...on the Westergaard Year 2000 site. www.y2ktimebomb.com/Tip/Lord/rmart9917.htm Don't know how to hot link that.. But, anyway, it is a very interesting article. Pass it on to others.

-- madeline (runner@bcpl.net), April 27, 1999

Answers

Serious Y2K Preparations Are Needed

In this column, Martin presents eleven of his Spring 1999 concerns that lead to urge serious Y2K preparations.

(Roleigh Martin will be regularly sharing the writing of the Y2K Tip of the Week column at Westergaard Year 2000 with Susan Conniry.)

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), April 27, 1999.

Yup. I think he's right. I'd like to add that the effects of y2k will be different from place to place. Some cities/towns/counties/municipalities will do well because of a strong hi tech infastructure that helped communities become aware and replace y2k defectives, others wouldn't. Thank you for pointing this out.

-- y2klou (i.m@s.a.com), April 27, 1999.

A couple of points on this "essay":

First, Roleigh is concerned that he sees no signs of companies intentionally "over-producing". I think, though, he misses the fact that companies are/will be over-producing as a matter of normal business. While few may be making statements they will over-produce, most are making statements that they intend to stockpile materials from their suppliers. In essence, the market will take care of the over-producing, instead of some governmental mandate. Maybe Mr Decker can provide some more insight here.

Second, he states there is no integrated testing

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-dejanews.com), April 27, 1999.

Here are excerpts from Roleigh Martin's eleven Spring 1999 concerns:

1. Virtually speaking there is no pre-Y2K over-producing going on among essential goods industries.

"Over-producing," refers to producing beyond what a company's J.I.T. (Just in Time) production process software mandates. The "ripple effect" that Ed Yourdon writes about, along with theglobal interconnectedness and supply chain dependencies talked about by Ed Yardeni plus the research of Capers Jones, the U.S Senate Special Committee on the Y2K Technology Problem and others indicate Y2K will cause some degree of setback in manufacturing productivity in 2000. With the essential goods industries, if history in 2001 shows us to suffer a 15 percent setback in 2000, historians will condemn our societal foolishness if we had not prepared ahead of time for it by overproducing by 15 percent in 1999. But does anyone know of even one company whose SEC 10Q statement indicates they are intentionally overproducing this year? ...

I believe the major historical lesson that will be learned from Y2K in 2001 or 2002 is that the Achilles heel of modern times is J.I.T. and the historically unfounded and risky assumption that significant and systemic supply chain disruptions are a permanent thing of the past. For tens of thousands of years, mankind built up reserves during times of plenty to weather out the times of harshness. Because of J.I.T, we have abandoned this ancient wisdom. Quite simply, we operate alarmingly "mean and lean."

2. Immediately next is the concern that no provincial, state or national government has granted tax incentives for essential goods industries to overproduce in 1999 to ensure their citizens do not suffer shortages in 2000. ...

3. Virtually speaking there is no integrated testing being reported now about our core infrastructures. ...

... in the recent 4/16/1999 Science magazine article by Senator Bennett, Co-Chair of the U.S. Senate Select Year 2000 Committee, it was reported "...there is no industrywide effort to test data networks, cellular and satellite communications systems, or the nation's 1400 regional telecom carriers."

4. Unlike the United Kingdom and Connecticut, there is virtually no third party auditing being done of major core infrastructure facilities. ...

5. Most of the utilities got started so late that instead of aiming for Y2K compliancy, they downgraded their goals to Y2K Readiness and behind the scenes research reveals that some to many utilities are engaged in type testing and unverified vendor statement acceptance. ...

6. What do we know about Water Utilities (filtration, sewage), Chemical Facilities, foreign oil company embedded systems remediation anywhere comparable to what we know about electric utilities? Very little, with either very poor response rates or very depressing data.

7. I start my recent speeches discussing why the major media and politicians inherently cannot take any fixed date, near-future event seriously.

Stated succinctly, the majority of the economy concerns non-essential goods. If government and the media told the public to seriously prepare for any such future event, whether it is Y2K or a comet threat, the essential goods industries would be so swamped with orders they would not bother advertising anymore meanwhile the bulk of the economy would lose people's discretionary income and stop advertising as it would be futile. Consequently the more the media warns about such an event, the quicker they go bankrupt. Similarly for politicians whose financial lifelines are corporate lobbyists and PACs and the employees in those companies who represent a larger voting block than those in the essential goods industries. Bottom line: the media and government will not publicly take Y2K anywhere as serious as Y2K researchers do until after 1/1/2000. ...

