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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Mansfield who wrote (963)	1/24/1998 10:06:00 AM
From: Joseph E. McIsaac	Respond to of 9818

Wouldn't it be nice.... Wouldn't it be nice to see the Clinton Spin Machine work on promoting the necessity of Y2K as hard as they are working to overcome the latest political scandal?

To: John Mansfield who wrote (963)	1/24/1998 10:49:00 AM
From: sibe	Respond to of 9818

From San Francisco Chronicle (1/24/98) Associated Press 1,000 Taxpayers Hurt by Year 2000 "Crisis" Error occurred when IRS tried to fix coding "The IRS uncovered an unintended side effect of its effort to fix the Year 2000 coputer problem: About 1,000 taxpayers who were current in their tax installment agreements were suddenly declared in default due to a programming error. "It's believed to be the first evidence at the IRS of taxpayers being stung by the fallout of the 'millenium crisis.'" Note from sibe: I'm making sure I'm not going to expect any refunds from the IRS the next few years.

To: John Mansfield who wrote (963)	1/25/1998 5:47:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

C.S.Y2K 24-25 Jan 1998 - long post: NRC; Cowles on ITAA's Year 2000 Outlook; update of www.euy2k.com; ... Some interesting posts from C.S.Y2K: - 'NRC says no new nuclear plants built in over 20 years. 90% of sensors are analog, not digital.' - 'NEI Director of Operations Jim Davis compares the century rollover to the exercise nuclear power plants must run through for conversion to Daylight Savings Time' - 'www.euy2k.com website has been updated a few times in recent ' - Paul, I agree panic is in the offing but it will be much later rather than'sooner.' - 'Ratio of faults - 2:25:100:1 ??' John ______ 'NRC says no new nuclear plants built in over 20 years. 90% of sensors are analog, not digital. Very little reliance on digital technology for core reaction (Fission -> heat water -> steam -> electricity). The "ON/OFF" switch is not digital. There is a risk of digitial Y2K problem in peripheral systems such as security, surveillence, testing, event reporting, etc. They claim to be taking appropriate measures. This is good news. For more info, see ITAA's Year 2000 Outlook, January 23, 1998, Volume 3, No. 3 (I am on e-mail list. I do not have an URL)' thanks to Ol'Timer ________________________ 'Here's a fun one from the wonderful world of nuclear energy and Y2k. This excerpt is from the most recent ITAA mailing: >ITAA's Year 2000 Outlook >January 23, 1998 Volume 3, No. 3 <snip snip> >None of which is to suggest that the nuclear power >industry is necessarily asleep at the switch when it comes >to the Year 2000. On the contrary, the Nuclear Energy >Institute (NEI) and Nuclear Utilities Software Management >Group (NUSMG) teamed up last fall to issue a Y2K strategy >document for the industry called Nuclear Utility Year 2000 Readiness. >(NRC's Jerry) Wermiel calls it "a fairly effective program >"covering everything a licensee needs to be concerned about." >The federal regulator wants to see a Y2K plan at least as good as >the NEI/NUSMG approach in place at every nuclear power facility. > >How difficult it will be to implement those plans remains to be seen. >NEI Director of Operations Jim Davis compares the century rollover >to the exercise nuclear power plants must run through for >conversion to Daylight Savings Time. "Not a big deal," he says, >adding that the twice-yearly time switch is a routine with which >professionals in his industry have learned to cope. Y2K is just >bigger. Well, the cat's outta the bag. The jig is up. Y2k is just like switching to Daylight Savings Time! Only bigger! Duh. What have I been knocking myself out for. Well, it's back to the french fry pit for me as soon as the boss figures this one out. -- Rick Cowles (Public PGP key on request)' ___________ Subject: EUY2K Update, 23 January 1998 'Just a quick note to let everyone in the n.g. know that the www.euy2k.com website has been updated a few times in recent weeks. Want to know what the Y2k status of your particular electric company might be? Check out the links page and find out if your electric service provider has bothered to list anything on their corporate website regarding Y2k. Two New Features: The list keeps growing. Over the next few months, you'll see the editorial content of the EUY2K website shift more toward the subject of contingency planning. At this point, all companies need to be thinking in terms of system recovery post-01 January 2000. It's a given that there will be system failures. Rather than debating that issue, it's time to consider the magnitude and breadth of the failures. Both will vary from company to company. The two new topics added this month are: Contingency Planning Industry Documents Y2K needs to be a non-competitive issue within the electric utility industry. Each electric company is, in some ways, dependent on the other, and the synergy that can be developed when all work together toward a common goal can be powerful, indeed. More to the point, there is not enough time for every company to completely reinvent the wheel each time another phase of the Y2K program is started. In this spirit, Duke Energy and TransAlta Utilities (Canada), two electric industry leaders in the Y2K problem, have agreed to place some of their Y2K program documents online at the Y2K website for download. Any other industry additions to the tool box now online are welcomed! -- Rick Cowles (Public PGP key on request) ' _______________ 1/24/1998 Subject: Re: Business: Catastrophic halt 'Paul, I agree panic is in the offing but it will be much later rather than sooner. People are incapable of hysteria about events still portrayed as100 weeks away. If panic over intangibles was easy, the financial markets would now be battle zones because of Asian worries. The ordinary citizen can barely spell Y2K and is a very long way away from connecting the dots back to his own life. The concentrated Y2K dosage that is available on the internet for those interested has no relationship to what normal people are exposed to. Critical mass is still a long way off. The lack of anxiety is what's keeping business remediation interest at such a low level. What's needed is something graphic, perhaps a good train wreck or two. Allen Comstock' __________________ Subject: Re: Ratio of faults - 2:25:100:1 ?? anyone want a stab ? Date: 22 Jan 1998 14:55:18 GMT 'Chip Aspnes wrote: >We've tested systems where 9/9/99 is critical and leap days were >irrelevant. One system is only sensitive to a '00' year. Non-'00' >years work fine. Sometime a range, not the inherent dates, is the >critical factor. 99 and 00 trigger the fault as easily as 97 and 96. >Clock wraparound, epoch calculations and day-of-week calculations can fail anytime regardless of whether 2000 has passed or not. Good observation, Chip. Ratios are interesting, but regardless of relative occurrence I'd worry a lot more about 99 dates than leap years, for the simple reason that they'll get you first! The true drop-dead date for some remediations will be 1999-09-09, for others it will be the first lookahead into 1999, even FY 1999. Some of us will have the old system humming along, the new system in pieces all over the shop floor, and no way of slamming the new into production when the 99's hit the fan sometime in 1998. Your first encounter may be a cosmetic laugher. Your first encounter may be a show stopper. Your first encounter may be an enterprise-wide database purge trigger. -- RonKenyon "No excuses. Excuses are not going to lift up your butt" (Cher) ' _______

