Officials: Panama Canal safe from computer bug

BY TIM SANSBURY JOURNAL OF COMMERCE STAFF

WASHINGTON -- Panama Canal Commission officials told House lawmakers this week that the millennium computer bug won't disrupt canal service on New Year's Eve and that no toll increases will come with the transition to Panamanian control at noon that day.

Assurances that the historic handover of the Panama Canal will be smooth and seamless were given to the House Armed Services Committee's merchant marine panel by U.S. Army Secretary Louis Caldera and Panama Canal Commission Administrator Alberto Aleman Tuesday.

Mr. Caldera also serves as chairman of the Panama Canal Commission, a management agency that is governed by a board of U.S. and Panamanian citizens.

Mr. Caldera said the canal agency is "well on track" and anticipates no operational difficulties arising from Year 2000-related data processing issues. "For our mission-critical systems, all Y2K solutions have been implemented, either by replacement (of them) or by making existing systems Y2K compliant," Mr. Caldera said.

All other Y2K measures related to canal equipment will be in place by the end of September, he said.

As an additional safety precaution, the commission will require the owners or masters of ships transiting the canal to demonstrate that their steering, propulsion and power systems have been tested and are Y2K compliant, Mr. Caldera said.

Asked by Rep. Herbert Bateman, R-Va., chairman of the merchant marine panel, if any surprises are coming, Mr. Caldera said there will be no Panama Canal toll increases in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

Mr. Caldera also said there would be no insurance liability increases in that same time frame.

Mr. Aleman said at the hearing that Panamanian officials recently have traveled to North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia to meet with senior shipping line executives, port operators and companies providing maritime services.

He said the purpose was to establish "close and continuous contact with our customers, developing a relationship in which we seek" ways to serve them better.

-- Norm (nwo@hotmail.com), March 19, 1999

Answers

And the NORM machine is back in operation again, chugging away, never thinking, never responding, just posting. If NORM were human, it would be great to get his OPINION of what he posted here -- like, hey NORM, all these guys are saying that they are "on track", but do YOU believe it? What do YOU think will happen, and why or why not?

But NORM's output buffer has already been flushed, the machine is even doing its Polly_In scan of Y2K articles, so that it can post yet another via its Polly_Out module.

N.O.R.M. = Non-thinking Output Response Machine

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), March 19, 1999.

Yeah Norm,

That's because they will be using donkeys to pull the ships through the locks! When are you going to learn that 99% of what you read in the papers is lies?

As of January 15, they said they were 60% done:

"Henry Sanchez, who has been serving as the coordinator of the Committee's technical commission since December, explained that 60 percent of the Canal Commission computer systems have been either prepared, adapted or replaced to make them year-2000 compatible."

http://www.pancanal.com/cgi-bin/news/boletin.cgi?submit=Consulta&item= 156

And I seriously question whether we can even beleive THAT! I predict that the U.S. will have to seize control of the canal back from Panama by June of 2000, because by then it will be a disaster.

-- @ (@@@.@), March 19, 1999.

King, I too am bemused by our latest troll. Although, after reading Charleton Heston's comments on "political correctness" on another thread, maybe Norm is trying to get the Yourdon forum to be PC: All we should ever do is post Y2K articles, but never actually discuss them, since that might cause someone's feelings to be hurt or otherwise discriminated against, etc.

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), March 19, 1999.

Norm, I still haven't had the courtesy of an answer to my questions on your other cut & pastes.

1. You have admitted to being a survivalist in that you have supplies stored for your personal survival during any future disaster; How much survival supplies do you recommend having on hand? And a new question, Do you have any young children to provide for?

2. Since Japan was upgraded by the Gartner group to being something like 30% unprepared, would you say that residents of Japan should not prepare for an interruption of services for a period of 1 to 30 days?

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), March 19, 1999.

If they are 100% complete - they will be the second government agency in the world to complete assessment, remediation, testing, and integration. (We will assume Social Security is the first - although they have some remaining problems too.)

