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

To: Steve Woas who wrote (1903)	5/24/1998 3:30:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

[FEDERAL] 'Leach National Y2K Assessment Bill' 'ITAA's Year 2000 Outlook May 22, 1998 Volume 3, No. 20 Published by the Information Technology Association of America, Arlington, VA Bob Cohen, Editor bcohen@itaa.org Read in over 60 countries around the world ITAA's Year 2000 Outlook is sponsored in part by CACI International Inc., DMR Consulting Group Inc., and Y2Kplus Leach National Y2K Assessment Bill Rep. James A. Leach (R-IA), Chairman of the House Banking and Financial Services Committee, today announced the introduction of the "National Year 2000 Readiness Act." The bill calls on the President's Year 2000 Conversion Council to submit to Congress within 90 days a national assessment of the Year 2000 problem and a comprehensive strategy for ensuring that critical national infrastructures in banking and finance, energy, telecommunications, transportation, and vital human services affecting public health, safety, water supply, and environment, are ready for the transition to the Year 2000. "It has become increasingly clear that the Year 2000 computer problem has enormous economic implications for the economy," Leach said. ".Even if every bank in the nation successfully repairs its own internal systems, our financial system is still critically dependent on functioning telecommunications and electrical power infrastructures to conduct business in January 2000. It is disquieting to hear from the FDIC that although many bankers are trying to assess the risks from such infrastructure providers, telephone and power companies have not responded to their correspondence nor addressed the issue on their Internet sites. "It is important to public confidence and the continuity of critical public and private services that a reliable assessment and a comprehensive strategy be put together immediately. This bill will ensure that," Leach said. In addition to the national assessment and strategy, the bill: * Requires that the strategy include a plan for ensuring the availability of an adequate supply of technical personnel in the private sector as well as in government, and make recommendations on any need to raise immigrant visa ceilings. * Requires the strategy to include, in consultation with the Federal Reserve and Treasury, the goals and strategies the United States will pursue to ensure that foreign banks, as well as international financial institutions, are ready for the Year 2000 transition, and to engage multilateral institutions in providing funding or technical assistance to developing countries to address their Year 2000 problems. * Requires the Chairman of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion to submit quarterly reports to Congress on the progress being made under that strategy in all critical national infrastructures and in the development of contingency plans. * Provides that the Federal Acquisition Regulation may be revised to disqualify for an appropriate period of time a federal contractor who knowingly provides non-Y2K-compliant goods and services to federal agencies from receiving any other federal contract. However, any such restrictions may be waived if new goods and services are compliant. The legislation is cosponsored by Ranking Member John LaFalce (D-NY), subcommittee Chairmen Marge Roukema (R-NJ), Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Richard H. Baker (R-LA), Michael Castle (R-DE) and Rick Lazio (R-NY), and Financial Institutions subcommittee Ranking Member Bruce Vento (D-MN). The National Year 2000 Readiness Act will be available in the bills section of the Committee's website: www.house.gov/banking. ....

To: Steve Woas who wrote (1903)	5/25/1998 9:06:00 AM
From: scott ross	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

Paul, not to try to dissuade you from your views, but a couple of points to consider: o The United States survived the CIVIL WAR without a breakdown in the structure of state and local government. o As few as thirty years ago, major utilities were operational without ANY digital computing devices whatsoever. o You describe the Gartner Group's accuracy on LOC & remediation costs but then mention their estimates for embedded devices. Having worked on many embedded systems, I have seen VERY FEW that CHECK THE DATE. That is: most embedded systems do not use a date at all. A small fraction of these systems DO use a date. Of these, a small fraction ever read the date for purposes other than display. That is not to say there won't be some critical failures in these devices. There will be. But, for the most part, embedded systems and Y2K issues are hype. These systems need to READ THE DATE FOR PURPOSES OF CALCULATION. If they do not do do so, they will not fail. Cheers.

To: Steve Woas who wrote (1903)	5/25/1998 10:00:00 PM
From: Quad Sevens	Respond to of 9818

Steve: I wouldn't trust too much of what Paul Milne says. He calls anyone a "butthead" who doesn't agree with his extreme y2k doomsayer views, regaling the newsgroup with many egregious errors of fact and logic along the way--none of which he will admit to. Here was my response to Milne on that newsgroup: ------------------------ Milne started a thread called "EXPLOSIVE NEWS! It's over!" The URL given is techweb.com The passage in the article that has Milne (and Gary North) in ecstatic frenzy is "Similarly, the earlier estimated cost for year 2000 fixes of $1.10 per line of Cobol code now looks way too low. In an in-depth study of three companies, Gartner Group found that all three had erred egregiously in their estimates of where their companies do their computing. Though the companies had said usage was 80% on the mainframe, 20% on client-server, Gartner Group found the reverse to be true. The IT advisory firm has accordingly upped its estimate. Taking all computer languages into account, plus PCs, servers, embedded systems, networks, vendor compliancy, supply-chain analysis, and everything else falling into the scope of the three companies' year 2000 projects, Gartner Group now estimates that the rule of thumb for average year 2000 costs is $6.46 per line of code-nearly six times higher than its original estimate." This makes no sense. "$6.46 per line of code"? Per line of code of what? COBOL? All languages involved? Some serious "apples and oranges" problems here. What do lines of code have to do with PCs, servers, embedded systems, networks, ...? I mean, a faulty BIOS or a y2k noncompliant chip needs to be replaced (in most cases); "lines of code" is meaningless here. Why would estimates go up on the basis of 80/20 or 20/80? Doesn't it all need to be fixed? Why would estimates increase on the basis of usage? I can see estimates going up. And maybe GG's total y2k cost estimate has gone up 6 fold, but the paragraph cited is quite poor. We need some corroboration. Wade PS: If GG, the "world's premiere IT research organization", is only now discovering 20/80 vs 80/20, LOL, why does anyone pay them any attention at all?