If Koskinen really understands at least this much he just fell off the malice end of my "never ascribe to malice what you can explain by incompetency and stupidity" continuum 'o-meter.
dailynews.yahoo.com
Saturday April 24 12:12 AM ET
Y2K Failures Abroad Could Hit U.S. Drug, Oil Firms
Full Coverage
Year 2000 Problem
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. oil and drug companies could face major problems from potential year 2000 failures outside the United States, the U.S. government said Friday.
Developing nations are most at risk from Y2K problems and U.S. firms that trade with them could feel the affect of possible failures by the first weeks of 2000, White House Year 2000 coordinator John Koskinen said.
''We import significant raw materials in the pharmaceutical industry, we obviously import a lot of oil,'' Koskinen said in a telephone interview from Washington.
''If we have any significant interruption in that flow, either because the production facilities are challenged, don't work or the port facilities or the tankers, over time that will create a major problem for us,'' he said.
Y2K failures outside the United States would not hurt the U.S. economy overall, but they would affect firms reliant on specific countries, the chairman of President Clinton's Council on year 2000 Conversion said.
In a report released Wednesday, Koskinen said the greatest potential for year 2000 computer problems lies outside the United States. He said the U.S. government would start to identify problem states and countries by name as the year progressed.
The year 2000 Computer problem, known as Y2K for short, arises because many older computers and software allocated only two digits for the whole year in the date.
Unless computers are repaired or replaced, the year 2000 may be read as 1900, causing machines to crash or put out bad data.
Electric power, telecommunications, and transportation systems have been identified as Y2K trouble spots in developing nations. U.S. firms might run into trouble in cases where products come from one or two countries and substitute markets are unavailable.
In some cases, foreign systems are not expected to stop but slow down, as Y2K glitches force a switch to manual and paper based operations.
Koskinen said he did not expect significant problems from major trading partners in the developed world. |
