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Response to 3T's album

from a (a@a.a)
Subject:China Is Toast
Date:1999/05/11
Author:fedinfo <fedinfo@hal ifax.com>
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Experts here warn that China could suffer everything from severe disruptions in power and water to lesser but still expensive glitches in telecommunications, banking, public health and transportation.
 
And China's woes could spill over to Hong Kong, where banks,
brokerage firms and shipping companies with close ties to the mainland are worried about lost cargo and missing payments.
 
"China is very, very behind in Y2K contingency planning," said Joseph Sweeney, director of research at the Hong Kong office of Gartner Group, a research firm that specializes in the Year 2000 problem. "There's no way many of their organizations will come up to speed in time."
 
Yet so little is known about the nature of the problem here that the experts are often reduced to a digital-age version of reading tea leaves as they scrounge for clues about how and where China will be affected. The dearth of data is compounded by China's computer network -- a mix of 1960s-era mainframe machines and pirated
copies of the latest Windows software running on a variety of
personal computers.
 
Tim Shepheard-Walwyn, the chairman of the Global 2000
Coordinating Group, a consortium of 300 banks that monitors Year 2000 compliance, said he did not have enough information even to make a judgment about China.
 
 
 
 
==============
&n bsp;
 
It is an ABSURDITY to say that 'not enough is known' to make a decision about China.
 
Patently ABSURD.
 
From the SAME article:
 
If the Chinese banks suffer computer malfunctions, it would
paralyze hundreds of millions of dollars of settlements within days.
 
One big problem is that an estimated 96 percent of the software in China is pirated. Software manufacturers generally refuse to repair products not sold under a license. Faced with buying a license to become Year 2000 compliant, many Chinese companies simply opt
to leave their equipment alone.
 
But Chen said there were potential trouble spots. The plant that supplies two-thirds of Beijing's water cannot be shut down for testing, and Chen said he did not know whether its computers were
vulnerable.
 
 
But Pollayannas will always assert that they do not have enough
information. Even a letter from God would be insufficient.
 
The fact of the matter is that China is about to dissolve taking a great deal of the rest of Asia with them, and by extension, the rest of the world.
 
 
 
<http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/05/biztech/articl es/11year.html>
--
Paul Milne
If you live within five miles of a 7-11, you're toast.


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