NEW YORK -- Y2K computer worries won't go away this weekend, even if nothing goes wrong. Glitches are likely weeks, even months, into the new year. And a few may linger until 2001 and beyond.

The Gartner Group, a technology consulting firm, estimates only 10 percent of all Y2K failures will occur during the first two weeks of January.

Yet an Associated Press poll taken earlier this month found that only 16 percent of respondents think Y2K problems will last more than two weeks. And the number who think the problems will be confined to less than a few days has increased from 22 percent to 36 percent.

Most Y2K planners are aware that Jan. 1 is no magic date, but they fear a quiet weekend might leave the public with a false sense of security.

"There is too much focus on New Year's weekend," said Bruce McConnell, director of the International Y2K Cooperation Center. "If you think that the only time to worry about the Y2K bug is on Jan. 1, then you're underestimating the problem."

Besides having new problems appear later in the year, glitches that strike on Jan. 1 might go unnoticed initially, even after employees return to work and restart computers. The full effects might not be felt until smaller glitches compound and disrupt business supply chains.

Several weeks must pass, McConnell said, "to have a good idea just how big an event Y2K is."

Jan. 1 is not necessarily the first time a computer will encounter 2000, and some problems already have appeared.  A few years ago, some merchants began having trouble with credit cards expiring in 2000. In early October, some federal computers needed repair because Oct. 1 starts the federal fiscal year.

And in a twist from Maine, model 2000 cars were incorrectly marked horseless carriages -- the designation that the state uses for pre-1916 vintage vehicles. Notices with 1900, not 2000, also have come from banks, courts and at least one college.

LONDON  - A Y2K-triggered failure in credit card swipe machines caused frustrating delays for thousands of retailers and customers trying to ring up purchases across Britain on Wednesday.

The machines, manufactured by Racal Electronics and supplied by HSBC, one of Britain's largest four banks, improperly rejected credit cards because of a failure to recognize the year 2000, a bank spokeswoman said.

Merchants who tried to swipe Mastercard and Visa cards through some 20,000 machines beginning on Tuesday found they were improperly rejected, said HSBC spokeswoman Nicolette Dawson. Lines grew as retailers were forced to telephone for further authorization.

Linda Stryker, a public relations executive for HSBC in the United States, said the problem should not hit any U.S. credit card swiping machines. She said the glitch was specific to software used in machines in Britain.

The failure, characterized as minor by Dawson, comes just days before the New Year, when most Y2K glitches are expected to strike computers. Experts say the seriousness of disruptions will depend on the quality of the repairs companies did on their computer coding. Faulty fixes can be a problem.

Dawson said the HSBC failure occurred because some of the bank's new swipe card terminals are programmed to look ahead four working days in processing transactions.

"The problem was with the terminals, not the cards," she said. "There's no way any customers would be inconvenienced."

HSBC officials said the problem was expected to disappear by Jan. 1.

• A water reclamation plant near Los Angeles spilled millions of gallons of sewage into a park during a Y2K test in June. The spill happened while the plant was testing a Year 2000 scenario in which the power failed. The emergency generator kicked in as expected, but a gate failed to reopen.
  
• Federal court officials in Atlanta recently issued summons requesting about 167 potential jurors to report for jury duty Jan. 3, 1900. Authorities say an employee accidentally used an outdated version of jury selection software. Philadelphians also received incorrect jury summons. A homicide detective in Hamilton County, Tenn., was subpoenaed to appear for a case in January 1900.
  
• The English Department of the University of North Dakota issued a preliminary schedule for next fall, showing a professor teaching a course about James Joyce in the fall of 1900, when the author was still a student in Ireland.
  
• About 3,600 water customers in West Des Moines, Iowa got bills saying there will be an extra charge for payments made after Jan. 3, 1900. In the East, Bell Atlantic also sent out more than 300 phone bills with wrong due dates.
  
• Oct. 1, the start of federal fiscal 2000, brought problems to four federal agencies. A purchasing system at the Energy Department temporarily failed. The National Science Foundation reported problems with a system that provides information to grant recipients. The Justice Department and Federal Aviation Administration each had problems with budget-related computers.
  
• In Maine, owners of 2000-model cars and trucks received titles identifying their new vehicles as "horseless carriages," the designation used for vintage vehicles produced before 1916. About 800 passenger car titles and about 1,200 tractor-trailer titles were issued with the error.
  
• Wells Fargo & Co. mailed 13,000 renewal notices to customers in 10 states, saying their certificates of deposit would expire in January 1900. Bank officials blamed the glitch on a printing vendor.
  
• Hershey Foods Corp. faced distribution delays because of trouble with a new $112 million automation system designed in part to avoid Y2K problems. At the height of problems in October, several retailers were reporting shortages that forced them to turn to other candymakers to fill bare shelves.

Seattle -- The Y2K computer bug has struck in the very heart of the high-tech industry and caused a mild embarrassment for the world's leading software maker.

On Tuesday, industry giant Microsoft was forced to edit out references online to several of its self-published books that were announced as becoming available in "January 1900".

The announcement on the web site of Microsoft Press displayed the classic symptoms of having been bitten by the Y2K-bug.

Also the three titles announced with a release date one hundred ears ago are published as accompanying literature for Microsoft’s flagship software, the year-2000-version of the Windows operating system.

Jacksonville -- While waiting for the new century to arrive, an estimated 5,000 Jacksonville customers recently got an ultimatum over bills the local electric utility said they should have paid 100 years ago.

That's right, Y2K, the end of century high tech scourge, has struck in Jacksonville.

Officials of the city's public utility--the Jacksonville Electric Authority--on Tuesday announced no one's lights will be turned off over past-due payments due by Jan. 3, 1900, as mistakenly printed on notices.

Embarrassed JEA officials acknowledged in sending out apology letters to affected customers, those payments should be made by Jan. 3, 2000.

The glitch came after the JEA spent three years trying to prevent just this sort of Y2K problem in its electric and water plants--and in its billings.

"The bills we're sending out now are correct," Bussells said, "and the bills that had the erroneous past-due date notice, the billing amounts were correct."

New York -- Bell Atlantic Corp. sent out more than 300 bills this month asking for payment on ``Jan. 4, 1900,'' the Philadelphia Inquirer said. Similar Year 2000 computer glitches have appeared across the country in recent months, including one in Maine, where state officials sent out 2,000 titles for 2000-model vehicles that listed them as antique ``horseless carriages'' -- a designation the state uses for vehicles made before 1916. Bell Atlantic spokeswoman Sharon Shaffer said the company fixed the problem yesterday, which affected ``just 308 customers,'' the paper reported.

The Year 2000 computer bug can make computers mistakenly read the year 2000 as 1900.