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

To: EaglePutt who wrote (13757)	3/30/1998 4:16:00 PM
From: E	Respond to of 31646

Re 'recognition for the y2k problem in general', the March 28th "Economist" has an article on recent developments in Britain. We've seen much of its report here already, but here are a few striking items: "Action 2000...says that in the past year about 15% of the microchip -controlled production lines in factories have failed tests of whether they can cope with dates beyond 1999...two pharmacies had their entire records wiped out during such tests...a government department's computer network suffered irreparable damage during testing. ...whereas so far the emphasis has been on advice and encouragement, the government and its agencies may soon have to start issuing edicts..... to order the firms they oversee to provide more specific guarantees to hospitals and other priority customers. ...the health service faces costs of perhaps L500m...even minor failures, if duplicated across the whole country, could cause many deaths....a senior doctor and computer expert ...reckons that even if only 10% of the NHS's computers break down, up to 1,500 patients might die while the machines are being fixed. Robin Guenier, who was the government's chief adviser on the bug until he was dropped last September (apparently for being too doom-laden for ministers' tastes), says that...[L500m is] a substantial underestimate... [He says] that to wipe out the bug could in theory cost Britain more than L50 billion. In theory, that is, because he says it would be impossible to spend that much money in the time left. Now it is simply a matter of minimising the chaos... [I'd add, of minimizing legal liability for negligence, too; and in the U.S. one way to minimize liability for neglecting to address your embedded chip problem is to hire TAVA asap.JM]