Insurer: 'Another 1.9 billion microprocessors were sold last year, for use in machinery, plant, sewerage treatment...'
'Insurers urged to get the jump on millennium bug
By TIM BLUE
18mar98
INSURANCE companies should advise clients immediately of the possible risks to business from the
millennium bug, a NSW government adviser has warned.
Tony Poynton told the NSW State conference of the Insurance Council of Australia the millennium
bug was the single biggest threat to Australian society and commerce since World War II.
The millennium bug refers to the inability of computer programming codes to recognise all four digits,
rather than the final two, of a year number.
"Everyone is focused on the 50 million Pentium microprocessors sold worldwide last year, and the 50
million other processors also sold for information technology," Mr Poynton said.
"Another 1.9 billion microprocessors were sold last year, for use in machinery, plant, sewerage
treatment, water pumping, power control and everything that modern society depends upon."
Mr Poynton said he knew of three council-run water pumping stations which had been tested to see
how they might perform with the arrival of January 1, 2000. "All three would have failed," he said.
Mr Poynton said no one fully realised there were 19 times as many microprocessors running
machinery and other equipment than were in financial services running desktop computers.
"We need to tell our clients that trucks with computer-controlled ignitions may not run, that
refrigerators on smallgoods cool rooms might not cut in on time and that RTA weighbridges might
stay closed and hold up hundreds of trucks on the Hume Highway," he said.'
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