Remember the Y2K Scare?

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How naive we were as we approached the new year 15 years ago.

In the days leading up to New Year's Day 2000, there was this overwhelming anxiety about what would happen to the nation's computers when asked to shift correctly from 1999 to 2000. Apparently, the storyline went, computers hadn't been programmed to handle a situation in which all four digits of a year changed.

Which made me wonder ...

Personal computers were still relatively new in 1999. It was still news in those days when someone established an online presence. Online shopping may be pervasive today, but then it was still a new thing for many people. Prior to Y2K, I can recall an intensive effort by many businesses to encourage people to shop online — but I honestly don't recall now if it was encouraged during the Christmas season of 1999.

Perhaps it required too much courage in the face of all the doomsday predictions that were circulating.

My point is, the developers of the personal computer were considered the best and the brightest of their generation. Weren't they bright enough to know that the year 2000 was coming up?

All sorts of apocalyptic scenarios were proposed in the days leading up to New Year's Day, causing considerable fear among the many Americans for whom personal computers were still new and intimidating things. I'd like to think that people have learned since then, but sometimes you have to wonder.

As they apprehensively approached the dawn of a new millennium — which was incorrect, too, but I long ago reached the conclusion that I wasn't going to win that argument — many of those Americans believed they could engage in any behavior that suited their whims and remain completely anonymous online or that, by simply pressing delete, they could permanently remove embarrassing or incriminating comments or photographs. Unfortunately, it appears some people still do.

Well, anyway, back to New Year's Day 2000.

Remember what happened? Nothing. Well, that isn't completely true. As I recall, there were a few very minor glitches — the kinds of things that wouldn't raise any eyebrows today. But lots of people took it seriously.

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Businesses, too. Somehow some folks got the idea that they could avoid any problems if they switched off their computers before midnight on New Year's Eve, then switched them back on the next day.

Which made me wonder ...

If computers really weren't programmed to accept a four–digit year change, what made those people think it would behave any differently when power was restored to it? What was so special about having the power off at midnight? It still wouldn't be programmed to accept a four–digit year change.

It did seem like the logical evolution in thought from those who, when forced to deal with video issues on an old–fashioned TV that needed rabbit ears to pick up signals, responded by hitting it on the side. Aside from maybe knocking loose some of the TV's innards, I couldn't figure out what they hoped to accomplish.

Maybe people lost their ability to reason because we weren't changing one digit or even two. We were changing all four digits — and people approached New Year's Day 2000 (dubbed "Y2K") with more apprehension than they did Mayan Calendar Day a couple of years ago.

"Of course, it wasn't long before it became clear that all the fears associated with the turn of the millennium were for naught," wrote TIME's Lily Rothman.

Well, I guess it's a good thing we don't have to worry about a computer revolt at midnight this year. If you don't buy into the end–of–days scenarios, the next generation that will have to worry about issues surrounding a millennium change won't begin to show up for more than 900 years.

Happy New Year.

Cell Phones Don't Kill People

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I was listening to the radio yesterday morning, and, for awhile, the topic of the discussion was banning cell phone use while driving. Should we or shouldn't we?

I missed the beginning of the conversation, but I assume it was in response to the National Transportation Safety Board's proposal this week for a ban on cell phone use and text messaging devices while driving.

Now, before I go any farther with this, I guess I should say that there are times when I feel like a refugee from another time.

Not to say that I am old — not yet (although there are times when I feel that I need to be wearing a shirt like the one my mother had — it said, "Hill? What hill? I didn't see any hill!") — but there are definitely times when I feel that technology has gone galloping past me.

Time, I have discovered, doesn't merely fly. It sprints. You younger folks will understand that one day.

Anyway, that's how I feel about cell phones.

As I have written here before, I taught journalism on the college level in the mid–1990s. I left the classroom for several years, but I gravitated back to it last year, taking a job as an adjunct journalism professor in the local community college system.

When I did, I quickly discovered how many things had changed in the intervening years. In the '90s, for example, none of my students had cell phones. Today, they all do. It was essential to implement rules about their use in class to maintain order — and get anything done.

It's a battle I'm still fighting.

On a personal level, I resisted cell phones for many years, and I had pretty good reasons. I'm not married, and I have no children. It was an additional expense, and, in the event of an emergency on the road, I figured (at first) that I could always use a pay phone.

Well, I'm still not married, and I still have no children. Cell phones are still an additional expense, but pay phones have just about disappeared. I finally decided it might be worth the expense to be sure I would have one if something happened — but I only use it when it is absolutely necessary.