And this is for a nearly 90 year old system (which helps in some ways!) in a third world country with corrupt political leaders, reporting to a nation with corrupt political leaders who have an agenda and history of hiding problems and lieing about status when they report to Congress.

But I have heard of no tests, no integrated operations, and no remediation status other than the mid-January report that indicated much work was needed to finish assessment - particularly of the support infrastructure and supply and administration down there.

Therefore, in the absence of confirming numbers, I remain on the disbelieving side of skeptism. I can't really say absolutely "They are concealing problems" - but there is no evidence here of any truth behind their statements.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), March 19, 1999.

I wonder how many compliant ships will be passing thru?

As for Norm, see his answer to my question here

<:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 19, 1999.

Sysman- Don't be fooled, that response from NORM was actually PROGRAMMED IN!! If NORM detects a number of repeated questions, the system will then put out that (politically correct) response: yes i do believe in preparing but no y2k is not a problem but yes this forum is disrespectful so no i will not continue this discussion.

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), March 19, 1999.

They didn't even begin THINKING about this until August of last year!!

"Anticipating the challenge, the Government of Panama, through Executive Decree 214 of August 19, 1998, established a Presidential Committee to plan and execute the necessary actions to correct the millennium bug."

"The Panama Canal Commission has embarked on a program to replace all systems with Y2K compliant systems, however, there are about 15,000 vessels per year transiting the Canal and there is no way to guarantee that these vessels are going to be Y2K compliant and will not be subject to delays."

http://www.pancanal.com/maritime/advisories/a-61-98.html

There's going to be a war down there when they start turning down vessels that cannot prove they are compliant.

-- @ (@@@.@), March 19, 1999.

Really, folks, read both links (Norm's article and the 60% quote).

The recent article did not say 100% complete, but complete with mission-critical systems.

The January quote was 60% of all systems, or at least did not qualify the percentage as to mission-critical.

Assuming they attacked mission-critical systems first, why would you doubt the statements made?

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-dejanews.com), March 19, 1999.

Well, Herr Hoff, some of us don't just BELIEVE because we are told to believe. There are enough examples running around of outright lying (FAA most recently comes to mind) about Y2K progress that, amazingly enough, yes some of us are going to want to compare what is being said NOW with what was said BEFORE.

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), March 19, 1999.

Well King, if the response is just "they're lying", not much to discuss.

But you missed my point. Systems identified as mission-critical will be some subset of all systems. The original quote of 60% complete could well have already included all mission-critical systems. The recent quote merely said they were finished with mission-critical systems. I don't necessarily see a disconnect between the two statements.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-dejanews.com), March 19, 1999.

Norm,

If you want to expand on this topic, links to the Panama Canal site, and information concerning the Panama Canal was discussed about a week ago (or so).

LINK

Their schedule for shutting down lanes run anywhere from 2 days to 16 days ....and the schedule runs up through the end of the year. Would that be enough time to fix a bad fix? Hmmmm, don't know....

Mr. K
***having a busy day at work***

-- Mr. Kennedy (where'veyoubeen@discussed.this), March 19, 1999.

Well, Hoff, I'd say the story LINKed by Mr.K kind of mucks up the don't-worry-be-happy article posted by the NORM machine, wouldn't you? None of us have any way to DIRECTLY VERIFY anything that we see in these articles, all we can ever do is scrutinize, and inconsistencies like this tend to undermine our confidence. Sounds reasonable, I hope????....

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), March 19, 1999.

This joke is getting a bit tired, don't you think.

Here we have some possible good news. But don't worry! The knee-jerk rejection brigade has come to the rescue, attacking the story AND the poster.

The members of this brigade have one thing in common - they know *absolutely nothing* about the operation of the Panama canal. Of course, rejecting good news requires no knowledge at all - indeed, knowledge is an active handicap. Fortunately, this seems to be a handicap suffered by relatively few of us.

So OK, I followed the LINK to get more information. That link points to a thread containing more of the same, kicked off by a story in Y2Knewswire that mentioned not a single word about the operation of the canal itself, nor did it address any compliance issues.

