The year 2000 bug has had plenty of press lately, but here's a somewhat overlooked fact: The bug may have been necessary in context. Take yourself back to the glorious years of the late 1950s, when software was vastly constrained by the hardware it was running on, and computers were not much smarter than today's digital watch. They had barely enough disk space to remember their names, let alone what century everyone was in. Furthermore, companies were renting computers, paying for each byte they used. Software developers of the time made the relatively wise decision to save themselves some valuable disk space by abbreviating the year to only two digits. How much space did this save? Well, two Y2K consultants, Leon Kappelman and Phil Scott, have estimated at least a 1 percent total savings in disk space, which, when you are paying for every byte on a per month basis, adds up quickly. (For all the details, check out http://www.comlinks.com/mag/accr.htm.)