Have you read Mitch Ratliffe's latest piece:
zdnet.com
Look what he says about airports:
"Even in the last couple weeks, we've seen overstatement of Y2K problems at European airports, which the Times of London said we're "headed for millennium computer crashes." This alarming headline is due to the way the question about preparedness was put to the airports by reporters - "Have you tested all our equipment?"
MITCH RATCLIFFE GOES ON TO SAY ....
Well, you don't need to test all your equipment. For example, less than four percent of all embedded systems worldwide are thought to be susceptible to Y2K problems, and less than one-half of one percent of embedded systems actually prove to be Y2K problems on average in companies that have talked openly about their systems."
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This guy's an idiot. How can he say it's not necessary to test the equipment???
UNBELIEVEABLE
And he's also now an expert on the economy and Y2K impact??
UNBELIEVABLE
Here's another absurd comment regarding Credit Suisse bank downgrade ...
FROM MITCH RATCLIFFE
"Mayo fails to recognize that overseas banking is still largely manual, and that leading international banks and financial networks are making good progress."
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Based on my travels (3-4 months/yr for 8+ years, until I moved to Oregon - no travel now) ... the ONLY places I ran across ... where banking was TOTALLY manual was a small town off the Turkish coast, out-islands in French Polynesia and Seychelles. Oh yeah, when we were in Patagonia and on safari in Africa . (But, banks weren't available, so you did your "banking" at the front desk of the lodge.) I'm sure there are others ... I didn't travel the whole world.
But give me a break "overseas banking is still largely manual". What a ridiculous statement.
Remember the ole days when you'd use your AMEX or VISA and they'd take your card and run it over some machine to get an imprint??
Well, 6+/- years ago when we had a villa [actually a wonderful reburbished farmhouse] in the Vars region of France (a rural area bordering Provence & Cote d'Azur) ... they didn't do that ole imprint stuff.
When we got our bill, the waitress was holding a little machine at our table and punched everything in. They downloaded it each night. Bill and I were flabbergasted that they did this, and wondered why we were still doing that imprint stuff in the U.S.
What made this even more amazing, was how we found this place. We were in the middle of nowhere. Largest town in 10 mile radius must have had a population of 500. We were doing some biking. Went down a one-lane road, trying to find our way back to the village where our house was. Came across this little, tiny restaurant that had all kinds of fancy awards attached to the exterior. Decided to stop in. Absolutely delightful. Serendipity.
Nonetheless ... they were downloading AMEX & VISA there ... while none of us were doing it in the states!
As I recall, it was about 2 years later before I saw a similar system in the states. Not that people stood by your table with a machine ... but when we started to get AMEX/VISA register tapes, instead of those self-carboned imprints.
Cheryl
P.S. Obviously Mitch Ratcliffe doesn't do much travelling. |
