Shakespeare's new book, just released by O'Reilly & Associates, is divided into phases: awareness and detection, planning and conversion, and implementation. It includes a rudimentary, but completely functional code-scanner and reporter. It covers programming languages, operating systems, and hardware. From a managerial viewpoint, it provides templates for project plans, reports, and fiscal and legal considerations.

Year 2000 in a Nutshell does not dwell on simple concepts or doomsday scenarios. It is, instead, a concise, factual reference work covering the major issues relating to the biggest obstacle in computing history. It offers a clear-cut, top-down, problem-solving approach. There are densely packed sections on date-manipulation routines for many common languages, PC hardware and packages, and an essential reference section on the most affected language- COBOL-which will be of particular value to those programmers who have been assigned the task of making the COBOL code Y2K compliant, but haven't had much experience with the COBOL language.

Year 2000 in a Nutshell is a reference guide that addresses three main aspects of the Year 2000 computer dilemma:

• Awareness: covers main issues such as compliance, costs, event-horizons, embedded dates and systems, date stamping, timing, staffing, and benefits of Y2K conversion

• Managerial: covers considerations such as: triage (when the Y2K conversion process isn't started soon enough), legal issues, budgets, and standards. Also covers a project-plan: inventory, analysis, logistical estimates, planning and strategies, conversion, and testing and implementation

• Technical: covers: dates, Julian day, windowing, single-digit century, file and database date conversion, and PC issues

About O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
O'Reilly & Associates is recognized worldwide for its definitive books on open source software, the Internet, programming, Windows NT and UNIX. From their pioneering bestseller The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog (the book that introduced the Internet to the public) to GNN(the first Internet portal and commercial website) to WebSite (the first web server software for desktop PCs), O'Reilly has been at the forefront of Internet development. Building on its expertise, O'Reilly has also produced award-winning Internet software and innovative web-based courses. The company's active support of open source software (aka free software) extends beyond its publishing program. O'Reilly has taken the lead in promoting and legitimizing open source software by hosting the April, 1998 Open Source Summit and producing an annual Perl Conference

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