The New Yorker - January 12, 1998
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Nerd File |
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by RUSS BAKER |
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JANUARY 12, 1998
A
computer pioneer comes out of the Bob
Bemer can’t program a
VCR and is baffled by Windows, but he believes he has the solution to a
disaster of untold proportions: the so-called millennium bug, which, on
January 1, 2000, could cause many of the world’s computer systems to
crash.
Pimply
computer whizzes don’t take Bob Bemer or his proposed cure very
seriously, but that’s because most don’t know who he is. The first
I.B.M. employee profiled in these pages (in 1957), Bemer was responsible
for more computing breakthroughs than just about anybody, including
ASCII text—the universal standard for computer characters—and the
escape sequence, a complicated maneuver that controls laser printing. In
1979, in an article in the now defunct magazine Interface
Age, Bemer predicted the upcoming Big Bug. Having Bemer return now to
correct a deeply rooted electronic-data problem is like having the Wright
Brothers back to scrutinize the TWA crash. Bemer, who favors bob ties, is
seventy-seven, and that makes him ancient history in a field in which, if
you’re older than twenty-five, you’re toast.
Bemer
says that he knows exactly how to fix mainframe computers
internal-calendar systems, many of which currently designate years with
two digits and can’t tell if “00” means 2000 or 1900.
“Essentially, we designed the car—we know we can drive it,” Bemer
said the other day, sounding like Ross Perot in campaign mode. “But now
we’ve got to take this into the Sahara.” He admits to a little guilt,
having helped design COBOL, the world’s dominant mainframe programming
language, in the first place.
When
Bemer presented his idea to companies such as E.D.S., the
information-services giant, and the investment bank Morgan Stanley, he got
a polite “No thanks” or, at best, a “Let’s wait and see.” Most companies
are approaching the problem by painstakingly rewriting billions
of lines of highly complex computer language. Bemer’s solution, which he
calls Vertex 2000, is much more elegant, boring down to the level of
“object code,” which the computer understands directly.
This
month, Bemer and his Dallas-based B.M.R. Software will formally announce
Vertex 2000. And at least one big company is seriously considering
embracing his rescue plan: Bell Atlantic is running a test of Bemer’s
product. “We think his solution is real,” Skip Patterson, the
executive director of Bell Atlantic’s Year 2000 Program Office, says.
“‘It’s simple and it’s quick. It’s the most highly automated
solution we’ve found, and that’s its real attraction.” |
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