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

To: John Mansfield who wrote (2196)	7/19/1998 7:50:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

Might just happen!? - 'DJ10K? With world stock markets staggering under the impact of a weak Japanese yen, it may not seem as if the Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJIA) will climb much higher. But if it reaches 10,000 -- as seemed imminent just two months ago -- it could trigger a catastrophe analogous to Y2K -- this according to research firm The Gartner Group and others. The glitch, now being referred to as DJ10K, has the potential to crash systems, as many automated trading operations are programmed to suspend trading if the DJIA falls by a preset amount, to prevent panic trading. Designed to compute only four-digit averages, many systems will read the extra digit incorrectly, dropping the first or last digit. That is, if the DJIA closed at 10,673, this figure could be read as either 1,067 or 673. Although the jury is still out on the ramifications of the DJ10K problem, it is most likely to effect companies basing operations on older equipment originally programmed in such languages as JCL, Cobol, and PL/1. "People need to take a proactive approach rather than wait for these IT problems to blindside them," said Ed Severs, executive VP of Adpac Corp., a San Francisco-based conversion software company that offers a solution for systems unable to handle the transition to a five-digit average. sentrytech.com

To: John Mansfield who wrote (2196)	7/19/1998 10:25:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

'Bennett estimates only a 50-50 chance that Y2K legislation will pass in Congress...! asked in the TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) Q&A Forum July 16, 1998 Even Odds On Passage of Federal Y2K Bill By Declan McCullagh How serious are politicians about fixing Year 2000 problems? A bipartisan proposal to encourage Y2K readiness -- endorsed by President Clinton -- has only even odds of becoming law this year according to Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate's Year 2000 committee. "I don't put them much better than 50-50," he said yesterday. While conceding that Clinton's speech on Tuesday spotlighted what's been until recently an obscure software bug, Bennett stressed that much more needs to be done during a luncheon speech at the National Press Club. "My plea to you here in the Press Club is: Do not ignore this story just because someone is reassuring you that it's going to work out all right," he said. Not everything is going to work out all right, Bennett said. "We're not going to get this problem solved, so we have to set priorities." This means triage. Worst-case contingency plans. Ending just-in-time manufacturing. Filling warehouses, just in case. It also means Bennett is more realistic than Clinton, who offered a feel-good but absurd prediction the day before: "I set a government-wide goal of full compliance by March of 1999." Meanwhile the feds are falling behind their own schedules to at least fix the most vital computers -- and these in turn are only a tiny fraction of the total number of systems. The Defense Department's Y2K czar even told Netly that "I believe there are mission critical systems that won't be done." Will Bennett be heading for the hills? "I'm not yet ready to start storing food in the basement and digging up the backyard to put in a propane tank," says Bennett. "But it might not be a bad idea to have a little extra food and water around." cgi.pathfinder.com Yeah - it might not be a bad idea - at all. greenspun.com