and billing-CB