That thread did contain real information in one post by someone called Panama who pointed out that the canal operation is entirely manual. This post was COMPLETELY IGNORED by everyone subsequent. I guess our minds are made up, don't confuse us with any actual facts.

NOW, here's a rundown. Lets start with this thread:

Here we have an article saying the canal is in good shape. All mission critical y2k aspects have been corrected.

Moving right along, let's see the reaction:

King of Spain: ignores canal and attacks Norm.

@: says it's lies

Jack: ignores canal and attacks Norm.

Puddintame: ignores canal and attacks Norm

Robert: sees no evidence of truth and assumes the worst pending confirmation of the worst.

Sysman: attacks Norm, and changes the subject to talk about ships.

King of Spain: attacks Norm again

@: also changes the subject and starts speculating about noncompliant ships

Hoffmeister: addresses the actual facts, which are positive.

King of Spain: says they're lying.

Hoffmeister: desperately tries to redirect attention too the actual facts, gets ignored.

Mr Kennedy: redirects us to an essentially similar earlier thread, mentioned above.

King of Spain: says the prior thread contradicts this one. Fails to mention that the prior thread had only ONE POST actually talking about canal compliance, and this one was positive and therefore ignored.

Grand total so far: discussion of the facts - 2 (Hoffmeister) attacks on Norm - 5 (@, Jack, Puddintame, Sysman, KofS) saying its all lies - 3 (@, Robert, KofS) changes the subject - 4 (Sysman, @, KofS, Kennedy)

Yup, we bring a lot of skills and knowledge to bear on the topic here, folks. Lot of intellection here, you bet. Our 25 rules of disinformation get their usual workout. And as we enjoy telling ourselves, we bring this same high level of objectivity and investigative zeal to *every aspect* of y2k. Is it any wonder we Get It?

And oh yes, lest we forget: The Panama canal seems to be in pretty good shape.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 19, 1999.

Ah, but Sir Flint (of the hardnosed 8<) -

You are forgetting the previous thread whence I asserted that much of the Canal is manual - but linked to the local infrastructure by the requirements for power, people, administration, and management. Secondary impacts in this mix of thrird world and old-US equipment (what dates, what repairs, what statuses, etc. are never said - by anyone.)

Would any of the three countries involved lie? Yes - absolutely the administrators have done it before and may be doing it again. Ther are lies within these public reports - that or the people boldly making statements don't know what they are talking about. Perhaps the latter is more dangerous - it means tehn that they are lieing to themselves and don't know it.

The real danger - which again from the previous thread should be clear, is that the real danger is the Chinee Communist purchase of the bases and seaport facilites at both ends of the Canal, their influence and corruption in the country already, and the Clinton administration's role in the Chinese take-over down there.

The threat is not actually the ability to power and control the canal, the threat is the power of the people who control the canal. Even the "policy" of demanding Y2K compliance for ship's passing through the canal is a thinly veiled threat to Tawain - with 15,000 annually going through - the Chinese need only "inspect" and demand certification of those going to Tawain to threaten that island's international trade.

Want to blackmail a nation who opposes your policies - or who won't pay your bribes (er, taxes)? Stop their shipping for a week due to "lack of papers."

Bluntly, I have more evidence they are lying than they have evidence that their claims are true. Like circumstantial evidence in a trial - means, methods, motive, opportunity, and previous history indicate I'm right. I may certainly be wrong, and will admit to being wrong - if so, after the evidence comes in next year when traffic is flowing unimpeded next year.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), March 19, 1999.

Excuse me Flint. Attacks Norm? If you bothered to look at my link, you would have seen that I accepted what Norm is doing here, and in fact wished him good luck. Yes, I may have "attacked" him before, but not here.

As far as changing the topic, what good is it if the canal is empty, compliant or not. As they say, it's all connected. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 19, 1999.

Sorry, sysman, you're quite right. I'll change you from one subject change and one attack to TWO subject changes, one from the canal to Norm, and one from the canal to the ships.

Nothing like keeping your eye on the ball, eh?

-- Flint (fointc@mindspring.com), March 19, 1999.

