This news story has just appeared on the news link of this site.

There is no URL. You can get to it by going to the news link and its there under News stories added on Feb 5, 1999.

It is a must read for GI's.

-- Carol (usa-uk@email.msn.com), February 05, 1999

Answers

Site name please...

-- RD. ->H (drherr@erols.com), February 05, 1999.

There is no URL??? Do you know what you're talking about?

-- huh? (huh@what.where), February 05, 1999.

site is at http://www.coolpages.net/2000/ where the forum that I posted the message is located. On this same site there are links at the lefthand side of the screen for:

Home

News

Y2K Info

Survival

Forums

Live Chat

Links

Books

Videos

If you click on the link titled News it will take you to a list of new articles. The article titled: "Y2K bug may get 6-month head start" is under News stories added on Feb 5, 1999.

-- Carol (usa-uk@email.msn.com), February 05, 1999.

I have a URL:

http://www.canoe.ca/LondonNews/lf.lf-02-05-0051.html

-- Carol (usa-uk@email.msn.com), February 05, 1999.

Here is the story. I found the part about Canada hosting the Nuclear technologists interesting.

Friday, February 5, 1999

Y2K bug may get 6-month head start

By JENNIFER DITCHBURN, CP

OTTAWA -- A quarter of the computer failures most people expect on Jan. 1, 2000 will happen in the last half of this year, says the world's foremost Y2K forecaster.

Lou Marcoccio, year 2000 research director for Gartner Group International, met with several federal departments yesterday to share new information on how millennium bug problems will unfold.

Only eight per cent of problems are expected to come out in the weeks immediately following next New Year's Eve, contrary to popular belief.

He said most of the fallout -- about 55 per cent of failures -- will happen throughout the year 2000, tailing off in the beginning of 2001.

"Year 2000 failures only happen when you run certain transactions in your computer. They don't fail just because the computer's sitting there," Marcoccio said in an interview.

"When companies and agencies run their five-week financials, or they run their quarterlies, that's when the failures are going to occur."

Failures this year will occur with organizations starting their fiscal years in April, July or October. There are about 3,000 date- code variations that could cause problems before the year 2000.

Marcoccio said this new data will seriously affect how governments and companies deal with their contingency plans, which might have to be put into action as early as this summer.

In some cases, disaster plans will have to be implemented at the same time as computer systems are being tested this year. Companies are also likely to have to devote more resources for contingencies over a much longer period than thought.

There are worries about nuclear accidents, as well.

Canada will play host to the nuclear world next week to find out if the millennium bug could cause an atomic blackout or blowout.

Nuclear technologists from 29 countries will converge in Ottawa Monday to unveil the state of their reactors.

The organizers of the event, the international Nuclear Energy Agency, will pay Russia, the Ukraine and the Slovak Republic to travel here to find out about the state of their aging facilities.

"We want to make sure everybody's safe," NAE spokesperson Barry Kaufer said in an interview yesterday.

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), February 05, 1999.

Only eight percent of computer failures on January 1, 2000? What about embedded systems, communications and utilities failures? Won't those failures come on 01/01/00? It seems to me that most of the really serious failures, the life-threatening ones, will come on 01/01/00, in spite of claims to the contrary.

-- Joe R. (wondering@whoknows.com), February 05, 1999.

Gayla,

Thank you for making sense of this thread that I started.

I was doing my usual trick of trying to wear more than one hat at one time. I was trying to wear my newly acquired Y2K dunces cap with my chefs hat. Suffice it to say that trying to post and cook at the same time doesn't produce good results.

Happy to say that the family meal fared a bit better than the thread I started in a hurry.

Thank you again.

-- Carol (usa-uk@email.msn.com), February 06, 1999.

Thanks Carol - were you making a hash in the kitchen too :)

I also saw this on csy2k - he's estimating 55% of JAE problems will surface in the latter half of 99, there is another thread on this somewhere.

Cheers, Andy

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), February 06, 1999.