Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Mansfield who wrote (3648)	2/4/1999 3:34:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

'Airport Reservations on Fox News asked in the TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) Q&A Forum -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Fox News (the fox friends show) this morning (Feb 4 1999) They briefly mentioned that the airlines had spent "billions" (their words not actual number) to fix their reservation systems to be year 2000 compliant. They said that today was the first day that you could reserve a ticket for a flight in 2000. So they had someone there call and attempt to reserve flights at 5 different airlines. Only one flight could be reserved the other 4 failed. Whole thing was dismissed with a cutesie comment about which 5 people on staff were trying to leave the country. In general this is the worst show that Fox News airs but I found this interesting that it didn't seem to bother them that here was a significant problem that if not fixed soon will begin to impact the airline industry. Can anyone else confirm that the airline reservation system has a problem? Any travel agents out there..... LM greenspun.com

To: John Mansfield who wrote (3648)	2/4/1999 3:39:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 9818

'Y2K: a matter of life and death Clinical equipment fails Y2K tests despite vendor guarantee of compliance by Paul Brislen Y2K has become literally a matter of life or death. Clinical equipment in some hospitals will fail on January 1, 2000 if it is not fixed or replaced. "We've looked at six patient-controlled intravenous pumps and four weren't compliant," says Andre Snoxall, manager of information systems at Taranaki Healthcare. "Two of these would have allowed the patient to double-dose if one dose were applied before midnight and one after. The other two do the same, and then they stop working altogether." Alarmingly, Snoxall says they still have eight more pumps to check. "We expect half of them fail as well." But the most disturbing aspect of this discovery is that Snoxall has a written statement from the manufacturer assuring him of the devices' compliance. "You've got to test. You can't take anybody's word for it. Once you know, then it's not an issue -- you can replace it or put in a procedure in to deal with it, or whatever." Taranaki Healthcare has completed a full inventory of anything that might have an embedded system in it and has employed electrical engineers to test all the equipment they can. "Every piece of equipment that has a risk to patient safety is being specifically targeted first up and if we can't prove anything one way or another, it just won't be used." Snoxall says he is concerned about the infrastructure working on the day itself. "Electricity, water, waste disposal -- we don't have a high level of confidence in any of those things." Snoxall has to consider the effect an outage would have on everyone at a hospital, from the part-time cleaner through to those people on life-support systems. Taranaki Healthcare does, of course, have a number of back-up generators, but there are pitfalls to avoid even there. "We ran them for a full day to test them under load and discovered that they stopped running after three hours. They had an automatic cut-out built in." Without testing, Snoxall says they would have relied on the generators for power and that could have been disastrous. Now, Snoxall says, they are debating whether or not to hire back-up generators for the back-up generators. If supply chain compliance is giving you a headache, spare a thought for Snoxall and his peers. .. year2000.co.nz