Flint, the canal is in pretty good shape I bet. So is Niagra Falls. Doesn't it operate on gravity to? Seriously, I'm not at all worried about the Panama Canal. Last time I checked, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia both shipped to the east coast via the Atlantic.

Now let's look at what you called my "attack" on Norm. . .Norm, I still haven't had the courtesy of an answer to my questions on your other cut & pastes.

1. You have admitted to being a survivalist in that you have supplies stored for your personal survival during any future disaster; How much survival supplies do you recommend having on hand? And a new question, Do you have any young children to provide for?

2. Since Japan was upgraded by the Gartner group to being something like 30% unprepared, would you say that residents of Japan should not prepare for an interruption of services for a period of 1 to 30 days?

Are those questions not germane? I've been looking for an answer from Norm, to no avail. So far it's just stealth posting by Norm. I'm trying to call him out.

Flint, you're pretty defensive of Norm. Are you Norm? You will never admit it, but I think you're busted with your posting on this thread. That also solves the Y2K Pro question, since I suspect Y2K Pro and Norm are one the and the same. Let's face it, no one is actually going to spend signifcant amounts of time on an issue which they feel is a waste of time. But Y2K Pro and Norm do. And remember Y2k Myass? And all the others that pop up for a weekend at a time. Flint, how did you know that Norm would not defend himself?

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), March 19, 1999.

Puddintame, are you Sysman? Same arguments apply.

I'm not defending Norm so much as trying to point out the outrageous double standard being applied here. I pointed out that ONE PERSON addressed the subject Norm raised, the rest attacked Norm, or dismissed the material Norm posted without ANY conflicting knowledge, or changed the subject. I pointed out that in the prior thread, there was ONE person who addressed the issue, and was ignored. Check it out!

I too am skeptical of the assertions made in this story, but that doesn't mean I don't believe it. There seems ample reason to accept that any actual canal problems (remember the canal? Do you care about the canal?) are minor and any important ones have been fixed. But I think that next year, we'll see what they overlooked, OK?

How can I possibly communicate to you that the status of the Panama Canal has nothing to do with whether Norm responded as you would have preferred? I tabulated the responses to show what was happening, and you attack me for doing it! You call this a search for the truth?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 19, 1999.

Puddintame, don't get carried away now. Flint has a good point, and he's been here too long, or he's got us all FoOLeD as Dieter would say. I suspected Norm was part of the multiple-personality crowd, but have since changed my mind based on his answer noted above. Of course I could be wrong on all counts. I still think Y2K Pro and Vinnie may be the same though. See this thread. <:)=

BUSTED - Y2K Pro is Vinnie!

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 19, 1999.

While we're at it, my semantic analysis suggests that Ray and Jack are the same person. Or if they aren't, they might as well be.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 19, 1999.

Nor . . ., I mean, Flint, I'll have to let you have the last word for tonight. By the way, Sysman is a lot smarter than I am. You owe him an apology!

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), March 19, 1999.

Ho Hum---where is dITEr?

-- Watchful (seethesea@msn.com), March 19, 1999.

Thanks Puddintame. No problem Flint <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 19, 1999.

Hi,

A few points to ponder:
changes the subject - 4 (Sysman, @, KofS, Kennedy)
I would submit to you that my post and LINK was to direct you to the links within the article that lead directly to http://www.pancanal.com As usual I go to the company or organization pages (if any) to glean info from their side. I recommend slowing down and actually reading before posting responses.

Within the Y2Knewswire article, there were many substantial links. The actual story concerning the canal topic was submitted by Knight Ridder. It was not from Y2Knewswire itself.

Ponderance #2:
So OK, I followed the LINK to get more information. That link points to a thread containing more of the same, kicked off by a story in Y2Knewswire that mentioned not a single word about the operation of the canal itself, nor did it address any compliance issues.

Okay, I didn't hotlink all the links within the story itself. There again was the URL of the Panama Canal site. Want to know how it works? Want to hear from "them" about their compliance? The information was provided there to use (albeit, not hotlinked), would you have cared to really be serious about seeking comparative information.

