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Technology Stocks : INFORMATION ANALYSIS (IAIC) - YEAR 2000 Date Remediation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sid Turtlman who wrote (1604)	5/18/1998 9:25:00 PM
From: Graham Dellaire	Respond to of 2011

G8 to take urgent action on Millennium computer bug By Paul Casciato BIRMINGHAM, England, May 17 (Reuters) - Leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) countries said on Sunday they had agreed to take urgent action to combat the possible fallout from the millennium computer bomb. The eight world leaders said in a final communique from this weekend's G8 Summit they will work with business to prevent the danger of computer failures to defence, telecommunications, financial and other systems at the turn of the century. "We agreed to take further urgent action and to share information among ourselves and with others, that will assist in preventing disruption in the near and longer term," the communique said. World industry is now so reliant on computers that a rash of failures could cause economic disruption. Some experts say this could tip the world into recession or worse. But the leaders of the U.S. Britain, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Canada and Russia said businesses in those sectors which could be affected by the bug will have to shoulder the responsibility of protecting themselves. "We shall work closely with business and organisations working in those sectors, who will bear much of the responsibility to address the problem," the communique said. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who played host to the world leaders for the two-day summit, said his nation committed some 10 million pounds ($16.24 million) to the World Bank Trust Fund and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to help international institutions combat the bug. He said the G8 were all at different stages of preparation for the millennium computer problem and that as chairman of the G8, Britain has agreed to hold a meeting of experts on the issue in Moscow. "We agreed...to hold a meeting of the G8 experts and do that in Moscow where (Russian) President made a particularly strong plea as to the importance of action on the millennium bug in his country and indeed around the world," Blair told reporters after the final G8 meeting. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien said the computer bug problem was visited twice by the world leaders at the meeting in England's second city. "We came back to that twice. Once in relation to international crime using computers and we came back this morning to make sure that we will all be together on the first of January 2000," Chretien told reporters. The G8 communique said the world's most powerful leaders had also agreed to implement rapidly an action plan on high tech crime put forward at the G8 foreign and G7 finance ministers meeting held last weekend in London. Chretien said the leaders recognised that heading off the so-called "millennium bug" will be an expensive prospect, but that it was necessary to avoid disaster. "Otherwise it could jeopardise trade and communications around the world," he said. Computers are exposed to a problem that sounds almost too trivial to be true. In the 1970s and 1980s, computer programmers saved what was then valuable space abbreviating years to two digits - like 97 or 85 - knowing that this would cause mayhem in the year 2000. Computers would be unable to make sense of a four digit number and would crash or start pumping out erroneous data. But because of the torrid pace of the growth in technology it was widely assumed that the problem would be addressed many years before the year 2000 dawned. This assumption has proved false and companies and governments around the world are scrambling to fix the problem. If widespread computer breakdown were to occur millions of people dependent on state funds could find themselves without money and public utilities could leave whole populations stranded without water or power. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, chief economist at merchant bankers Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, Edward Yardeni, said there was a 60 percent chance of a recession because of the computer bomb, with the possibility of a depression.