Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : TAVA Technologies (TAVA-NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Mansfield who wrote (19531)	6/28/1998 1:02:00 PM
From: Kenneth R. Moss	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 31646

To All: This is an article I found and thought it interesting. I sure hope it hasn't been posted:-) If so, I apologize. Ken Topic: Y2K News Fear Factorial - An Embedded Developer's View Embedded Systems Programming (Online) March 1998 Lindsey Vereen Fear Factorial [An Embedded Developer's View] by Lindsey Vereen After leaving the Ariake station, the Yurikamome, Tokyo's new waterfront train, glides by the Tokyo Big Sight international exhibition facility, past Hotel Nikko and Fuji TV, and then over Tokyo Bay via the Rainbow Bridge to the Shimbashi station in downtown Tokyo. The Yurikamome is swift, it's smooth, it's almost always crowded, and it has no engineer at the wheel. In fact, no one is aboard except passengers. Automated systems that move people from one place to another are not new. The People Mover at Disneyland has been around for years. The last elevator operator surely retired years ago, tired of the ups and downs of his job. More recently, transit systems sans drivers have begun to carry passengers from airline gates to the terminal at several airports. While many automated systems have been installed without so much as a murmur from the public, the evolution of automated systems is beginning to catch people's attention. Technological advances always have a fear factor, and rightly so. The idea of automobiles able to detect a potential collision and wrest control from the driver to avoid it is enough to raise the anxiety level of the most stalwart technophile. If that weren't enough, the millennium crisis has become our latest bogeyman. We've already heard horror stories about failed software projects and horrendous system crashes. Now we've got the proverbial guy with a long white beard and a sign proclaiming "The end of the world is nigh!" Is it really? The jury is still out. In the mainframe arena, the concerns are certainly legitimate. COBOL programmers, who only a few years ago were yearning for a career change, are now getting all the work they can handle. On the other hand, the embedded developers I've spoken to seem oblivious to the Year 2000 problem. At last fall's Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, the average attendance of each of the technical sessions was well over a hundred. The several most popular sessions attracted over 300 attendees each. The single Year 2000 session boasted a paltry 14 people, and not all of them stayed until the end. Where is the concern? I've found that the people making the most noise about the millennium crisis are the people who have the most to gain: politicians seeking media attention, millennium consultants, and millennium conference producers. One millennium consultant has suggested that elevators will be unable to cope with the temporal change, and will at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, 1999 move to the ground floor and open their doors, just as they are programmed to do in case of an emergency. But what if, asked this consultant, someone with a heart condition is riding an elevator at the stroke of midnight on that New Year's Eve and is mortally disconcerted by the descent. Come on! If you have a well developed sense of paranoia, you could surmise that companies could be concealing problems they've unearthed, but that seems far fetched. Despite my skepticism, I have no intention of minimizing the significance of any potential problem. As Tyler Sperry suggested a few issues back, if lives depend on your product, by all means have a Year 2000 audit done, if for no other reason than to protect yourselves from the lawyers sure to perch on your doorstep following any perceived product failure. If you find problems, or have already encountered any, let me know so that we can give this important news a proper airing.