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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: C.K. Houston who wrote (6183)	6/27/1999 9:57:00 PM
From: flatsville	Respond to of 9818

>>>Some think it's unfair that a technology company would sell a product that it knows has a year 2000 bug (or any other bug for that matter) and not disclose that bug to the customer at the time of sale. But then, when was the last time the telephone company disclosed to you all the conditions under which long-distance service is likely to be slower or fail altogether?<<< Yep, that did it for me too. These guys are idiots. Do they really think they can fool people into still thinking this is a bug v. a known design flaw? We are six months from "datequake" and the latest Infoliant delta report indicates that 2,000 hardware and software products have yet to be tested for year 2000 and an increase from 8% to 15% in those products that vendors have decided not to test. These guys don't about the software, don't care about the software and ain't gonna take the time to find out about the software. >>>But the Y2K bug has been known for years by everyone in the technology industry, so the problem should have been entirely avoidable, right? Wrong. Most people in the industry -- programmers, users and computer science faculty -- weren't aware of the problem until the last few years.<<< What!?!?!? "Most" people in the industry? So he's making a case for absolution based on the non-awareness of users and some teaching faculty at tick tack tech? Sorry. The people who counted knew, published articles, lobbied for action, told others and were largely ignored. (David, if I'm wrong here please set me straight. <ggg> No, really. You better than anyone know who knew what and when.) They had no reason* to change a long-time programming convention even though restricted capacity -- the reason only two digits were originally used to identify years -- was no longer a problem.* The life insurance and mortgage industries (not to mention Social Security Administration) certainly got religion on this early. Obviously they noticed something was wrong with the "long-time programming convention" and began remediation and changed their software buying habits. Were they as users and technology companies serving them somehow miraculously prescient while other users and technology companies wallowed in "stupid?" The unmitigated gall!