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Pastimes : The Naked Truth - Big Kahuna a Myth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: re3 who wrote (71375)	10/23/1999 2:16:00 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86076

If BGR actually did important work for an important company, would he be posting here all day long? LOL! Of course, what that says about the rest of us . . . . but we don't try to impress each other with how important we are!

To: re3 who wrote (71375)	10/23/1999 11:26:00 AM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86076

BGR and ike--I've been reading the exchange between the two of you. Below are some interesting points from both sides: BGR--The corporate sector is a huge consumer of technology, Ike. You know, those $499 PCs and $90 O/S s/w is not quite what the corporate sector uses. They routinely buy millions of dollars worth of h/w and s/w, and that trend is getting stronger with the populrity of the internet. ike--the corporate sector at some point will say, eff it, our people will use the pc's they have, pentiums are quite sufficient...i did complex spreadsheets on a 386 for years... BGR--I understand that spreadsheets are complex for you. But, trust me, comparatively they are a child's play wrt trying, for example, to keep your globally distributed real time customer/sales/invntory databases up-to-date and synchronized. And a problem there can just drive a company out of business. So, you want to do that with an old x386 running Windows 3.1? Well, good luck to you. And good luck for us that you are not a CIO of an important company. ike--ever hear of downsizing ? ever hear of a company doing just that ? ever hear an employee told, you have a pentium, it is good enough for what you do,.. In light of recent comments (see below) made at the last WDCY2K (Washington D.C. Year 200) working group meeting 10/13/99 regarding Latin American remediation I'd like to say that BGR you are/have been overly optimistic on the corporate sector's embrace/consumption of new technology. If there ever was a good excuse and an indisputable reason to blow out the budget and go whole hog with new h/w and s/w y2k IS IT. The problem is the job is not getting done here in the U.S. or abroad for the very kind of attitude ike highlighted. BGR it may be the wrong attitude to have at this juncture, but the reality is that it is/has been the prevailing attitude. (Without y2k I doubt that some of the U.S. companies that did upgrades would have bothered at all.) Message 11683542 (complete post from WDCY2K) Reasons for Pessimism Sr. Guedes (Sr. Carlos Guedes, Chief Information Officer of InfoDevBank, the Latin American arm of the World Bank) was at some pains to clarify the reality in developing countries. He took issue with assessments which downplayed the amount of possible damage in developing countries due to the relative scarcity of computers in the infrastructure. His point was that while there might be fewer computers all of them were critical. He noted the following problems for Latin America. 1. Late and misleading information from vendors. Cf. Infoliant?s recent report that the past month had seen the largest downward revision of software readiness at a time when increased compliancy and repair was expected. 2. In the mainframe world the systems were legacy systems with no documentation. 3. The mainframes themselves were old hardware and the skill sets needed for them were not available due to a ?brain drain? to the United States where the number of H1B visas had been increased to allow foreign programmers easy entry and more salary. 4. In the personal computer area illegal and unregistered software was present in 60% of government offices. Ergo no support or upgrades from software companies. 5. 80% of PC?s were using Windows 3.1 with a small percentage using Windows 95. 6. The PC?s themselves were not compliant with BIOS problems. He was scathing about the dumping of non-compliant computers into developing countries by manufacturers when they discovered their inventory was not Y2k compliant. The number of compliant PC?s discovered after a survey of 14,000 machines was under 1%. 7. Some upgrades and fixes had been offered by Microsoft but the offer was made on CD-ROM media which is not available on the obsolete PC?s in Latin America. 8. The suggestion that governments in Latin America should use the internet to upgrade software and seek information ran headlong into the fact that less than 5% of government offices have any internet access. 9. Lack of money. Only Mexico and Chile had budgeted for Y2k work. 10. Disasters and elections. Honduras has lost 30 years of public works due to Hurricane Mitch. Ecuador lost its coastal fish farming sector to an earthquake last year. Elections have meant the outgoing government has not been concerned and incoming governments have no interest in the issue. 11. Last but not least, he drew attention to the fact that there was no word for procrastination in Spanish. (cont'd in separate post) McConnell Testimony Mr. McConnell repeated his testimony given earlier yesterday to the Senate Special Committee. Some excerpts from that testimony follow while the full testimony can be found at: iy2kcc.org A picture is emerging of a failure scenario that is more complex than single, localized outages. What is likely in countries with numerous Y2K failures is a growing slowdown in commerce as capacity is reduced by a confluence of degraded infrastructure performance and shaky consumer confidence. To the extent that the slowdown is substantial, either in terms of the infrastructures affected or its duration, the performance of marginal businesses and economies will suffer, and so will the portfolios of their stakeholders. While the magnitude of the effects of these various interactions is inherently unpredictable, planners must be ready for both broader and longer disruptions in daily life. Performance degradation, potentially exacerbated by non-Y2K factors, may cascade from one infrastructure to another.