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Technology Stocks : Y2K (Year 2000) Stocks: An Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SOROS who wrote (13262)	11/11/1998 3:02:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 13949

I have been following the TD effect since last year; it is real and only now getting more media attention. Potentially many older PC's (386, 486 even older pentium boxes) may well have this problem. Think of the millions of older PC's currently running ledger in small business for example, and you get the message. Not a pretty one IMO. Harlan Smith is one of the best authors on newsgroup c.s.y2k (comp.software.year-2000). John ___________ ' Time Dilation -- Where Are We Now? By Harlan Smith November 10, 1998 [This article was submitted for publication on 1998-11-08, the day before the excellent NY Times article appeared at "Dispute on a Wrinkle in the Year 2000 Problem" by Barnaby J. Feder. That article offers a very clear explanation of the history of Time Dilation, the present status of investigation, Compaq's decision to suspend sale of TD Tools (a utility designed to test for and fix Time Dilation) and the actions Compaq has launched to further investigate the problem). I believe that this will be the first involvement of Compaq with Time Dilation. The Time Dilation effort was commenced by Digital, before they sold to Compaq. I recommend that my readers read that article first, to put my remarks in context. Harlan Smith 1998-11-09] On Friday, 16 Oct 1998 Barry Pardee, Americas Year 2000 Expertise Center Manager, Compaq Computer Corporation announced: [snip] We at Compaq and Digital have confirmed that the Crouch Echlin Effect, also referred to as Time Dilation (TD), is real and is a potential threat to PCs, servers, and embedded systems that use unbuffered real time clocks. Although we have not seen any TD symptoms on any Compaq or Digital PCs, many of our Customers have a mixture of various brands PCs that should be checked. Also, the use of non-manufacturer parts for repairs or upgrades may introduce potential TD problems into any PC. Hundreds of requests for the TD Tools (as described at the following URL) have been received by Compaq/Digital, along with reports of similar Time/Date anomalies, during post Year 2000 testing...We have made the decision to resell the TD Tools. TD Tools was developed by Mike Echlin of Yeovil Systems Research and Development Inc. of Canada, in conjunction with Jace Crouch, to test for and fix Time Dilation, or the Crouch Echlin effect, a newly discovered, little known problem with the interaction between the RTC/CMOS, BIOS, and Operating System, mainly occurring on the IBM Compatible PC or its derivatives. [end snip] So-called Time Dilation was originally reported by Jace Crouch on comp.software.year-2000 in a message thread archived at www.nethawk.com/~jcrouch/td01.txt that contains the early discussion of that phenomena. It was originally dubbed "Time Dilation" because the first guess about the cause of the observed phenomena was that the computer clock was running fast. Later it was realized that, at start up, the RTC (Real Time Clock) was being read during the update of its output shift register, causing bad data to be propagated to the BIOS clock. Shortly after Jace discovered the phenomenon, Mike Echlin began to research this thought-to-be unique phenomenon and it was soon dubbed "The Crouch/Echlin" effect, for its discoverer and principal investigator. It is also occasionally referred to as "Time/Date Jump," which I prefer because it is descriptive of the fact that, occurring randomly and infrequently at PC boot up, the BIOS clock time and/or date can jump forward or backward. The story of Y2K is documented at the above reference but a more concise description appears in Computer World of Canada, April 1998 issue. Two Time Dilation articles in that issue are accessible via lti.on.ca . Click on the search button at the left, enter "Echlin" in the search box and the two articles will appear in a list. I have been following this highly-controversial "Crouch/Echlin Effect" story ever since Jace Crouch reported its discovery in August 1997. Here's a description of what it is and why it's a controversial headache: .... y2ktimebomb.com

To: SOROS who wrote (13262)	11/12/1998 1:54:00 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Respond to of 13949

Re: A little Y2K humor(?) Ordered back to school at 105 IN A strange precursor to the millennium bug, a 105-year-old retired Swiss schoolteacher has received an order to attend primary school, after a computer cut a century off his age. The mix-up occurred because a list of local inhabitants delivered to education authorities contained only the last two figures of his date of birth, said Roland Dougoud, the town hall secretary in Echallens. The teacher, who was born in 1893, year joined 65 local five-year-olds earlier this year in receiving a letter ordering him to start schooling. "We have changed the computer program in question," Dougoud said. On a more serious note, though, if insurance companies withdraw cover for the Year 2000 problem, airlines will be forced to stay on the ground, said Andy Kyte, an analyst at the information technology consultancy the Gartner Group. "The attitude of the insurance industry will play the dominant role in what happens to airlines at the end of the century," Kyte said. scotsman.com