From: year2000-discuss@year2000.com
Subject: Sightings: Y2K snippets
computerweekly.co.uk
Monday 10 November
US play down Y2K
A US backlash has begun against the expected effects of the
millennium date change, with some businesses predicting little or
no trouble. And though they agree the date change needs addressing,
many insist the millennium saga is little more than a hype designed
to benefit software companies, speakers, authors, and most of all,
consultants.
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nytimes.com
Foreign Banks Are Behind in Repairing 2000 Bug
By SAUL HANSELL
November 10, 1997
Big United States banks and investment firms, prodded by regulators,
are making progress on a widespread software problem that could
cause computers to crash seconds after midnight on Dec 31, 1999.
But many overseas banks in the increasingly interdependent
global financial system may be woefully behind or even ignoring
the problem.
The potential problems are great enough that 38 percent of the
1,100 computer industry executives worldwide that Gartner surveyed
in September and October said they might withdraw their personal
assets from banks and investment companies just before 2000.
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techweb.com
Year 2000 Glitch May Ground KLM Flights
(11/11/97; 6:00 p.m. EST)
By Andy Patrizio, TechWeb
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines became the first airline to state
officially that it may ground some of its aircraft because of the
year 2000 software glitch.
KLM said it would consider halting some flights on Jan 1,
2000 because of potential system failures caused by the century
changeover, Reuters reported. KLM's main concern is for its systems
both inside and outside the airport -- not the aircrafts themselves,
according to Odette Sodor, manager of corporate communications
for KLM North America, based in Elmsford, N.Y.
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nytimes.com
Real Estate: For Building Operators, a Taste Of The Year 2000 In '99?
By JOHN HOLUSHA
November 12, 1997
Engineers and property managers say building operations are no less
susceptible to what is known as the "year 2000 problem" or the
"millennium bug" than their counterparts in banking, insurance
and accounting.
It is impossible to predict what some systems will do unless the
clock is artificially advanced to see what goes wrong, which is
difficult to do in an operating building. The security system,
designed to restrict admission on weekends, may shift to a default
mode and keep everybody out. The elevator controller may decide
that no maintenance has been done in 100 years and lower all the
cars to the ground floor as it would in a fire.
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cnnfn.com
nypostonline.com
New York Post Editorial: The millennium bug and the lawyers
Plaintiff's lawyers plan to celebrate the millennium in a big,
and profitable, way - with the mother of all class-action suits.
And experts say this could make the litigation over breast implants
and asbestos look like chump-change wrangling.
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computerweekly.co.uk
Date change fears come home to Blair
Ian Mitchell
Top IT users met Tony Blair's policy unit in Downing Street on
Tuesday in an attempt to get the prime minister personally involved
in tackling the year 2000 problem.
The move comes as report after report concludes the year 2000
problem is larger than previously thought and preparations are
inadequate. Last week the Gartner Group estimated 40% of key
public sector systems will fail, while the previous week a Cap
Gemini report said that demand for year 2000 resources will outstrip
supply in April 1998 - the deadline for government departments to
finalise their action plans.
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computerweekly.co.uk
Bomb has insurers diving for cover
The insurance industry took steps to protect itself from claims
arising from the millennium bomb this week, two months after
Computer Weekly forecast the move. The Association of British
Insurers has drafted exclusion clauses designed to protect insurance
companies from date bug claims that could amount to billions.
The clauses are now set to be introduced into policies immediately.
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computerweekly.co.uk
Hewlett-Packard rings in the changes with BT
British Telecom is undertaking a 15m pound overhaul of its
directory services system, replacing the search engine to make it
millennium-compliant and to slash response times.
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computerweekly.co.uk
Tory in action leaves firms on the abyss
Former Tory IT minister Ian Taylor has warned that his party's
failure to prepare business for European monetary union and the
millennium timebomb could ruin thousands of UK businesses.
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computerweekly.co.uk
Legacy users fall behind
Users of older IBM legacy systems are running far behind schedule
to fix their date bug problems, IBM has warned. It estimates that
only 35% of the 195 sites using the database management system
IMS are year 2000 compliant.
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computerweekly.co.uk
Rival year 2000 testing bodies fall out over PCs
How far do you go to make a PC year 2000 compliant? The issue has
led to a dispute between rival millennium testing organisations.
Prove It 2000, set up this summer, claims most PCs are not year
2000 compliant since any application that accesses the date and time
from the real-time clock will not recognise the century date change.
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computerweekly.co.uk
Tax system changes to go ahead despite millennium
The Inland Revenue will not defer or delay any major IT development
required for new tax legislation to free resources for its year
2000 project.
"There are a number of major developments in hand and year 2000
is not displacing any government [tax] initiatives," said Roy
Massingale, deputy director of business management services at
the Inland Revenue, and sponsor of the Revenue's millennium project.
