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To: C.K. Houston who wrote (8222)	1/2/1998 9:19:00 AM
From: M. Frank Greiffenstein	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 31646

Elaine Gazarelli??? CKH, the Sjveick post appears to describe none other than Elaine Gazarelli. Not many famous female investment personalities out there in the media. I too couldn't believe any KNOWLEDGABLE person making such a statement about Europe. Even America isn't 80% complete. In fact, the Euroconversion problem makes Europe's y2k difficulties that much worse. Incidentally, the Euroconversion effort is another mandatory market much like y2k, some estimate it to be 100 billion opportunity. Anybody interested in looking for companies offerring software, you may look at CRYSF and VIAS. Both are in y2k, both are in Euroconversion. CRYSF is better situated, they are physically closer to Europe and already have some contracts in Germany. DocStone

To: C.K. Houston who wrote (8222)	1/2/1998 10:00:00 AM
From: John Arnett	Respond to of 31646

C.K., et.al. Ran across the following in latest issue of "Ripples in the Wave" by Leo Hood dated 12/29/97... "By the way , we have another little problem which has been simmering on the back burner and is about to be turned up to medium high heat...the millennium bug. That nasty little computer problem which causes many computers to interpret the date jan. 1, 2000 as Jan 1, 1900 is expected to be a several hundred billion dollar industrial accident. The closer we look, the more concerned we become. Here's a few little tidbits to chew on: For one thing, the Federal reserve is contemplating cutting off the U.S. banking system from the rest of the world on Dec. 31, 1999 so as to prevent the corruption of our banking systen from non-compliant foreign banks. Now ask yourself what happens to foreign trade if we do not have an effective international banking system? Smoot Hawley will seem like a picnic to that! For another thing, some experts believe up to 20% of all businesses on the planet could go comppletely out of business from the Y2K problem. Now, ask yourself how vibrant the global economy would be with 20% fewer businesses operating? Still not worried? A survey of programmers working on the technical solutions to the Y2K problem produced some startling results. 38 programmers with a combined 670 years of experience were asked to place a numerical score on the problem. The scoring was based on 1 meaning that there is no problem, 3 meaning that it will be a problem requiring lots of overtime and money to fix, but no serious consequences and 5 meaning a probable collapse of the world economy. The average score among the 38 professionals was 3.96 which suggests they see the millennium bug as falling somewhere between a serious problem and a global catastrophe. We have seen mostly Pollyanna fluff pieces in the popular press so far about Y2K. I expect this will change as we move into 1998 and the seriousness of the matter starts sinking in at more and more corporations and as Federal agencies. We're particularly concerned that the IRS has little or no chance of getting Y2K compliant by the end of the decade and will have to be replaced with a flat tax, a value added tax or some other alternate means of revenue collection. No budget can be balanced without effective means to collect revenue from the citizenry. For the past 6 months there has been an incredible volume of short selling going on by the specialists of the NYSE. Perhaps this is simply a function of the extremely high volume of trading on Wall Street seen in 1997, or perhaps this is an omen that the savviest professionals are setting up for the koll of the century. Given the dominos tumbling across Southeast Asia and headed towards Russia and eventually North America and considering how serious the year 2000 computer problem might be, I think the specialists are showing incredible foresight and will not be starting to cover their huge short positions for at least several thousand points lower on the DJ. I would not be surprised in the leaset if during calendar year 1998 we saw the Dow give back the entire gain since 1994, and trade towards 4,000 at some point during the year. It all depends on how the dominos fall. Mr. Hood, as you sense, is a contraian but I thought it interesting that he mentioned the Y2K problem but no companies providing solutions...such as TOPRO. I have written him and advised him of his oversight and suggested his readers, and himself, might want to know about TOPRO!

To: C.K. Houston who wrote (8222)	1/2/1998 10:51:00 AM
From: C.K. Houston	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 31646

CREDIT CARDS: Print this post out and give to local retail businesses in your area Embedded systems in card swipers can cause major problems ======================================================= MASTERCARD: The Year 2000 Challenge Although New Year's Eve 1999 seems far away, every merchant who accepts cards is facing the year 2000 challenge now. Increasing numbers of consumers already carry cards that expire in the year 2000 and beyond, but a small number of point-of-sale (POS) terminals and cash registers cannot process such cards. If one of these terminals is in your store, it could affect your business. To eliminate this problem, all POS terminals and system pathways must be checked immediately to ensure that they can accept year 2000 credit cards. You need to act now to protect your business. Instructions on how to test contained in link. *Same applies to VISA* mastercard.com NOTE: In October '97 MasterCard & VISA started issuing credit cards with year 2000 expiration dates. American Express has chosen to wait until mid-late 1998. ================================================================ THIS IS WHAT CAN HAPPEN IF CARD SWIPERS ARE NOT Y2K COMPLIANT 1st Y2K Lawsuit. Tired of losing business because its cash regist crash when credit cards list 2000 as an expiration date, Produce Palace an upscale grocery near Detroit, sued Tec-America, the vendor of its computerized point-of-sale and inventory system. The store's computer, installed in 1995, has crashed more than 100 times, rendering 10 cash registers useless during the crashes. The system froze when such cards were processed, and often took several hours to come back up, causing delays and loss of business while transactions were processed by hand. They are losing 30% to 40% of their business as a result. freep.com Aug '97 cwlive.cw.com:8080/home/online9697.nsf/All/970812fruit