Stay tuned, more Y2K to drag-on, and on. Groan! -- Diane

San Jose Mercury -- Breaking News
Posted at 9:14 a.m. PDT Tuesday, April 20, 1999

Y2K problems will drag on, taskforce warns

http://www.mercurycenter.com/breaking/docs/015464.htm

LONDON (Reuters) - The millennium computer bug is more than just a problem for midnight on December 31, 1999, a British report published Tuesday said.

The report from Taskforce 2000, a privately funded organization seeking to raise awareness of the millennium computer bug problem, said about 60 percent of computer errors and data disruption will occur during 1999.

Around 30 percent will happen after the revels greeting the new century have died down, it added.

``The current focus on 1st January 2000, (which) although understandable, is simplistic and unrealistic,'' Ian Hugo, assistant director of Taskforce 2000, told a news conference.

``In particular, the media focus on the rollover from 1999 to 2000 is mistaken, as we believe that this will be only five to 10 percent of the problem.''

Some computers programmed to understand year dates in two digits may not be able to handle 2000 and may misread it as 1900. This could cause many computers to crash or malfunction whenever they have to take account of the four digits of 2000.

Robin Guenier, executive director of Taskforce 2000, said millennium bug problems, often referred to by the shorthand Y2K, have already started and will begin to escalate, probably peaking in a year's time.

Gartner Group, the U.S. technology researcher, agrees with the scenario which reckons that millennium bug manifestations will not all occur within minutes of clocks striking midnight at the end of this year.

In a report published last month it said that five percent of Y2K problems happened before January 1, 1999, 25 percent would reveal themselves in 1999, with 55 percent waiting until next year. Fifteen percent would not come to light until 2001.

Eight to 10 percent of failures would bunch into the two weeks after January 1, 2000.

Hugo said the lack of news about computers failing did not mean that problems had not occurred. ``You only hear about the failures that can't be covered up. Only real messes get heard about,'' he said.

Hugo reckoned that the riskiest area concerned large corporations that were late to fix their computer systems.

``Large projects that are late; that's where the chance of failure is greatest,'' Hugo said.

Hugo said in the report that what he called the ``drag factor'' could cause problems to spread over days or weeks.

``The reason that problems will continue for longer than many think is due to the ``drag factor.'' This is the lag that occurs between technical errors occurring and disruption becoming noticeable. A failure in one area may take weeks to cause problems elsewhere,'' Hugo said.

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), April 20, 1999

Answers

Diane,

You and I must have been born under the same star! :)

See my thread at

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000k49

For poster here, don't go there. Post on Diane's thread instead, since she has the link.

Diane, email me. I want to know more about you. Let's chat!

:)

-- FM (vidprof@aol.com), April 20, 1999.

Taskforce 2000 - primary goal is to increase awareness of the year 2000 date-change problem and what needs to be done, by everyone, to ensure that UK plc can enjoy a happy and prosperous new millennium. ...

http:// www.taskforce2000.co.uk/text.htm

Under the Public button, you can click here to download the Taskforce2000 leaflet by Briony Williams: 'The Millennium Bug and You: Sensible Precautions for Ordinary People' (PDF format: Adobe Acrobat Reader required)

Not finding press releases or downloadable reports on their web-site.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), April 20, 1999.

Arg.

Don't you just hate duplicates! Make that synchronicities. Sounds better.

Diane

FM's thread -- same topic ...

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 000k49

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), April 20, 1999.

There's also the official British Government site, Action 2000, which contains some good info. It seems that as soon as their survey showed that small to medium businesses (10-249 employees) were heavily non-compliant, Action 2000 got together an info package for a mass mailing to those businesses. Facsimiles of the flyers can be seen at the site:

http://business.bug2000.co.uk/

In a related move, Action 2000 ". . . aims to run 500 free workshops across the UK for 10,000 company managers of small and medium sized businesses who are unlikely to be millennium ready without help."

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), April 20, 1999.

UMMMmmmmm..... this looks like a series of direct quotes from Gartner's latest, posted down about a mile or so here.

CR

-- chuck, a Night Driver (rienzoo@en.com), April 20, 1999.