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: B.K.Myers who wrote (3988)	2/19/1999 1:48:00 PM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

B.K.--Thank you so much! It certainly doesn't get much clearer than that! By the way, how did you find it? I did an Excite search using "Gross Domestic Product and Unemployment" and don't recall this site in the results. "flatsville"

To: B.K.Myers who wrote (3988)	2/19/1999 2:47:00 PM
From: Ken Salaets	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

BK -- this is more than what I had before. Thanks! Ken

To: B.K.Myers who wrote (3988)	2/22/1999 8:21:00 PM
From: B.K.Myers	Respond to of 9818

There has been some speculation that April 9, 1999 and September 9, 1999 would cause problems in some computers because 9's were used as an end of file marker. April 9, 1999 is the 99 day of 1999 - 9999 in Julian format, and September 9, 1999 is the 9th day of the 9th month - 9/9/99. What about January 9, 1999, the 9th day of 1999 (1/9/99)? Lafarge Corp., one of North America's leading suppliers of construction materials, couldn't pay their bills for 48 hours because one of their systems read the three 9's as "end of file". Here are some excerpts from a Washington Post interview with John M. Piecuch, president and chief executive of Lafarge Corp. Q: How are you dealing with the year 2000 problem and how big an issue is it in your business? A: It's a significant issue. We run on computers today. That's the reality. Our plants, our offices, the process control, equipment within the plants. We're a very sophisticated environment today in that respect, so we have thousands of pieces of equipment that are potentially impacted by the year 2000 situation. But we have put together a very large task force made up of both IT people [and] financial people, as well as operating people. We've conducted audits of all operations all around the United States and Canada. We've put together a very sophisticated, very detailed game plan. We spent about $4 million last year and this year it'll be closer to $10 million just on the expenses for the year 2000. Our capital investment in terms of new systems is going to be in the range of $18 to $20 million, so it's a significant amount of money. In fact in our annual report I think I'm quoted as saying that we've spent so far over 27,000 hours on the year 2000 issue, which means a combination of our internal people and consultants. So we're spending a great deal of money. Q: Is that much more than you had anticipated? A: When you set up this process you're kind of hesitant to come up with a number. It's more than we would have thought, yes. How much more, I'm just not capable of saying. It's a lot of money. It's not just the money. It's the manpower. In actual fact, January 9, the system crashed, because it was turned over to 1999 and three nines in a row signal end of file, shut down the program. We couldn't pay our bills, we couldn't do anything else, and we're a $2.5 billion company. We fixed it within 48 hours. It's illustrative of the fact that no matter how much work you do there's potentially a glitch out there. washingtonpost.com