This piece for instance is listed in my Independent folder on my PowerBook as

This piece, for instance, is listed in my Independent folder on my PowerBook as having been written on Friday 11 March 1938.That's right. The computer thinks that this piece was written 60 years ago, before the Second World War, on Friday 11 March 1938. It's a lap-top, which is the name we give to machines we use on a table or a desk but never on a lap When I bought it, it was top of the range. About six months later, people who came to mend it would suck in their breath and say, "This is a bit out of date now - I'd get a new one if I were you", but I haven't yet.Every time I write a piece on it, I save it and store it on the hard drive, and the machine gives it a date. So if I want to refer back to a piece, I can look it up alphabetically on the hard drive and there it will be, along with a record of the date.

They would all rather go mad, or explode, or apply for a government grant to help with things, than change to 2000.Right. We now come to the machine on which I am writing this article It is called an Apple PowerBook 150. People who say "if you ask me" are people nobody is ever going to ask, whose opinion nobody ever wants to hear, just as people who are about to utter a lie first say, "If you really want to know...")The one thing we have established is that computers can't handle the turnaround to 2000. It is a glitch in-built by the people who first started doing computer programming, because they could not conceive that the present century would ever end, and therefore failed to incorporate any facilities for the date turning to the next century.After 31 December 1999 (as I understand it) the machines will all say to themselves, "Hey, we've come to the end of time as we know it! We aren't programmed to do anything about this! This, in our terms, is the end of the world! Let's explode! No - hold on, why don't we just go back to 1900 and start all over again? At least that will give the human beings another hundred years to sort it all out..."That is it, as I understand it.(Have you noticed that I keep using the phrase "as I understand it"? I realise that's a dead giveaway Only people who don't understand things ever use it It's just the same with people who say "if you ask me". It is a Century bug, because it is a problem that is going to arise every hundred years.In fact, it's not even a bug.

I only hope that this article will be read by such an expert, who knows what I am talking about even if I don't.Now, the Millennium bug, as I understand it, is not a Millennium bug at all. And, Kevin, you'll find out how unhappiness feels on Wednesday When Scotland come back from the dead Oh yes!. I DON'T want to boast, but I think I may have something to contribute to the Great Millennium Bug Debate. A solution, perhaps. Perhaps not.But I do have a startling revelation to make, which an expert will be more capable of evaluating than I am. By love I mean a happy marriage, a happy family, good friends, being loved in some sort of happy relationship.

All the soppy stuff.These three things won't guarantee happiness The personality you are lumbered with will see to that And you'll always have periods of unhappiness. Which is how it should be."A lifetime of happiness, no man could bear it," said GB Shaw. For many, they are filling their time, and their life, as a form of escape, to avoid other things - which would suggest unhappiness, rather than happiness.Third, and probably number one - wait for it - is love. I don't have to be actually doing it - I may be putting it off, moaning about it - but I love having work I'm supposed to do. I feel awfully happy when I get to the end of a day having done a bit of work, however small, however crap I may decide it is.