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Technology Stocks : TAVA Technologies (TAVA-NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Douglas Rushkoff who wrote (8796)	1/12/1998 9:50:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 31646

That would seem to be all we're waiting for. I hope you're making progress in setting up that blind trust, so you can write about these matters, thusly becoming part of the solution. (The solution for tpro...) In the meantime, here are some excerpts from a very long January 7 article by Paul Taylor in the Financial Times, "Defusing the Millennium Bomb." Heading is NOW AN URGENT MANAGEMENT ISSUE The countdown has begun. It has been called the most serious challenge ever to hit the information technology industry, but in reality it could be the biggest crisis to hit businesses, governments and other organisations that rely on information technology systems… Many organisations could be thrown into chaos and some could even go out of business…But the problem does not stop there. Lifts, medical systems, power stations, missile systems and other devices, which contain embedded micro-controllers, may also be vulnerable. "Much everyday equipment such as air-conditioning systems, bar-code scanners, lifts, telecoms equipment or underground cabling includes ‘embedded' date sensitive software," warn guideline notes issued by Garrets, the London-based law firm… …Based on early studies, about 80 per cent of all mainframe computer programmes appear to be vulnerable… Establishing the full scale of the problem is difficult: analysts have estimated that the cost of fixing the problem worldwide could reach $600bn, and absorb up to 50 per cent of the world's total IT budget from now to the millennium… …some experts predict that that cost of qualified staff may double every year as 2000 approaches. To help offset these rising costs, many organisations are turning to offshore software development centres, such as India, to help ease skill shortages. Computing services companies with specialist Year 2000 units are also in strong demand…. Without doubt, some of the more sensational doom-laden forecasts made by self-styled y2k experts and consultants are self-serving and exaggerated. Nevertheless, the scale of the problem is truly awesome… Perhaps most worryingly, business managers in some organisations still seem to be unaware of the problem, under-estimate its impact, or even deny its existence altogether… Cap Gemini, which has developed a Millennium Index to track how effectively the problem is being addressed in Britain, warns that if the timetable to fix the problem slips by just three months, one in four organizations, representing 37 per cent of GDP, will fail to meet the deadline… …the Year 2000 problem is no longer just a technical issue. It is now a management issue, and an increasingly urgent one.