With time fast running out to the turn of the century, companies worldwide are rushing to ensure their computers do not fall victim to the so-called millennium bug.
However, several foreign experts are calling into question the mainland's ability to deal with the problem, and that could have serious ramifications for anyone doing business there.
The millennium bug, or the year-2000 (Y2K) problem, is caused by the inability of certain computers to tell the difference between 1900 and 2000. The problem stems from the early days of computing, when computer memory was limited and expensive. Programmers, in order to save memory space, used two digits to represent the year in dates, instead of four.
While this may have seemed an efficient idea at the time, it transpires that many computers do not recognise a rollover in the year column as the start of a new century, and so may translate 00 as 1900.
Consequently, almost any date-sensitive application may produce errors come January 1, 2000. These errors could range from lifts shutting down because their service schedule is wrong, to pensions not being paid because the computer believes the recipient has not been born.
However, while most countries are well into the complex process of correcting the problem, the mainland is lagging behind.
