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

To: John Mansfield who wrote (3822)	2/12/1999 8:36:00 AM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

This is courtesy of csy2k. The choice snippets from the Q & A session are wonderful. The best is under "BELIEVE US DAMN'T." And Howard Belasco wants us to believe? government statements re: remediation status. Well gee Howie, I would if they didn't keep changing the no. of mission critical systems, deadlines, percentages etc... -------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a transcript of a briefing conducted by the Deputy Secretary of the Defense about the DOD's Y2K status. Like most news articles the first half of the article is quite encouraging. Hey, even I was starting to be impressed. But (always a but), as you start to get into the Q&A at the end, things start to smell bad...real bad. This has it all...swipes at people selling gold bullion, "don't look at us, look at Russia", "What you mean we should be concerned about China too?", "We've lied before but believe us now", etc. If you're not afraid of Y2K, read this...you will be. The URL: army.mil Some choice snippets: GOLD: Q: But given their intercontinental nuclear capability and hopefully, a lot of this is media hysteria, but we have seen a lot of reports about how things are going to go haywire and power grids will go down and communications will fail and who knows how computers are going to react or how people will react when their computers fail. A: (Hamre): I think those are the same people trying to sell gold bouillon. (Laughter) RUSSIA: Q: You said Russia's not taking it quite as seriously at this point as perhaps they could. That's not necessarily confidence inspiring. A: (Hamre): What I need to say is they may be taking it seriously. But they've got a lot of other pretty serious problems. So I think therein lies the -- our nervousness about it. We would love to see in Russia the same degree of passion about this that we have. We have to understand that they are a very different situation. They have come to this much later. They haven't had, you know, the country is going through some fairly profound changes. And so, they haven't had the central focus. It's only been about a year that they've had an office that was really trying to work this problem. And with astounding changes that have been going on. So we would like to see more, but we're grateful that they have positively responded when we've raised the issue. As I say, things that we're most concerned about they are engaging with us on it. I don't know what more I can say. I think we feel good about what we have right now. CHRISTMAS: Q: At least two states are going to have their National Guard standing by I guess the last two weeks of this year. Can American service members in other places or active duty people find that their Christmases are going to be ruined? A: (Hamre): I'm glad you asked that because I have seen these reports. What I think has been mischaracterized is the sort of planning that's going on both at the state level and at the federal level that is in this category of consequence support. There is no mobilization plan right now for bringing the National Guard out or active duty military. We're not going to know the extent to which and how we should best support the civil sector until we go through some of this planning. People shouldn't be anxious about that. We will be ready to support whatever has to happen. But we're not going to know the dimension of that yet for another couple of weeks. Nobody's going to lose their Christmas, I don't believe, worrying about that problem CHINA COMMENT: Q: Have you got a handle on how the Chinese are doing? A: (Hamre): No. I don't think we have too much insight [there]. Remember, the basic military posture doesn't cause us to be worried that they are going to be unacceptable, catastrophic consequences. We don't think that's going to be the case at all. BELIEVE US DAMN'T: Q: In October when you met with a group of reporters, Dr. Hamre, you predicted that 95% of mission critical systems would be ready by, actually by this date, the 1st of the year. You're 81%. You're going to be 93% in March '99. It says you have to be 100%. Why should we have confidence that you will be 100% by the Year 2000? A: (Hamre): Well, we now know with every single system where it is, where it stands, by independent looks at it. I didn't have that kind of knowledge back in October when I met with all of you. It was our forecast: what we were hoping to be the case. We fell short of where we wanted to be. But I know now we will be able to make it based on what we've seen. Believe me, we've drilled everybody. It's because the people that have to go to war are the ones that are now checking to make sure that it's going to be there to support them. So I feel pretty good about it now. NEW SOFTWARE, NO PROBLEM: Q: Defense Secretary Cohen had threatened to impose a moratorium on the development of new software and to modify what you already have. With the progress you've made, is that still necessary? A: (Hamre): My feeling is, and I haven't yet reported this to the Secretary because he's been on travel, but I don't believe that we're going to need to do that now. I believe that there's sufficient energy and discipline in the system that we don't have to do that at this stage. MISSION CRITICAL: Q: My final point here is that the number of mission critical systems appears to be growing since the OMB report in November. I could be wrong about this. Is there a fluctuation in the number identified? A: (Hamre): It moves up and it moves down as you study a case. And you find out that one system is really a subroutine in another system or you'll find something that you thought was one system, turns out there are three variants. So the number does bubble around a little bit. But it isn't a dramatically different picture.

To: John Mansfield who wrote (3822)	2/12/1999 10:44:00 AM
From: O. H. Rundell	Respond to of 9818

John, c.s.y2k: A trip to the wild side, or perhaps the twilight zone. Lots of big brains/big iron programmers with an attitude . Fun to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there since anyone under a "9" or over a "3" can count on multiple toastings. Don't recall the URL, but think the "expert opinions" are being revised. Read the remarks by Harlan on CServe, very thoughtful albeit disturbing. Very much appreciate your efforts to keep us up to date. I've been following the Y2K developments since last fall and sadly cannot for the life of me see much (any?) improvement in the situation....just an increasing effort to spin down the situation....perhaps the result of an increased fear on the part of gov't; i.e., fear that a public panic could sink the banking system, etc. One sad aspect to all this PR effort is that (IMO) the prepared citizen is far less likely to panic than someone who suddenly realizes that there is a problem (e.g., this summer when the brownouts/blackouts begin because NRC decided to shut down the nukes). Just an example of what could happen, of course; not necessarily a prediction. Regards, O. H.