There are two other reasons I find very significant: the major philosophy among members of the media and politicians is that of egalitarianism which is don't advocate something that everybody can't have. Strong preparations is something everybody can't afford nor are there enough suppliers in the short enough time left for everyone to strongly prepare. The other reason is explained in the last bullet below.

I think the above explains why magazines like Forbes give basically no coverage to Y2K and what little it gives downplays it. ...

8. There are certain foreseeable Y2K impacts, particularly increased prices in essential goods if not worse outcomes, such that at least acquiring extra amounts of essential goods in 1999 makes sound economic sense. ...

9. There is a low outcome risk to preparing regardless of whether the Y2K outcome is tolerable locally or not in contrast to a high outcome risk to not preparing and needing it. ...

10. The ratio of those not preparing versus those who are seriously preparing is not favorable. ...

11. Who you are and how big your audience is constrain what you can responsibly say about Y2K despite what your research tells you.

You'll note that Y2K researchers, most particularly individualists not tied to institutions or major corporations, urge stronger preparations than do members of the mass media, politicians, and major institutions or corporations. One of the major reasons is that us small folk can make these recommendations without damaging the economy. The economy is currently strong enough for the small members of our audience who will listen and take heed. The economy is not capable of similar advice coming out of the mouths of the big players. ... Bottom line: I don't feel irresponsible talking like a stern scoutmaster and critics who state such talk is irresponsible are forgetting the important factor that it very much matters who is giving the advice. Small players like myself can get away with giving such advice and society is better off for it.

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), April 27, 1999.

Sorry, hit the wrong key.

Roleigh states there is virtually no integrated testing being reported about the core infrastructures. He laments that the Jan report listed only 40 units at electrical utilities being tested.

Now, through some minimal research, I can probably come up with direct evidence of over 100 such tests documented on the net. I stopped tracking awhile ago. And my guess is that is somewhat less than the actual number. He also forgets the planned NERC test in September, currently stated as being an industry wide "dress rehearsal" for the rollover.

He also seems to miss the TELCO forum and NRIC industry tests of telecommunications.

Maybe these will make him feel better.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-dejanews.com), April 27, 1999.

>[ Strong preparations is something everybody can't afford.....]<

The above line, which I copied and pasted from No Spam's post, and which was a quote from Roleigh Martin's essay, is a prime example of that which can cause much confusion and argument, both here in this forum and in the world at large.

The CORRECT way to phrase this, as I understand Mr. Martin's point is this:

'Strong preparations is something NOT everybody can afford.....'

I apologize if this seems like nit-picking, but as I said , it is one of the main causes of confusion which leads to disagreements these days. And we all know what can happen when there is a disagreement in the world today.

Now, back to the show....

-- J (jart5@bellsouth.net), April 27, 1999.

Read this report for a global trading perspective, then extrapolate to J.I.T. potential problems.

Diane

US Dept of Commerce: Y2k and the Global Trading System

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 000lL0

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), April 27, 1999.

Y'all may not realize it but there are a couple LARGE consulting firms out there which maintain LARGE practices that just go out and sell and install JIT packages. I hear about 'em all the time. And each time I want to do a Cory and SSSSSLAP some SSSense into someone. But I resist the temptation, as I'm only the driver after all.

Chuck

-- chuck, a Night Driver (rienzoo@en.com), April 27, 1999.

Item 3 is not entirely true...Several Mobile Telecomm companies (read Lucent, Nortel, Alcatel & Ericsson participated in an interoperability Y2K test approx. 4 months ago sponsored/organized by the CTIA. The aforementioned companies comprise well over 95% of the wireless telecomm networks in the world...The tests went off with out a hitch and configuration mirrored their customers installation base.

-- pdirac (pdirac@hotmail.com), April 27, 1999.

And after reading the report, by all means be sure to add the assumption that all of these companies are sitting idly by, waiting to go down the tubes because they haven't done any contingency planning on their suppliers.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-dejanews.com), April 27, 1999.

Hoffmeister, by all means, provide the links to the 100 or so core infrastructure integrated testing docs that you are aware of. I have corresponded with Roleigh. He is a very accessible guy. I'm sure he would be happy to see those documents. We all would.

-- (orwelliator@biosys.net), April 27, 1999.

TVA:

http://www.tva.gov/y2k/prog ress.htm

18 units at 4 fossil plants

69 units at 11 hydro plants

Avista:

http://www.wwpco.com/y2k/y 2k_qna.asp

All 11 generation facilities

Texas Utilities:

http://www.tu.com/ news_info/Y2K/y2k_faq.html

33 fossil generating plants

Gets it over 100. As I said, I stopped tracking. I do have more; if I get time, I'll post the others.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-dejanews.com), April 27, 1999.