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 : Oracle Corporation (ORCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nathan Hansen who wrote (7716)	6/30/1998 3:44:00 PM
From: MeDroogies	Respond to of 19080

Well, I don't invest in Y2K (I think most of it is a crock and hyperbole), but for companies that have legitimate issues surrounding the Y2K problem, this certainly offers a viable alternative. Especially when I heard the head of our Y2K effort talk about MSFT's misleading info with regard to the issue...apparently a good amount of MSFT's products are not Y2K compliant - yet. But that isn't what they are saying to clients...until it's too late. Our Y2K leader found out in a test, and confronted our MSFT contact with regard to the issues (not being a techie, I will have to leave out specifics since I don't understand them), and he replied that a service pack was going to be forthcoming (no date was able to be given).

To: Nathan Hansen who wrote (7716)	7/1/1998 12:54:00 AM
From: Larry Brew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19080

Nathan, << upgrading new systems for y2k >> Maybe this thought is what's holding Y2K back. It sounds good on the surface, but is a far cry from reality. I'll try to give an unlengthly and hopefully an understandable analogy. When working for TXN, I was heavily involved with computer aided design for a number of years. Called CAD systems. Many of our systems were and still are SUN work stations. Functions of these work stations were to simulate designs, do the chip architecture layout, extract the complex architecture and compare to the design schematics, make sure all wafer fab processing rules were in compliance, and look for parasitic ( unwanted electrical parameters) that could be adverse to the design functionally. Extremely complex and very often a year or more in design. My analogy. Along comes SGI, the 3-d movie company deciding to blow their way into this market. They have some of the best engineers in the industry, unfortunately for me and others, good engineering has nothing to do with management vision. Their systems were superior to SUN. IMHO on all this. Now their short-sightedness! It takes a couple years to train even the best engineers to become effecient with these work stations for them to reach the skills of being able to compete with leading edge designs. To switch to another vendor for some 10% or 20% improvement in performance would be suicide while retraining 300+ designers in our analog mixed signal department. Sun will easily match SGI's performance in short order if it hasn't already. The SGI internal ego was something to behold, but their vision and execution was very weak. To think someone who's used any software system over the years will be able to suddenly switch to new concepts is going to smash every company with this attitude. It's far more complex than going from WIN95 to WIN97. Those who've grown with the new technology will be fine, but all those old institutions are in for a rude awakening. Sorry I couldn't relate in fewer words, and who knows, maybe I'm wrong! :-) Larry