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Technology Stocks : Y2K (Year 2000) Stocks: An Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bob oserin who wrote (11882)	6/9/1998 10:45:00 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13949

Bob, yes, I heard bits and pieces of the three hour C-Span Y2K discussion. Anyone who has heard those people speak know that they are anything but "apocalyptic". Yardini has his pat joke about his friend setting up a Y2K retreat in Montana. Yardini said that's the first place he's going if he needs help, the point being you can run but you can't hide, so you might as well stay around and try to help out if help is needed. Having read Rick Cowles book on "Electric Utilities and Y2K", it baffles me how the chief technology officer at the Edison Electric Institute is quoted in Time as saying "People forget that electric utilities have equipment failures and outages all the time... [Y2K] is not like a storm of a random failure. We know this one is coming." OK, so, if a few chips fail on 1/1/2000 and cause and outage, why am I supposed to believe the problem will be fixed in a few hours or days when it wasn't fixed it the previous two years? Was it a chip they missed, or a new one that malfunctioned? Perhaps it was an entire custom embedded system that must be redesigned. Perhaps it was the software that monitored the problem that erred? On the flip side, perhaps certain unscrupulous individuals also have planned for Y2K for a few years :=0. What we really need is a reporter who listens to "both" sides, does their own research, and tells it like it is. I have learned a lot reading various stuff on Y2K on the net, but it wasn't until I attended a few of these conferences and talked to personally to people like the guy in charge of Kraft Food's Y2K project (embedded chips galore), that I began to get a real sense of urgency. In other words, if Kraft says "we plan things by the day, not week. If we miss a deadline we don't go back because there's no time... Many in our industry are just now getting around to looking at the problem", well, it certainly brings the message home, does it not? - Jeff