To: John Mansfield who wrote (963)	1/29/1998 2:07:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

C.S.Y2K 27 - 29 Jan 1998: AS/400; job market; interesting links _____________ Larry Shove; 1/29/1998 'FYI... IBM CALLS EVERY CUSTOMER FOR Y2K READINESS If you haven't already received a phone call from IBM probing your Year 2000 strategy, you soon will. With a goal of contacting every single AS/400 customer worldwide by the end of this quarter, IBM is compiling an unprecedented picture of the AS/400 market's Year 2000 readiness. It's not a pretty picture. "We're finding that the vast majority of AS/400 customers are aware of the Year 2000 issue -- they just haven't taken any action on it," reports Jim Kelly, head of Year 2000 for the Small and Medium Business Division. Kelly reports a variety of reasons for the delay, including confusion about what should be done and the higher priority of daily business pressures. "We're trying to clear away misinformation and misconceptions," he says, "and get them focused on a plan of action." One hurdle in the AS/400 market's preparation for the new millennium is the number of users still on back releases of OS/400, some as far back as V2R1. That's some distance behind the releases IBM markets as Year 2000-ready: V3R2, V3R7, V4R1, and (soon) V4R2. IBM won't say how many customers are left behind, but most analysts agree that a significant portion of the AS/400 market still lags well behind current releases. ----------------------------------------------------------- Maybe a good time to buy IBM shares? ' __________ Jim Martin: 'FROM..... ********************************************************** Edupage, 27 January 1998. Edupage, a summary of news about information technology, is provided three times a week as a service by Educom, a Washington, D.C.-based consortium of leading colleges and universities seeking to transform education through the use of information technology. ********************************************************** IT WORKER DEFICIT WORSENS The Information Technology Association of America says the gap between the number of vacant positions for computer programmers, systems analysts and computer scientists and engineers and the number of qualified workers has widened to a 10% shortfall -- 346,000 jobs are currently unfilled. "The problem has been getting much, much worse over the last year," says the CIO at CompUSA in Dallas. "It's harder to find people, and when you get them, they stay for much shorter periods." ITAA's president says companies must consider hiring graduates with other academic qualifications or certified skills in specific technologies. "The industry can't step back and say, 'we depend on our universities to solve the problem.' That's not working now, and it's not going to work in the future." (Information Week 19 Jan 98) -- Jim Martin ' _________ Some interesting links found by Chris Anderson: 'AREA: Opinion TITLE: The Hidden Sides(s) of Y2k COMMENT: PC Magazine February 1998 URL: zdnet.com AREA: Euro TITLE: Emu-Net URL: euro-emu.co.uk AREA: Contingency Planning TITLE: Contingency Planning erols.com <snip>'