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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (9028)	1/18/1998 6:39:00 PM
From: Steve Woas	Respond to of 13949

Here is an embedded diddy I found on the misc.survivalism newsgroup. ( 1/14/98; 11:00 AM EST) By Terry Costlow and Alexander Wolfe, EE Times There's been a lot of hoopla about the possibility that a banking program or payroll application will freeze up at the turn of the century, but observers are now growing far more concerned that deeply embedded systems represent a far bigger problem. It's fairly simple to determine whether a PC's software package will work correctly, but it's much more daunting to tell whether a nuclear plant, factory system, elevator, or other system with embedded firmware might be brought to its knees by the "00" in a dated time stamp. Although often hidden, the embedded problem may have far more impact than the one in front-office computers. It's unlikely that airplanes will fall from the sky when the 1990s end, but observers say portions of factories may fold, oil drilling and piping systems may freeze up, and other embedded hardware may grind to a halt. "The problem is everywhere, from large logging sites scattered across British Columbia to a city where they've determined half their fire trucks won't run after Jan. 1, 2000," said Jennifer McNeill, president of Cipher Systems, in Calgary, Alberta, a company that's focusing on embedded year 2000 problems. "I'm hoping some of the nuclear plants shut down until they're sure everything works properly." "We've seen a lot of vendors who say everything is compliant," Heermann said. "One company tested a controller made by one of those companies, and when it failed, it caused 19 others linked to it to fail. A software package that was supposed to be compliant worked fine through tests that simulated switching from Dec. 31, 1999, to Jan. 1. It continued to work fine on Jan. 31, 32, 33, and 34."