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

To: jwk who wrote (4266)	3/3/1999 9:41:00 AM
From: R. Bond	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

For those lateral thinkers on the tread, this story may be deemed relevant: Sunday February 28 7:24 AM ET Hackers Reportedly Seize British Military Satellite LONDON (Reuters) - Hackers have seized control of one of Britain's military communication satellites and issued blackmail threats, The Sunday Business newspaper reported. The newspaper, quoting security sources, said the intruders altered the course of one of Britain's four satellites that are used by defense planners and military forces around the world. The sources said the satellite's course was changed just over two weeks ago. The hackers then issued a blackmail threat, demanding money to stop interfering with the satellite. ''This is a nightmare scenario,'' said one intelligence source. Military strategists said that if Britain were to come under nuclear attack, an aggressor would first interfere with military communications systems. ''This is not just a case of computer nerds mucking about. This is very, very serious and the blackmail threat has made it even more serious,'' one security source said. Police said they would not comment as the investigation was at too sensitive a stage. The Ministry of Defense made no comment.

To: jwk who wrote (4266)	3/3/1999 11:07:00 AM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

To: jwk who wrote (4266)	3/3/1999 2:31:00 PM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

RETURN OF THE MISSING POST jwk--thanks for the excerpt on the pharmaceutical industry and the link to the Newshour transcript. So the good Senators just discovered that 80% of the pharmaceutical industry's basic chemical come from abroad, huh? Frankly, I think that percentage is a bit on the high side...Nevertheless I can tell you the situation with chemical processors does not inspire confidence. I have been following the remediation efforts in the basic chemicals industry for several month now. My husband is a pharmaceutical chemist. He recently left a mid cap pharmaceutical maker with no to bad remediation, exhausted credit lines and so much debt they considered a secondary for a contract research organization making a concerted effort at remediation, sitting on a honkin' big wad of cash and good prospects because of that 80% (or thereabouts) figure. The problem is that eventhough he is removed a step or two from actual production that is no guarantee of a paycheck. Should his company's large pharmaceutical makers experience critical supply line problems and can't get the drugs out the door what happens to the R & D budget? What does a multi-national pharm. co. do when experiencing a crisis and the inevitable credit crunch? Solve the immediate problem? Alter the business plan for drug development? Your guess is as good as mine... A very telling exchange took place between Elizabeth Farnsworth and Bruce Webster during that Newshour segment which was a direct spin-off of that pharmaceutical discussion: >>>BRUCE WEBSTER: (snip)...And then on the far side of Y2K, I think the real danger there is economic. I think far more Americans will feel Y2K in their pocketbooks than will find, you know, problems with power or water supply or whatever. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How so? What do you mean? BRUCE WEBSTER: Well, I see a number of factors that can contribute to an economic slowdown and recession. These can be disruption in oil supply, it can be issues of supply chain and manufacturing, it can be issues of a worsening of the current global economic problem. It can be a problem of simply corporations which are already doing record layoffs finding themselves having to scale back even more as Y2K problems sort of bleed them from a thousand cuts or as a friend said the other day, you know, torment by a thousand flea bites from Y2K problems that weren't caught.<<< Notice that Webster hedged on pegging y2k as the catalyst in this scenario. Why was that? Well, here's my take.---Bruce is a trained economist. The discipline frowns on economists behaving like "fortune teller" the same way historians are discourage from behaving like "futurists." It is considered bad form even though they are in the "prediction" trade. It takes a different sort of individual to step outside the accepted bounds of the discipline and think outside the box...go out on a limb...from their peers...That's why Yardeni stands alone in his 70% recession prediction...That's why he won a Nobel Prize. But Webster is no dummy. The implication is there...trouble dead ahead. He's just more "careful." He's also the co-chair of the Washington DC Year 2000 Group and an IT professional. I think he knows something, eh? I think it will be a damn big surprise to most people if they were lucky enough to have uninterrupted electricity, sewer and water service and their company hands them a pink slip post 01/01/00 anyway. "Wha hoppund?" they'll ask. Damn those pesky global dependencies.