Bug bites early

The world may already have felt the first tremors of computing’s millennium
bug. In Singapore, 300 taxis were disabled on 1 January when their meters went
blank, while in Sweden an automated payment system and a computer at Gothenburg
airport that issues passports failed. The problems are being blamed on confusion
caused by the use of the digits “99” in many programs to mark the end of a
computing run, and on advance orders for 2000.