[mattsears]

Yes, it was real. While in college, I was working as a programmer (Perl mostly) for a book publishing company and several database systems wouldn't boot up after the new year. It turned out they didn't bother upgrading their software. This was common, but by then, most software companies had patches available - probably because of the hype. In this case, I believe the fear provided by the media actually helped avoid a much bigger crisis.