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

To: Bill Ounce who wrote (1879)	5/19/1998 12:34:00 PM
From: Bill Ounce	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

Attacks on Fred Swurbil's Electrical Power Report Fred's report precipitated an interesting discussion from Cowles and Toews (https://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=4409760), professionals with a history of educating the industry about the realities of Y2K. But it precipitated hostile responses from self-appointed-experts Gary North and Paul Milne. begin personal rant Gary North's site is a good resource for Y2K links. but this article makes it clear that his commentaries about the links are not to be blindly trusted. (I'm saying this because some at SI seem to revere North as some sort of divine prophet!) The confirmed existence of several Y2K cuckoos does not imply that only cuckoos believe in Y2K. A rational frame of reasoning will be more effective for remidiation and triage. For the future of society, I hope there are many more people like Swirbul, Cowles and Toews than North and Milne. end personal rant From: Fred Swirbul <fswirbul@ix.netcom.com> Newsgroups: comp.software.year-2000 Subject: Re: Gary North Ridicules Fred Swurbil Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 22:35:50 GMT In article <6jkasv$psl$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, fedinfo@halifax.com wrote: > > >Here are Gary North's comments on Fred Swirbul's report. > > > > >A report from the Dallas meeting of the Electric Power Research > Institute. > >Most power companies are not finished with assessments. Those few that have >begun testing are experiencing failures. But the failures aren't so critical >that systems will shut down. I never said that. Lower level embedded COMPONENTS don't seem to fail in a way to shut down whole systems/plants, embedded SYSTEMs do. > So, concludes the reporter, we will have power. That is my personal opinion. I also believe I said "(most) of the lights will be on". Someone will be sure to screw up somewhere. > Now all we need to do is find ways of getting fuel shipped in and get power >transmission systems compliant. And make sure that all the software is coded >correctly, so that the individual systems are compliant. (PEPCO has 8,000 >noncompliant systems.) Then all of the vendor-supplied software must be >compliant, consistent with each other, and fully integreated into the newly >repaired systems. > Next, the banks must be compliant, we that we can pay our power bills, >assuming the U.S. Postal Service is compliant. The power companies must be >able to pay each other for power consumed and also pay their suppliers. So, >the suppliers must be compliant and remain in business, and so must their >suppliers. It seems Gary's point is that there are a lot of other secondary, inter related "systems". True statement. They need to be looked at, just like everything else, but they also won't directly cause the lights to go out, with the exeption of the transmission systems. It is a choice a utility will have to make if they are going to shut off you power because they haven't received your payment. > Apart from this, there's no problem. > >----------------- > >Anyone with half a brain can see that Fred Swirbul is completely ignorant of >the magnitude of the situation. That is why Gary North ridicules his >conclusions, because they are ignorant. He didn't do a very good job, even considering the misquotes. I will assume they were not made maliciously. >But nothing will convince dyed-in-the-wool Pollyannas that there is big >trouble brewing. As a matter of fact, the worse the news gets, the more >confident they become that everything will come out alright. > >Fred Swirbul, completely ignores the overall situation that most utilities >have not even completed an assessment of their embedded syaytems. He ignores >that utilities have thousands of embedded systems to repair and 19 months to >do it. He ignores the monumental nature of the task and how late they are in >starting. He ignores the myriad of factors aside from a utility's own >compliance that affect power generation. He is impressed, however, that they >held a meeting. You are twisting the facts again (is anyone surprized?). The average is about 700 per generation plant that needs to be tested. Then factor in a failure rate of about 2.5% to 10%. Then you only have to fix a the fraction of those that cause a plant to trip. It might be a tough job, but no where near insurmountable. >Pull the covers up over your head, Fred. The monsters will go away. I would rather stay on the front line and fight the "monsters", rather than run away like you. >Paul Milne >http://www.garynorth.com/y2k/detail_.cfm/1590 >