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computerweekly.co.uk
Procurement straitjacket condemned
Labour must scrap public procurement rules or risk being unable to
get help to solve its millennium problems, Cap Gemini has warned.
Jacky Olivier, head of year 2000 at the services firm, said, "Given
the time and resource constraints, we wouldn't look favourably on
the opportunity to tender for government year 2000 work."
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computerweekly.co.uk
New body to put rail network on track for date compliance
Railtrack will announce the establishment of a cross-industry body
next week to mastermind the rail network's year 2000 programme.
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computerweekly.co.uk
Desktop conversions could cost up to 26bn pounds
The global cost of making end-user-developed applications year 2000
compliant could be $42bn (26bn pounds), according to Gartner Group
estimates. And, by the end of 1997, more than 80% of companies
will have end-users who inadvertently leave their computer set in
2000 when testing it, the consultancy predicts.
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computerweekly.co.uk
Reuters gives users news on millennium compliance
Intenational information services company Reuters has sent out
50,000 packs to customers worldwide to keep them up to date on its
year 2000 compliance work. In the pack, Reuters outlines about
100 systems, 10% of its product line, that will be made obsolete.
Martin Vickery, international director of Reuters' millennium
compliance programme, said he had received many "dismal responses"
when seeking information from suppliers on the year 2000 compliance
of their equipment.
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computerweekly.co.uk
Whitehall bug fix plans in disarray
Government plans for dealing with the millennium computer bomb
are in chaos, with departments seriously behind schedule in their
attempts to tackle it. According to parliamentary written answers
obtained by Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Malcolm Bruce,
only three out of 16 departments met the National Audit Office
target date of January for producing year 2000 compliance audits.
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techweb.com
November 10, 1997, Issue: 689
Is Network Gear Y2K Vulnerable?
Many network devices built before 1996 were programmed with
two-digit date fields that will not translate into the new
millennium, according to Art Dolimpio, director of product
management for BANI's new Network 2000 Assessment Program.
Networks installed before 1996 have a 90 percent chance of
experiencing a Year 2000-related problem, he said.
"We tested some token ring bridges, and they just stopped delivering
traffic [in a Year 2000 test]," Dolimpio said. "That really opened
our eyes to the scope of the problem."
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techweb.com
November 10, 1997, Issue: 689
Year 2000 Quirks Will Hit Us Slowly
By Wayne Rash
Sometime in 1999 we'll begin to see glitches in information, or
in our activities that depend on information. Maybe something
will happen to our account at the video rental store, or the
expiration information on our prescriptions will be wrong when we
go to the drugstore. As 2000 rolls into its first few days and
the mail starts to arrive, we'll see more things that don't work.
It won't be the airliners falling from the skies, as some have
suggested, but rather it will be a visit to the car dealership
that suggests that we're years out of warranty. Then we'll start
getting billed for things that have already been paid, or taxed for
things we don't owe, or our Social Security payments will be wrong.
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techweb.com
November 10, 1997, Issue: 656
Banks Bracing For Year 2000
By Bruce Caldwell
According to surveys conducted by Gartner Group Inc., although U.S.
banks have completed 30% of their compliance efforts, "they have
a probability of 10% system failure," says Lou Marcoccio, director
of year 2000 research at Gartner. Part of the problem: Surveys of
vendor compliance efforts are rarely accurate because most vendors
"don't know what they don't know," says Marcoccio.
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techweb.com
November 10, 1997, Issue: 656
Year 2000: No Small Job -- Small and midsize companies
struggle to get their code ready for the new century
The millennium bug is difficult enough for large companies with deep
pockets, large IT staffs, and direct lines of communication to the
big vendors. It's even more pernicious for smaller businesses,
with far less money, personnel, and influence. A recent Gartner
Group study found that nearly one-third of companies surveyed
worldwide - most with fewer than 2,000 employees - have not yet
started to deal with the year 2000 problem.
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itrain.co.uk
Year2000 - Management Briefing
The Year2000 Management Briefing is a clear and concise year 2000
awareness training system. This technology based training system,
which runs on any Windows PC, is a 90 minute overview of the main
issues and problems faced by all management and technical staff
tasked with addressing the year 2000 problem.
Our research suggests that year 2000 project staff are still
finding it difficult to get across the scale and complexity of the
millennium problem to senior management and to secure realistic
budgets for the work. This briefing is designed to help overcome
these problems.
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ft.com
Britain: Ministries miss own computer 'bomb' deadline
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 12 1997
By George Parker, Political Correspondent
The government has missed its own deadlines for tackling the
millennium computer bomb problem, it was revealed yesterday.
Seven government departments out of 16 have failed to complete
costed action plans to tackle the problem. They have failed
even though they were due to finish the work by October 1 - a
deadline agreed with the National Audit Office, the government
spending watchdog.
Among those government departments facing the largest bills for
reprogramming their computers are health and defence. |