See, I've learned that anything can happen — and it can happen all by itself. It doesn't need anyone's assistance.

And I have been wary of cell phones because I have long believed that they were likely to contribute to the accident rate — which certainly doesn't need any help.

When my parents taught me to drive, the thing they emphasized, more than any other, was to keep my eyes on the road. If your attention is distracted, they told me, even for a second, it can have tragic consequences, and one must be ever vigilant — because anything can be a distraction.

A distraction can be a very modest, very momentary thing, like the sound of a dog barking or a sudden movement one catches from the corner of one's eye. But cell phone conversations can go on indefinitely, and the distraction from the task at hand can be far from modest.

The introduction of texting into the mix just raised the risk level, as far as I was concerned. It certainly raised my awareness of the risks.

Perhaps it was due, in part, to the fact that I went without a cell phone for so long, but there were certain things about them that I just never considered — and, to be fair, there were other things that just weren't factors until recently.

Like texting.

And, perhaps because my cell phone is so basic, so ordinary, I'm not entirely acclimated to a world in which the internet is at your fingertips, wherever you are. When I was in graduate school, there was no internet (well, no real commercial internet). A few years later, that was a reality. It was a new frontier, but you could only explore it from your desk at home or at work.

Then, along came laptops, and you weren't tied to a physical location anymore. But laptops are still too big and bulky for some people so access to all of it has been condensed to the "smart phone," a gadget that fits in the palm of your hand.

(Oh, what we could have done with those when I was a general assignment reporter fresh out of college!)

The speed of technological advancements has made so many things possible that my poor mind never imagined most of them — and still needs time to absorb it all.

That point was made clear to me when I heard the listeners' calls.

One observed that he frequently uses the GPS app on his cell phone when he is driving in an unfamiliar area. The cell phone is equipped to "speak" to him so it isn't necessary for him to look at the cell phone, as he would if texting. And his car is equipped for hands–free operation of the cell phone so it really is no different than speaking to a human occupant of the vehicle.

He travels a lot, he said, but he rarely has a traditional conversation on his cell phone — and almost never does so when he is behind the wheel. But, when he is using this GPS feature, which he often does because his work requires him to spend a lot of time in unfamiliar territory, "I'm still talking on my phone," he pointed out, "so, technically, I would be in violation of the law."

True — but not necessarily its spirit.

The law is intended to discourage people from talking on the phone while they're driving — which is certainly a noble objective — although, in a culture in which people can be seen trying to eat cereal, apply makeup, even get dressed behind the wheel during the daily morning rush hour, one can be forgiven for wondering if such legislation goes far enough.

Before the discussion ended, a veteran police officer came on the line. Now, most policemen with whom I have spoken about this agree that cell phone use should be curtailed while driving; they just disagree on how the law should address it.

But this particular officer wasn't too concerned about the use of cell phones behind the wheel. It's just another distraction, he said, no worse than having a conversation with someone else in the vehicle — and he went on to point out that he had many electronic distractions in his police car.

It's all a matter of being mature enough to handle it, he said.

Cell phones don't kill people.

And the Password Is ...

I went online nearly 14 years ago.

Things were a lot simpler then, to say the least. In those days, you had to use the dial–up method each time you went online. High–speed connections were still off in the future. Passwords were being used, but not for everything. The internet may have been a lucrative target for technologically minded criminals, but it was probably more on a business basis. There simply weren't enough individual users, regardless of their financial value, to make it worthwhile to prey on them.

But things have changed.

Today, individuals can do so many things online that they could not do efficiently in the mid–1990s. They can go shopping without leaving their homes. They can look for a job or a new house. They can review their checking and savings account balances. They can search genealogical records for their ancestors. They can locate long–lost friends. In 2010, it almost seems as if there is nothing that cannot be done if one has a computer and an internet account.

The convenience of the internet has prompted a (pardon the pun) virtual explosion in users.

And, to gain access to almost all of their personal accounts, even free ones, for just about anything, they have to provide a user name and a password.

Humans are creatures of habit, I suppose. Some people — and I plead guilty to doing this myself on occasion — fall back on passwords they've been using for everything for more than a decade, and these passwords are usually simple. It makes it easier for the user to remember them, which seems to be a plus at a time when people have to remember so many passwords.

And, as both the New York Times and the Washington Post are reporting today, a recent analysis suggests that this practice leaves many internet users vulnerable.

Ashlee Vance of the New York Times calls it "the digital equivalent of a key under the doormat."

