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

To: Larry Voyles who wrote (22569)	8/22/1998 10:04:00 AM
From: Manzanillo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 31646

Today's Barrons has a lengthy article about Y2K. Even though it doesn't mention Tava, it calls embedded chips the biggest problem. You'll need to be a subscriber to read it online. Here is part of what it says about embedded chips: <<Bruce F. Webster, who is also chief technical officer at the Dallas-based Object Systems Group, makes the point that the real difficulty with Y2K remediation lies not so much with conventional software, but with what's called embedded control systems. Software is disproportionately associated with the service sector, and is far easier to fix, which is one reason why Wall Street has recently been able to strut its stuff about its compliancy. Another reason for the Street's readiness is that the often-distant maturity dates on bonds can concentrate your mind on the future. In fact, concern about the future is one reason why the Social Security Administration first became aware of the problem back in 1989 and began working on it at that point. But embedded control systems, which are disproportionately associated with mining, manufacturing and transportation, are far more difficult to fix. (There are 8,000-10,000 ECSs in a modern offshore oil platform.) As their name implies, ECSs are computer chips stuck in something else, and they generally carry out the functions of metering, scheduling and maintenance. Ironically, in the vast majority of cases their time-monitoring has nothing to do with the year, but because they usually have two-digit codes that recognize what the year happens to be, they will still become disabled when those digits flip from "99" to "00." Amazingly, the estimated number of embedded control systems worldwide is in a range from 10 billion to 25 billion. Webster points out that even if we take the lower figure, and even if we assume that only 0.2% of the 10 billion have Y2K problems, that means 20 million fixes that have to be made. And all of them first have to be assessed.>>