they appear to be a 'tad' more forthcoming in oz.

having said that, it does pay to remember that they usually follow the brits lead and tony blair has been alot more 'upfront' than bill clinton.

http://www.afr.com.au/y2k/990531/inf/inf1.html

-- Anonymous, June 01, 1999

Answers

Marianne, you guys really dislike Big Bill. i work in the utilities industry, doing Y2k and just remember no utility can guarantee electricity at any time, not possible. They obviously can not guarantee the compliance of suppliers becuase that is out of there hands, even if they have letters from every supplier stating compliance, they still sould not publicly state compliance of their suppliers. another thing to think about is that the majority of the infrastructure used in the Australian electricity was in place more than 40 years ago and I therefore believe less reliant on chips than the US counterparts. (this is a guess based on what I read on this forum) so our good news may not be yours. regarding an ealier post here, please tell me you all think the address http://www.gate.net/~koehler/y2k001.html#x002 was a pile of crap. I was an IBM systems programmer for 4-5 years and I would never need nor learn COBOL, and as for the redundancy of IBM mainframes next year, this guy is a raving lunatic, I am sorry but it is true, based on what does he make these comments. there was not one fact mentioned on his address, it was all taken on face value based on his alleged experience on IBM machines. Although I disagree with, you Marianne, and Bonnie and some others, I enjoy reading your posts and give credit to the research you do, but this guy is off the planet. Again an earlier post about the Oil crisis, is there no one who has worked in the middle east who reads this post. I am still unconvinced that Arabs use computers based on a Christian calander. Best wishes Graham

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

In using the Moslem calendar, I suppose also use Moslem time. The day starts and ends, as determined at each local mosque when they can/cannot tell the difference between a white thread and a black thread in the changing light.

Get real. They use translation tables. Do you expect every nation to program by their own calanders. The Japanese dates are based on the reign of the emperor, it's somewhere around the year 10 in Japan. The Thai's use the a year based on Buddha, it's somewhere areoundthe year 2500 now. The Arabs use Mohammed. It's somewhere around the year 1400 in the mid-east.

Did you ever see a real Arab watch with two dials, one for local time and one for, not "Christian" time, but "Western" time.

-- Anonymous, June 04, 1999

hi graham,

i almost missed your post. my ex is from nsw... boolaroo to be precise. i really love your country, particularly queensland, spent alot of time there.

when i posted this article on powercore i was impressed by the fact that the papers carried, what appeared to be, a balanced view. they even commented on the 'spin' doctors 'playing down' the revelations[the papers own words.] we are not seeing this kind of coverage in the states.

but the your contention, "the plants are 40 years old so we don't have your problems theory," doesn't quite, as we say here, 'hold water.'

this from your own paper:

The lack of accountability of the victorian electricity industry has also forced the hand of the State's chief regulatory body, the Office of the Regulator General, which recently commissioned an indepentdent audit of the industry's Y2K compliance.

The ORG, which had previously been critical of the imprecision of the industry's Y2K compliance program, called in a team of experts from UK utility specialist PBPower and expects to issue a detailed report of its findings within the next two months.

In its 2000 disclosure statement, Powercor identifies three critical areas directly involved with the supply of electricity to its customers, none of which has yet been made Y2K compliant.

According to Powercor's disclosure released last week, the utility has still not finished testing its field equipment for Y2K compliance and estimates that it will not complete fixing non-compliant components for another four months. In three other key areas identified by the utility meters, zone substation equipment, and SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems. Powercor has scheduled estimated completion dates for for June or July.

so graham, as they say in your part of the world, "there you have it."

-- Anonymous, June 06, 1999