That thread did contain real information in one post by someone called Panama who pointed out that the canal operation is entirely manual. This post was COMPLETELY IGNORED by everyone subsequent. I guess our minds are made up, don't confuse us with any actual facts.

Now read this from Norm's posting of the article: Mr. Caldera also serves as chairman of the Panama Canal Commission, a management agency that is governed by a board of U.S. and Panamanian citizens. Mr. Caldera said the canal agency is "well on track" and anticipates no operational difficulties arising from Year 2000-related data processing issues. "For our mission-critical systems, all Y2K solutions have been implemented, either by replacement (of them) or by making existing systems Y2K compliant," Mr. Caldera said.

I wonder if anyone has told Mr. Caldera that the canal operation is manual and that he has just made a big fool out of himself....

Mr. K
***looking for the Dragnet badge***

-- Mr. Kennedy (calm@sea.here), March 19, 1999.

Mr Kennedy:

Good point. 'Panama' made the point that the canal could be operated entirely manually. I saw a long documentary on this myself. Ships are shepherded through by hand.

But I'll agree that there's a lot more to operating the canal than simply opening and closing gates. There's payroll, and billing, and licences, and data collection, and scheduling, and I'm sure much more involved. And I'm sure that a lot of this part of the total operation is computerized and likely had the usual smattering of date bugs.

My understanding is that none of this ancillary processing would prevent ships from using the canal even if it all rolled over dead. But it would reduce the efficiency of the operation in the short term, and probably cripple the whole operation severely if not corrected in the longer term.

But as Hoffmeister writes, we really have no reason to believe that the 'critical' aspects of all this haven't been addressed, except insofar as some posters to this thread simply *refuse* to believe it.

And the flavor of responses to positive news remains undeniable.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 19, 1999.

Flint

While looking for answers to questions like "where does space end?", "how does fire present itself as a physical property out of thin air?" and "what will happen with Y2K?", I discussed the response mode with a Dr. friend of mine.

Just for more ponderance: people tend to respond to any conversation or exchange to obtain validation for their belief. Few questions are genuine attempts to unconditionally learn new information.

Therefore, most of us (me included) respond to questions in a quest to validate our decisions. We all don't like to think that we make wrong decisions. Making wrong decisions indicates incompetency, wastefulness, and causes embarrassment. I've removed my well chewed foot my share of times.

Angry responses seem to be an attempt to recover validation for one's beliefs and decisions so one won't be perceived a fool. That is why negative responses kind of bounce off my old skin. I know my debators do not want to be perceived a fool any more than I do.

Keep up the debates folks. The worst thing to do is to let the mind go dull from complacency and laziness. Try not to take the harsh criticisms very personally. It is not YOU that a respondent is attacking. The respondent is evaluating their own decisions.

Mr. K ***exploring new threads/articles/news releases daily***

-- Mr. Kennedy (was@afriends.house), March 19, 1999.

Flint,

Just for the record, I did not "attack" Norm.

You, however, did make an outright lie about my post:

"@: also changes the subject and starts speculating about noncompliant ships"

What you refer to as "speculation" is FACT taken right from the sight of the Panama Canal itself, with quote and link provided!

Why don't you learn to read befor you start shooting your mouth off.

-- @ (@@@.@), March 21, 1999.

@:

I can only read what you wrote, not what you might have meant. The question is, will the CANAL be ready? Whether or not the SHIPS will be ready is another subject.

As for speculation, that's what you presented. Your link says there is no way to guarantee that 15,000 ships a day *will be* compliant. Well, this is a statement about a future state of affairs. Statements about the future are speculation. If you interpret this inability to guarantee as a 'fact' about ship noncompliance in the future, well, that's a real stretch at best.

The canal authorities can't even 'guarantee' that ships won't have breakdowns today. Never could. Some ships have had problems for a variety of reasons and caused delays. Perhaps the assumption is made that any ship that can successfully get *to* the canal, can get *through* the canal. But that's just a guess, not a fact.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 21, 1999.