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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: accountclosed who wrote (37716)	11/28/1998 6:26:00 PM
From: Skeeter Bug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

roq, no debate here. every now and then i think something out and it makes no sense. ;-) i was just thinking that some may postpone purchases to spend in 2000 and have the memories... maybe not. just thinking out loud...

To: accountclosed who wrote (37716)	11/28/1998 10:26:00 PM
From: novice investor	Respond to of 132070

Hi Antoine, >> people may avoid air travel right as y2k hits as people are concerned about bugs in the air traffic control system. << I believe it was you who once asked me if I have any idea about what may happen on January 1, 2000. I've spent a little more time researching and found (so far) that the most likely area for Y2K chaos is the point-of-sale products such as cash registers and very small systems with accounting features. The reasons this area is most vulnerable are the following: 1) virtually all sales transactions world wide use cash registers or some type of accounting machine. There are literally millions of these machines, all of them use embedded technology and all accounting processes keep track of dates including the year. 2) Due to lack of any regulations (probably because no safety problems are involved), there are no standards for any of these machines to meet. Each one of these millions of machines have unique embedded code and virtually all of them keep track of the year as 2 digit number. There are no easy and quick methods to correct the problem. 3) Vast majority of the users (mom and pop store owners, etc.) are totally unaware of the Y2K problem. None of the makers have been actively contacting the users or recalling the machines for Y2K compliance, also the users of these machines tend to be very cost conscious and often minimize maintenance efforts. 4) Only handful of major manufacturers (e.g. Samsung) are actually keeping track of Y2K issues and even those are limiting Y2K compliance efforts only to recently made models. 5) There are no ways to predict the severity of Y2K bug. Simple printing program that prints the dates can cause entire embedded system to lock up. Based on above issues, I expect that on 01/01/2000 there will be global chaos as stores world wide frantically attempt to manually process sales transactions. During the post Christmas sale on 1999, I intend to stock up at least one month amount of food and fuel supplies and perhaps buy calls on companies that sell/repair cash registers. I will post on this issue later when I have names of potential companies with investment potential. NI