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Thursday May 6 1999

Mainland piracy big threat as Y2K looms, survey finds

ALEX LO Hong Kong may be ready for the millennium bug but the real danger lies in exposure to the mainland's computer systems, according to a region-wide survey published today.

"The readout [in China] is still very unclear," said Asiaweek senior technology editor and author of the survey Jim Erickson.

"Western companies, multi-nationals and local companies are all asking their [mainland] suppliers how ready they are and they are getting very few answers."

In a chart rating 10 countries on their Y2K-readiness, the United States is judged most prepared and China the most behind. The mainland problem is compounded by widespread piracy.

"Some 90 per cent of China's software, including most of the programs used in government offices and state-owned enterprises, is pirated, making it difficult to unravel and receive help from companies that originally wrote the programs," Erickson says.

While SAR government departments, utilities, the airport, banks, Hongkong Telecom and most multi-nationals claim they are either already fully compliant or will be Y2K-ready by the end of June, the Asiaweek survey warns that small to medium size companies are lagging behind. Copyright )1999 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), May 06, 1999

Answers

The revenge of Bill Gates strikes! Bill eats Hong Kong! Computers fail due to lack of support! "They deserved it" says Gates, "Those dirty rats were not paying ME for software, and then had the nerve to complain about the wait on the tech support line".

In late breaking news, the Chinese govt. has ordered all computers to be wiped clean, the drives repartitioned, and LINUX loaded with the GNU software including XEMACS and FreeBSD. "We will show Bill Gates that the largest country in the world can live entirely without his rotten noncompliant software" govt. leaders vowed. "All workers will carry their State issued Linux manuals high, and have vowed to memorize one new command line option each day to further the revolution against Microsoft!". RedHat and Caldera officials have vocally applauded the Chinese decision, while both Slackware officials and Linus Torvaldson have declined to comment.

TOTALLY TONGUE IN CHEEK HERE. (be great if it really happened tho)

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), May 06, 1999.

Guess we'll have to send a bomb into their embassy to wake them up - let them know we mean business - last time Silicon Valley paid off Washington, MicroSoft got sued. This time, with software piracy at issue and lost profits to be replaced, this means war!

The Silicon Valley contributors to Clinton really want their money worth's for their bribes.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), May 10, 1999.