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Technology Stocks : Y2K (Year 2000) Stocks: An Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: P. Ramamoorthy who wrote (8135)	11/28/1997 9:21:00 AM
From: BM	Respond to of 13949

Canadian initiative on Y2000 [Note - CIBC, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, is one of Canada's largest banks] CIBC'S YEAR 2000 DIRECTOR RESIGNS TO LEAD CANADA'S YEAR 2000 NATIONAL PROGRAM OFFICE OTTAWA, Nov. 27 /CNW/ - Joe Boivin, Director of CIBC's Year 2000 program has resigned in order to become Director of The National Millennium Foundation, the newly formed National Year 2000 Program Office in Ottawa. The National Millennium Foundation (NMF), a non-partisan, non-profit organization, will be fully operational in January, 1998. The NMF is dedicated to developing and exporting national-level solutions to the Year 2000. Currently it is supported by the voluntary efforts of a group of Year 2000 experts. ''There is an urgent need to focus and co-ordinate Year 2000 efforts on a national and international scale. All levels of government and regulatory bodies need to work together or the job simply won't get done. Our children's future is in jeopardy if we don't give Year 2000 the utmost priority'', Joe asserts. One of the objectives of the Foundation is to create a monthly report that tracks the Year 2000 activities of our national infrastructure. ''Even if this tracking tool can only approximate what is being accomplished it will be a very useful mechanism to have when organizations are formulating their risk management plans for Year 2000'', states Doug Lagasse, the Director of Research for the Ottawa-based Year 2000 Research Group Inc., one of the founding members of the NMF. Hugh Carter, CEO of Curis Consulting, also a founding member, regards the Foundation as a ''much-needed catalyst for anyone who still doubts that Year 2000 is a serious problem''. A vision statement and list of objectives is available.

To: P. Ramamoorthy who wrote (8135)	11/28/1997 9:55:00 PM
From: The Stockman	Respond to of 13949

Interesting item I came across on a forum on general computer risks. I've deleted the name of the poster. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Nov 1997 09:49:58 -0500 Subject: Y2K and canned-goods expiration dates A friend who manages one of the Y2K compliance projects at a major US-based multinational corporation reports the following (some light editing to protect sources and to consolidate several messages): Just heard this one from one of our expat Brits in Zurich. Apparently [a large food retail chain in Britain] has these highly automated regional distribution centers. They are starting to receive canned goods with expiration dates running past 2000. So, at the same time as they were receiving shipments of tinned tomatoes with shelf lives until '05 (which were being shuffled into storage bins by their automated pallet system), their automated "expired goods" system was scanning the new stuff, thinking they had gone bad 92 years ago, pulling them, and putting them on to lorries which then took them to the dump. [...] after trashing the "expired" tins, the automated system placed an order to the supplier to replace them. Apparently some guy at the warehouse noticed this but didn't want to say anything [...] It was only when the tomato company's sales rep said something like, "Jeez, you guys are selling a lot of our tinned tomatoes lately," that they caught on. Besides the usual Y2K issues, two other risks are worth noting: 1. Either the system has no autoamted tripwire mechanism to alert operators about major deviations from suitable running averages, or its thresholds are not set properly. 2. The usual organizational risk of people being afraid of rocking the boat. Caveat: I trust my direct source, but this is a "friend of a friend" kind of story, so there's a slight chance that this could be a Y2K urban legend, if nothing else because it's so exemplary. -------------------------------------------------------------- G