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Technology Stocks : Year 2000 (Y2K) Embedded Systems & Infrastructure Problem -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Mansfield who wrote (378)	5/16/1998 4:22:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 618

[UTILITIES] Some figure from the EPRI conference 'In article <6ji20m$pkh$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, fedinfo@halifax.com wrote: >All along I have said that as far as utilities are concerned regular IT >systems are virtually meaningless as compared to embedded systems. For all >intents and purposes, nothing has been done. Morella rightly says that society >would shut down in the wake of non-compliant utilities. > >So, name ONE compliant utility? Oh, you can? Name ten more. Can you? So >what? Drop in the bucket. Meaningless. There are about 9,000 all together in >the US. If the vast majority are not ready, you can forget the whole shebang. Paul, Paul, Paul - Why do you continue to miss state facts that support your view, even after you have been corrected. Yes, there are probably 9000 utilities in the US, but a very few control the vast amount of generation and distribution. Just going off the numbers from the EPRI Y2K conference, a mere 29 utilities control 78.2% of all nuclear plant generation. These are the big guys who also control a lot of the fossil generation, but I need to do some more fact compilation before I can give you those numbers. And of course no one can say they are compliant right now, there is still plenty of work to do. But the work is getting done. Just as a gut check, one person at the EPRI Y2K conference asked the entire group if anyone thought their lights would be out on 1/1/2000. Before anyone could answer, I spoke up and stated that question can't be answered with certainty because Y2K testing is not complete at any utility (I know Paul, that wasn't very pollyannish of me). That fact was understood by all, but the question was repeated, just to see what peoples best guess was. Not a single person raised their hands. Is this a guarentee? No. But it has to be an indication that a great deal of people directly involved in the problem think that it is solvable. Fred Swirbul ___ Subject: Re: Utilities Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 07:15:16 GMT From: Fred Swirbul <fswirbul@ix.netcom.com> Organization: ICGNetcom Newsgroups: comp.software.year-2000 References: 1

To: John Mansfield who wrote (378)	5/16/1998 11:10:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 618

Questions to someone claiming to have remediated several utilities 'Mickey <mickeyb@nospam.home.com> wrote in article <355EE13F.694145DB@nospam.home.com>... > fedinfo@halifax.com wrote: > In the past 5 years, I have remediated 7 utilities. All but the one I am > currently on are now compliant. Yes Mr. Milne, just 7. I am, however, 6 > for 7 so far. I will be 7 for 7 soon. Well this is very interesting, but far too vague to provide any useful information. a) Did you function as a contributor to various remediation teams? b) Were you a team leader? c) Did your company contract for the entire remediation job on turnkey basis? d) What were the sizes of this utilities? e) Were these utilities Investor Owned, Municipal or Cooperative? f) What size (in terms of number of meters or generating capacity) are these utilities? g) How many total substations and switchyards do the 7 utilities operate? h) Did you work on distribution systems? i) Did you work on generating stations? j) Did you work on billing and/or other administrative systems? k) Did you test and remediate "embedded systems" at generating stations? l) What were your findings with respect to the Y2K compliance of the "embedded systems" encountered? m) What remediation actions were completed for "embedded systems". n) Are any repair actions identified for "embedded systems" now complete? It is entirely unproductive to make sweeping assertions without any factual content. If you supply some facts, as Fred Swirbul, Rick Cowles and others do, then perhaps will assign some credibility to your statements. > More BS. Of these 9,000, many are teeny weeny locals with little or no > impact on the whole. If the big ones make, alles gute. I believe that Rick Cowles now uses the figure of 7815, per recent testimony to Congress. Yes, it would be appropriate to discuss the small coops separately from the investor owned and municipal utilities. Similarly, you should identify what types of systems you have worked with. Harlan ____ Subject: 6 of 7 remediated?? Date: 16 May 1998 10:10:09 EDT From: "Harlan Smith" <hwsmith.nowhere@cris.com> Organization: Paperless Newsgroups: comp.software.year-2000 References: 1 , 2

To: John Mansfield who wrote (378)	5/16/1998 4:51:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 618

[COWLES] '...the nuclear side of the industry as the exception to the information sharing' Continued discussion between Rick Cowles and Fred Swirbul. John ___ 'On Sat, 16 May 1998 06:50:43 GMT, Fred Swirbul <fswirbul@ix.netcom.com> wrote: >>Even Rick Cowles ( a dyed in the wool Pollyanna ) understands that the >>utilities are not sharing information in a co-operative fashion but are >>actually competeing with one another. Such was his testimony before Congress >>this week. > >Funny, 78.2% of the US Nukes are already sharing information right now through >EPRI (I will provide the data for non-nukes as soon as I can compile it). Your >story isn't holding water. ITAA took a sound bite of my testimony - not the full thing. Please check out the 'exact' text of my testimony at www.euy2k.com/testimony.doc . I specifically called out the nuclear side of the industry as the exception to the information sharing (page 5). -- Rick Cowles (Public PGP key on request) Now Shipping From AMAZON.COM: "Electric Utilities and Y2k" - The Book euy2k.com Subject: Re: ITAA and Embedded Systems From: rcowles@waterw.com (Rick Cowles) Date: 1998/05/16 Message-ID: <35629fb1.6239420@enews.newsguy.com> Newsgroups: comp.software.year-2000 [More Headers] [Subscribe to comp.software.year-2000]