John,
The theory is that elavators are programmed to be maintained on a regular basis and when the date flips over they will likely descend to the bottom floor and the doors will open, remaining there until a maintenance type comes by and resets it.
Nothing major, nothing life-threatening(due to inherent safety systems in modern elavators), just a real hassle. The Otis elevator in my building displays a 6 digit date on its status screen.
Don't be fooled by this BS when someone trys to make elavators an example. I don't see a great lasting economic from malfunctioning elevators.
But embedded systems in petro-chemical, utilities, manufacturing, and transportation create the potential for a cascade effect similiar to what two striking plants did to GM's operations in two weeks.
And believe me that if the US is only now coming to terms with the potential problems with ES's, think about where Asia and Europe are.
Folks like Yamakita and others that are in denial would have you believe that everything will be hunky dory in Y2K with little or now disruption. They imply these perspectives without providing a shred of evidence to substantiate that position.
The next time someone tells that Y2K is nothing to sweat about, ask them upon what evidence (not innuendo) they base that opinion upon. There have already been several examples of embedded system failures, mainly due to leap-year problems. But in 2000, all of them will be flipping over at the same time and we'll all be left there to pick up the pieces.
There will be work for TAVA in a post-2000 world, plenty of it. They will large enough to be a credible vendor to the mammoth corporate heavy weights. What some call hocking the family jewels, can also be called an investment in the future and the growth that will result.
Regards,
Ron |
