Harvard Implements Safeguards Against Faculty Shutdown In Y2K

With less than 1000 days left before the year 2000, Harvard stands
at a mid-point of its year-2000 repair program.

A recent study by the RAND Corporation, though, shows that Harvard faces a
unique challenge in its transition to the 21st century --- its
professorial infrastructure may be more vulnerable to the dreaded
computer bug than systems previously thought to have the highest Y2K 
risk, such as the registrar and payroll databases.

Explains Ruth Metrick, co-author of the RAND study, "Older professors
were designed with only two digits for the year.  As with other systems,
the key disruptions to the professorial infrastructure are expected to
occur in tasks involving comparisons of two years."

"Thus," continues Metrick, "professors in fields emphasizing 20th-century
history will be the most affected by the bug."

Asked to comment on the impact, History Department Chair William Kirby
states, "I most fear that our professors may start referring to events
such as the Russo-Japanese War as in the future, which would lead to
widespread system instabilities."  

"For instance, a professor teaching a Soviet history course would be 
faced with the paradox of a Soviet state in recent memory, while Lenin's
Bolshevik Revolution is yet seventeen years off."  This paradox, according 
to Kirby, causes what computer scientists call an "infinite loop", whereby
the professor is flooded with a number of illegal signals until 
it must be forcibly shut-down by an administrator.

Kirby continues, "The Y2K bug could also lead to disasterous consequences
for the rest of the world.  In the worst case, those professors 
consulting for governments could cause the past century to 
repeat itself.  A professor consulting to Austria, say, might recommend
preemptive repression of Serbian nationalists to protect the
Hapsburgs from assassination.  Given the current situation in 
Yugoslavia, such an action could literally cause World War One, 
er, Three."

In order to support early detection of these instabilities, the
department is sponsoring a mandatory New Year's Eve party.  Kirby 
explains, "While the faculty believes the party to be only a celebration
of several millenia of successful history, the party will actually serve
to assess professors' vulnerability within minutes of the new
year.  Professors with the bug will be preemtively shut-down
and sent back to our suppliers, in accordance with the warranty of
continued accuracy implied by the industry-standard certification 
of 'PhD'."

"Of course, should any of our in-house manufactures fall victim to the 
bug, we have developed our own procedures and, as a backup measure, 
Harvard has many places free of anachronistic dissonance for a 
Y2K-defective professor," adds Kirby, gesturing towards the Faculty 
Club.

Other less festive measures against the year 2000 bug are also in progress.

HASCS Director of Residential Computing Support Richard B. Osterberg '96
states, "We are currently implementing system-wide redundancy and
back-up measures, allowing us to replace professors falling
victim to the Y2K bug with minimal disruption to students and other users 
of our professorial resources."  

One such measure, technically known as "hot swapping," is where a
professor discovered to be faulty may be replaced, even during
CPU-intensive processes such as lecturing.  

Unlike most year 2000 bugs, such as those in airport control systems,
professorial year 2000 problems will become apparent only gradually, as
professors carry out their normal duties. According to Osterberg, "Hot swapping
allows a professor found to be incoherent during lecture to be removed
quickly and with minimal disruptions from the students' standpoint."

HASCS Director of Computer Services Franklin Steen adds, "In fact, the 
professorial infrastructure replacement process may even become an opportunity 
for renewal.  The phased-in junior faculty, who are often more popular with
our user base, may even offer a more friendly user interface than those
they replace."


---
Ken Shan also contributed to the reporting of this piece.