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To: Captain Jack who wrote (24011)	10/19/1998 8:56:00 AM
From: Rich Dee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 31646

This is the first that I have seen about embedded chips not being as big a problem as first thought. Friday October 16 3:02 PM EDT Millennium bug Expert Shouts For Action By Neil Winton, Science and Technology Correspondent LONDON (Reuters) - Governments are failing to take a lead in the fight against the millennium computer bug despite promising to draw up an action plan, a leading expert on the bug said today. Computer industry consultant Peter de Jager, who has spent six years warning the world that many computers may crash at midnight on December 31, 1999, said governments are just paying lip-service to the problem. In May of this year, the Group of Seven leading industrial nations said at a summit that action must be taken on the bug, which threatens to shut down computers that recognize only the last two digits in years and cannot cope with the double zeros of the year 2000. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said a group of experts would meet to draw up a plan to make sure world defense, telecommunications, financial and other systems would survive the turn of the century. The meeting never happened. ''Governments have been paying lip-service to this. We assumed they were doing something, but it seems they were just trying to stop us picking on them,'' de Jager said in a telephone interview. ''It's frustrating to be told they are going to do something and nothing happens. You want to throw up your hands and say 'where are the leaders?' ''It's impolite to shout, but they said they were doing something and they haven't delivered. It's time to start shouting again,'' said de Jager, who was speaking from Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he was addressing a conference. Blair's announcement suggested de Jager, based in Brampton, Ontario, had succeeded in getting across the message urged by many experts: that world industry is now so reliant on computers that a rash of failures could cause economic disruption or worse. Corporations across the world have been spending heavily to rectify their computer systems and governments are struggling to make sure the computers which control databases for the distribution of social security money are fit to handle the millennium. But De Jager said it was also important for the public to be aware of the action being taken. ''There may be lots of activity going on in the background. It needs to be visible otherwise it's not good enough. We need to know things are happening, that's what confidence is based on. When people lose confidence that's when stock markets crash. It's not the sudden inability to do business.'' De Jager said some potential problems appeared less serious than feared. The risk to so-called ''embedded systems'' -- chips which provide the brain power behind sophisticated systems such as life support machines, railway signals and industrial machinery -- was not as great as suggested by a recent Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report. The OECD, which is sponsoring a millennium bug conference in London on Friday, had said between one and three percent of the 25 billion chips in use would fail. De Jager said his information suggested a failure rate of less than 0.1 percent. He praised the financial services industry for its remedial work on the bug, but said he was worried about the financial sector in Asia and particularly Japan. Certain commentators who had dismissed him as a crank and charlatan had changed their minds, he added. ''Some of these people have gone straight from denial to panic. Some magazines were saying it's all hype and exaggeration. Now they are saying we don't have enough time. We are all doomed.'' By way of warning, de Jager pointed to a recent failure in part of Britain's social security system when it was switched to a new computer. ''This is the crux of the matter. When you put in a new system or modify an old one there are going to be problems. That's the way IT (information technology) works. That's the type of thing people forget. When you plug it on and turn it on it's probably not going to work on day one.''