Last month, a still–unknown hacker gained access to a list of 32 million common passwords from a company that makes software for social networking sites. That list was posted briefly on the internet, where it could be accessed by both hackers and security researchers.

Today, the Times ran a list of the 32 most popular passwords from that list. Have you used — or do you use — any of these passwords?

1. 123456


2. 12345


3. 123456789


4. password


5. iloveyou


6. princess


7. rockyou


8. 1234567


9. 12345678


10. abc123


11. nicole


12. daniel


13. babygirl


14. monkey


15. jessica


16. lovely


17. michael


18. ashley


19. 654321


20. qwerty


21. iloveu


22. michelle


23. 111111


24. 0


25. tigger


26. password1


27. sunshine


28. chocolate


29. anthony


30. angel


31. FRIENDS


32. soccer

If you want some tips for choosing a "strong" password to protect your most sensitive information, go here.

And, for more information that may help you make your passwords harder for hackers to detect, I recommend that you read the articles in today's Times and Post. Just follow the links in this post.

Modern Marvels

Today, I want to express a few personal thoughts about modern technology.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know everything I should about today's technology. I have friends who do, and when I have questions I turn to them for answers. Sometimes they have them. And sometimes they don't.

Yesterday, I experienced some problems accessing some of the websites that I like to access. And I kept trying to post a comment on a friend's blog, but he never received it. I spoke, via e-mail, with one of my friends who frequently has the answers I need. He told me that web servers have been under a lot of stress lately. Perhaps (and this is my speculation, not his) it has something to do with all the internet traffic that surrounded the inauguration on Tuesday.

Today those problems seem to have cleared up. But it underscores a point I want to make.

Modern technology is not perfect. But it makes so many things possible today that weren't possible even a few years ago.

For example, my father, my brother and I were all devastated when my mother died in a flash flood in 1995. At that time, the internet was still in its infancy — if one were to go back in time and look at what was available then and compare it to what is available today, I think the word "primitive" would come to mind.

And, when the year 2022 rolls around, what is available today will seem just as primitive to people of that time.

My mother never had personal e-mail to use to contact faraway friends. She did have a fax machine, and she used it all the time to send messages to local friends — and she sometimes faxed messages to me. I lived about 200 miles away from her and, at the time, I also had a fax machine.

I know she would have loved e-mail. She liked to compare faxing to "passing notes in school." Today, I suppose the paperless approach has entered the classroom and, instead of passing notes, today's students "text" one another.

But I digress.

As I say, when my mother died, it was a devastating experience for my family. I didn't have an internet connection at the time and, while I did have a computer that I used for some word processing tasks, I still prepared most of my personal documents on an electric typewriter. I couldn't send e-mails to distant friends or search the internet to locate friends with whom I had lost touch. And I certainly couldn't use the internet as an outlet for my grief.

I think I went online the following year, and I found something of an outlet for my lingering grief in chatrooms, conversing with strangers. That helped, but it left a residue of grief that never had an outlet — until recently, when I began to explore the possibility of creating a memorial website to my mother.

I found a host that provides free webspace for such a memorial. It allows me to post pictures and write my thoughts. I can share the link with friends and family members, and it gives them a place to go to see my mother's pictures and reflect on their own memories of how she influenced their lives. They can sign a guestbook. They can even contribute their own pictures.

It was an emotional experience for me, but I know that creating that website has had a cleansing influence on me. And, from the feedback I've received from others, it has had the same influence on them. One of my dear friends, Liebe, looked upon my mother as a mother figure of her own. When she had seen the site, she remarked, "It feels like she just died yesterday." And she said she was glad I had done it because she's been thinking of doing something similar in memory of her father, who died last summer.

That's a way that the internet helps people — beyond giving them a convenient place to shop or look for jobs or a place to live (or, in its less admirable mode, as a provider of pornography).

Another recent discovery is the Facebook website. An old friend of mine recommended it to me by e-mail, so I signed up for it and was amazed at how many people saw my name and contacted me. It has re-connected me with many old friends in just a few days. I had heard of Facebook before, but I tended to dismiss it as a social and dating site. I've been pleasantly surprised to discover that it is much more than that.

I'm not a particularly religious person, but I have to say that I feel richly blessed to have these friends back in my life. And it is something that probably never would have been possible if not for the internet.

When my father (who is 79 now) first decided to go online a dozen years ago, I told him that the internet's websites were like a bookstore. You will find shelves and shelves of books in a bookstore, I told him, and, although much of it is not worth your time or money, there are a few nuggets that are worth finding if you look hard enough.

My recent experiences confirm that I was right.