To: Rick Bullotta who wrote (19198 ) 6/25/1998 2:46:00 PM From: John Mansfield Respond to of 31646
TAVA/BECK's Rick Cowles speaks at New Jersey's Y2k Action Day... on invition... 'Kudos for New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman for being one of the few high-ranking elected officials in this country to face up to the Y2K crisis. She proclaimed June 11 as Year 2000 Action Day, declaring: "The Year 2000 Computer Problem, also known as the Millennium or Y2K Bug, represents a threat to the continuity of government and business services if not fixed. I wish to communicate the serious nature of the issues to all State of New Jersey governmental offices at the state, county, and local levels [because] the proper functioning of our computer systems is critical to maintain the quality of life and prosperity of every citizen, business, and visitor in the state." The New Jersey and Year 2000 Conference was held on the designated day, June 11, at the East Brunswick Hilton. Organizer of the event was Grace Polhemus, the president of Technology New Jersey, Inc. a non-profit organization. . . . Rick Cowles, author of Electric Utilities and Year 2000, discussed embedded control systems, their pervasiveness, and the daunting fact that the microchips in embedded systems cannot be tested in the abstract through design evaluation or computer simulation. Instead, they must be dealt with individually, one by one, because, despite certain commonalties, we are almost always dealing with unique configurations. Cowles spoke of the Four Horsemen of the Electric Utility Apocalypse - deregulation, competition, restructuring, and bundling, and the Year 2000 Computer Problem which together have the prospect of jeopardizing, catastrophically, the delivery of electric power. He noted that the providing of electrical power is basic to our "societal contract" and requires priority attention and action. . . . y2ktimebomb.com