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Technology Stocks : Forecross Corporation : Y/2000 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ruyi who wrote (1527)	1/2/1999 4:42:00 PM
From: lef	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1654

Dear Doug, It is called,"Selling to Buy."Over the course of my career I have seen it done hundreds of times and with great effectiveness.John Mullhearn {of Ivan Bosky fame}a former colleage of mine and probably the most gifted/talented Wall St trader of the 1980's was a master at it.Nothing illegal about it.Just gets the longs REAL NERVOUS. Looking forward to your next post. Regards lef

To: Ruyi who wrote (1527)	1/3/1999 8:43:00 PM
From: AD	Respond to of 1654

Year of the Bug Start Early For the Swedes: STOCKHOLD, Jan. 1 (Agence France-Presse) - The police at three Swedish airports got a foretaste of the Year 2000 bug today. Their computers malfunctioned at midnight, causing distress for travelers without passports. The bug hit police offices at airports that issue immediate, temporary passports to acknowledge that 1999 had arrived and refused to authorize tahe one-month documents. Police units in Arlanda airport, in Stockhold, and in Gothenburg and Malmoe, ran into the problem as a code signifying "end of run" or "end of file." Several would-be travelers were disappointed. The bug meant they could not get a passport -- a reason that is probably insufficient to claim a refund on plane tickets. Technicians managed to fix the problem later in the day. It is feared that the Year 2000 bug, caused because many computers are unable to distinguish between 2000 and 1900, will strike at midnight on December 31, 1999.

To: Ruyi who wrote (1527)	1/3/1999 8:46:00 PM
From: AD	Respond to of 1654

Y2K Bug Affects Singapore Taxis SINGAPORE (AP) - Singapore's first reported computer failure caused by the millennium bug struck an unlikely target - taxi meters - a full year before 2000, a newspaper reported. Computerized meters on about 300 taxis went dead at noon on Jan. 1 for about two hours, The Sunday Times said Sunday. The new meters were supposed to be ''year 2000 compliant,'' the report said. The millennium bug is expected to strike computers and software that only recognize the last two digits of a year. Although most of its disruptions are forecast for the first day of 2000, the glitch is also predicted to affect systems during 1999. The supplier of the meters was investigating the incident. Taxi meters in Sweden also acted up on Jan. 1, but passengers there hardly complained. The meters continued to work but gave riders unexpectedly low fares.

To: Ruyi who wrote (1527)	1/3/1999 9:01:00 PM
From: AD	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1654

Sapiens....??? Forecross's teaming partner...any business for FRXX??? The latest Y2K bug worry: checking the fixes A new "fix-and-test'' industry springs up to quiet computer concerns CHRIS ALLBRITTON Associated Press NEW YORK -- With only a year to go until 2000, organizations that say their computers are ready to face the Millennium Bug now face the task of checking the fixes. That means checking millions of lines of computer code, and then running what industry insiders call IVV -- independent verification and validation. And that's after companies and organizations already have spent a fortune to inoculate their computers. But since the alternative is likely worse, a whole "fix-and-test'' industry has sprouted up, manned by an army of programmers who independently check the original programmers' debugging and run computer simulations pretending it's Jan. 1, 2000. One such verifier is Sapiens International Corp., an Israeli company specializing in Year 2000 problems. Sapiens' verification business started picking up about six months ago and has really taken off in the last two or three months, said Monica Wooden, senior vice president for Sapiens America. Companies like Sapiens have spent the past two years flushing out Y2K bugs for organizations ranging from Holiday Inn, IBM and Siemens Energy & Automation Inc., to the state of Arkansas and the Virginia Farm Bureau. Sapiens, founded in 1990, is considered one of the leaders in the fix-and-test industry. It employs about 650 people and has $60 million to $70 million in yearly sales. It has scanned more than 100 million lines of code in more than 100,000 programs. The problem known as the millennium bug, or the Year 2000 or just Y2K, results when computers use two digits to denote the year -- such as "98'' for 1998 -- and read "00'' as 1900 instead of 2000. That causes computers to think they have moved back a century and give faulty readings, corrupt the data or shut down completely. Worst-case scenarios for Jan. 1, 2000, speak of chaos in the financial markets, electricity shutdowns, disrupted airline schedules and missed paychecks. More moderate forecasts suggest spotty power outages, delayed flights and ATMs refusing to dispense cash for a few days. To see if it's ready for 2000, a company can send a sample of about 10,000 lines of computer code to the verification firm, which uses specialized software programs and a programmers to scan for erroneous date calculations. They also run simulations, moving the computers' internal clocks forward to the last minutes of 1999 to see what happens. Once a company's computer code is checked and converted, it should expect to spend another 25 percent more to have a third party verify that the corrected code works, said Shai Sole, Sapiens' chief technical officer. But even then, nothing is perfect. "There will obviously be bugs,'' Wooden said. "The key is to reduce the amount. There will be bugs at midnight (when 2000 arrives) and there will be bugs afterward. You just have to keep chipping away.'' No one knows how many U.S. companies have completed the first phase of their Y2K fix because there's no one source of hard data for that kind of information. While Wooden wouldn't mention specific clients -- nondisclosure agreements are the norm in the Y2K industry -- she did say that the state governments of North Carolina, New York and Louisiana had begun asking for bids on testing. She also said that American insurance companies are well prepared, and billing companies, payroll companies and other financial organizations are gearing up for the final round of testing. Automatic Data Processing, the country's largest payroll company, handles about 30 million W-2 forms every year and says it's ready for 2000. Marketing director John Gregory said the company announced in April that its AutoPay system successfully passed an independent audit -- after working on the problem for 2 years. First published on Saturday, January 2, 1999