Millennium Bug Watch

A BIG concern among companies is whether their suppliers and customers will be "millennium compliant". This has led to a blizzard of post as companies send letters to anyone whose address is on any of their databases demanding to know how, when and for how long they will be able to deal with the years beyond 1999.

A few of those lettershave arrived on this desk and immediately been filed in the bin. But some firms have been responsive. A notable letter comes from Ahead Software, about its Nero software, and was reported by Computing magazine. "Nero will properly process dates beyond 31 December 1999," the letter began. "However, Dos will not be able to read CDs with file dates beyond 32 December 1999 correctly. The file date will be displayed incorrectly. This is a Dos problem and not caused by Nero."

Quite. But is it more or less worrying that the letter was signed by a human rather than being entirely computer-generated?

Tips, tales to:

bug@independent.co.uk