(IDG) -- At the end of a decade that's seen tremendous advancements in technology, the biggest news was not about a dazzling new invention. Rather, it was a short-sighted programming decision made decades ago that created the technology story that this year spread like out-of-control ivy and poked its tentacles into virtually every media outlet in the world.

Y2K. By now everyone who doesn't live in a cave (as well as those who plan to move into one for New Year's Eve) has heard of the world's most famous computer bug. It didn't start out as a bug, it started out as a memory-saving programming technique: Why use four digits for a date when you can use two?

Alas, that question has now been answered, and in the process untold billions of dollars have been spent -- and millions of consultants employed -- to ensure that our computer-controlled world doesn't come to an end because it thinks it's 1900 when the clock ticks over to January 1, 2000.

By now, most technology professionals seem confident that on New Year's Day, Y2K will be one big non-story. However, viruses set to trigger on January 1 may provide some diversion for the thousands of data center staff (and computer journalists) who have to work over the holiday "just in case."

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Microsoft antitrust trial

Bill, maybe you should have settled out of court. Your video deposition -- just one length of the rope with which Microsoft has been hanging itself all through the trial -- was not your finest hour. We know you don't care what we think of you -- we don't work for Microsoft, so we must not be very smart. But the general opinion is that Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson is very smart, and while he hasn't yet delivered a verdict, he's crafted a tight legal finding that calls you a monopolist.

Still, since the courtroom-drama phase of the case ended, we've missed the entertainment of watching Microsoft's legal maneuvers crash about as often as our Windows desktop.

It's hard to pick the most priceless moment, but the "canned" demo purporting to show that removing Internet Explorer cripples Windows 98 comes close. Government lawyers showed that the tape wasn't quite what it appeared to be. Kids, you can fake it at a trade show, but not in federal court.

Continued rise of Linux

Last year the "Little Engine That Could" of operating systems became a household name. This year it became a bandwagon that major vendors such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM decided to jump on.

Vendors also spied a new buzzword in the open-source method under which the OS's creator, Finn Linus Torvalds, has made the code freely available and incorporated programmers' enhancements. Sun Microsystems and Apple Computer, among others, have gone "open source" with some products -- though not quite as openly as Torvalds.

Finally, Linux also became a stock-market phenomenon: VA Linux Systems set a record for a first-day percentage gain on Wall Street. The small company that distributes and supports the hot OS saw its share value rise nearly 700 percent in the first day of trading.

MP3 and the online music revolution

The online music tidal wave rolled over the recording industry and its copyright concerns this year. MP3 has become the most popular way to compress audio files on the Internet for downloading and playback, but it doesn't offer copy protection.

The record companies this year found a raft to cling to: the Secure Digital Music Initiative specification, which, although not yet fully implemented, provides some measure of reassurance if not yet complete copyright protection. In any case, major labels this year jumped into online music distribution, and announced plans for new music sites.

New devices to play tunes downloaded from the Internet -- such as an offering from Toshiba and Sony's forthcoming Vaio MusicClip and MP3 Walkman -- are joining Rioport's Rio and will soon be must-have accessories.

Software as service

That is, the application service provider market. It's not quite coming full circle to the old days of time-sharing on mainframes, but it's similar.

The idea of companies not owning software but instead renting applications hosted on a service company's computers gained currency this year. The 1990s twist is using the Internet to deliver those services.

Right now, the ASP market seems more a gleam in the eyes of vendors who smell an opportunity than something for which users are clamoring. But it could be just the ticket for small and medium-size businesses -- which represent a huge segment of the market -- that don't want to wrestle with implementation and maintenance issues.

Free everything (with some strings attached)

It was easy to get something for almost nothing this year. With the cost of PCs dropping through the floor, some vendors were in fact giving them away -- in return for the recipient providing detailed market research information, signing an Internet service contract, or agreeing to use a screen with a certain amount of real estate permanently devoted to advertising.

Free Internet service was all the rage in Europe, where it seemed that every week brought the announcement of another provider offering at least bare-bones access and e-mail accounts to all takers--who for the most part still had to pay hefty line charges to their telephone companies.

Handhelds, smartphones on the move

One of the hottest -- and most hotly contested -- segments of the hardware market this year was handheld devices. While 3Com's Palm devices dominated the scene from a computing perspective, many Europeans and Asians saw the mobile market from a different point of view: They upgraded their wireless phones to ever-smarter models.

Wireless Internet will be the application to watch in 2000.

An intermediate step that showed some progress this year was the Wireless Application Protocol, which lets mobile users view Web pages coded in wireless markup language. Most mobile carriers in Europe made WAP-related announcements this year, but users are still waiting for WAP-capable phones, due early next year.

Telecom consolidation

Again. The apparently inexorable march to the One World Telephone Company continues. MCI WorldCom, itself the product of a megamerger, bought Sprint Communications. Meanwhile, the merger between Vodafone Group and Airtouch Communications created the world's largest wireless telephony company.

In Europe, however, flirtations and even betrothals haven't ended at the altar: Deutsche Telekom's romance with Telecom Italia went nowhere, but did anger the Germans' alliance partner, France Telecom. And just this month, Nordic sweethearts Telia (of Sweden) and Telenor (of Norway) decided to call the whole thing off despite a merger deal signed in October.

Internet explodes in Asia

Part of Asia's rebound from its economic woes of 1998 was noted on the Internet, where there's been a tremendous growth in traffic. In December, eight Asian telecom companies launched the Asian Internet Network to build direct Internet links between countries so that intra-Asian traffic doesn't need to be routed to the United States.

China, not part of the AIN, is now the fastest-growing Internet market in the region. It's starting from a much slower base and won't be Asia's largest Internet market until 2003, by some estimates. Still, many investors are willing to wait: The stock of Chinese portal China.com tripled in value on its first day of trading on the Nasdaq stock market in July.

Taiwan quakes, PC industry trembles

The severe earthquake that struck Taiwan in September left no doubt as to the importance of the island's place in the global PC supply chain. While production at the plants making all manner of PC components resumed fairly quickly, supply concerns were felt immediately in rising memory-chip prices, and manufacturers around the world fretted about their capability to keep their product pipelines flowing.

But in the end, the disaster's human toll was far more significant and lasting than its effect on the PC industry.

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