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

To: Investor-ex! who wrote (2012)	6/18/1998 11:14:00 AM
From: scott ross	Respond to of 9818

>> No, not unless they're a law firm. Many businesses will be scrambling >> remediation and triage up to the last minute. Killing competitors Just a comment regarding this: for some companies, this may indeed be the case. However, many of the deep-pocketed, larger companies are dealing with this as an opportunity. I am doing technology consulting (non-Y2K) in a Fortune 50 company and am located next to the Y2K team. I get to see what they are doing every day. They are highly motivated and apparently doing a good job... as they are already in a testing phase. >> 1) Where do you think you will be 2000/01/01 >> apart from Y2k? What are your preparations/ Probably at some sort of party, I would suspect. My personal preparations assume a minor disruption of the supply chain. >> 2) Do believe the global effect of non-compliance in other >> countries will be immaterial? Not at all. However, it is worth noting that much of Asia (including Japan) is _already_ in a severe recession; I think you would agree some countries are probably in a temporary depression. What has the impact been so far to our economy? A few percentage points off the Dow; we've had to buy about $2B worth of yen; etc. In general, my belief is that the English-speaking world (at a minimum) and much of Europe will deal with Y2K effectively from an infrastructure and critical-services standpoint. >> Is it sufficient that the US is partly/mostly compliant while many >> other countries are compliant to lesser degrees? Most other countries don't have the computer-based infrastructure (e.g., process control devices for delivery of electrical power) to worry about. For instance, will East Germany have a bunch of Y2K- related power failures? Very unlikely, IMO, as they have analog and manual systems in place. Remember not to confuse Y2K remediation costs with critical service remediation costs. That is, once a utility's major service is assured (e.g., delivery of natural gas), you can bet that their major concern is that invoicing (accounts receivable) is functional and accurate. >> 3) Would you prefer the government come clean at some point What does 'come clean' mean? You mean show some Senate subcommittee hearings on C-Span? I saw those last Sunday. >> Do you have any first-hand experience with large, archaic, >> mission-critical software >> systems and/or pre-1995 embedded processors? Yep, I sure do. I've developed and worked with a bunch of firmware (CNCs, PLCs, motion controllers, cell controllers, PID systems, etc.) since the early '80s. Virtually _none_ of these devices have a Y2K issue. The reasons are as follows (they vary depending upon device): 1) They don't store the date at all. 2) They store the date as number of seconds since 1970 (e.g., the time_t variant); we've got a couple more decades to worry about this one. 3) They store the date in classic six-digit fashion (e.g., 980618) but use it for display purposes... not for calculation. That's not to say embedded devices have _no_ problems whatsoever. Of course there will be some problems. But, of the devices I've seen (most related to continuous and discrete manufacturing) I would bet that 99+% of them will treat 1/1/2000 as no different than 1/1/1998. Even the devices that do have a problem can, in most cases, be reset today. Consider the case where a device fails now (e.g., it's NVRAM fails and it loses its date). If truly date-dependent, the date must be reset or the device must be replaced. That's the case today, not just on 1/1/2000. Summary Predicting Y2K is more akin to predicting the outcome of a sporting event than anything else I can think of. If I had taken some wagers on the this forum prior to the Super Bowl last year, the vast majority of respondents would have picked the Packers. But a sporting event is an unpredictable, uncontrollable sequence and collection of events. And... never underestimate the American people <g>...