A fairly revealing article from the Dallas Morning News with a lot of disconnect

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

An interesting article: Lots of reason to "become a doomer" if you really understand what they say (for instance "11 of 7,000" --- a logical deduction is that the rest are even less prepared...or "just because the powers out in Moscow ..."), but a lot of "It'll be OK" too.

Still, quite a revealing article for a big city newspaper:

(This was from Hyatts site.)

*****

'Pockets of panic' Y2K-related failures could lead to regulation of information technology industry, experts say 11/07/99

By Jim Landers and Alan Goldstein / The Dallas Morning News

Less than two months before the new year begins, thousands of computer systems remain vulnerable to year 2000 problems. And while the public has long been tolerant of computer bugs, a rash of Y2K-related failures could bring demands for regulation of the information technology industry.

Those were the highlights from a meeting of The Dallas Morning News Board of Y2K Experts - 10 representatives of government, industry and academia who have worked extensively on the myriad difficulties the millennium date change will probably bring to technology-dependent societies.

As in their first meeting in May, the panelists said the public's own actions in response to Y2K rumors or to real problems overseas will be a huge factor in how well Americans make it through the transition to the new millennium.

But this time, the panel was less confident about the extent of disruption that will be caused by Y2K technical failures.

The board agreed that the foundations of the U.S. economy - the banks, utilities, transportation industries, energy companies and food suppliers - have prepared themselves with repairs and contingency plans.

However, they said considerable risks face countries such as Russia, where limited funds were available to make repairs. Small businesses in the United States may also be hit hard because they gave little attention to the problem.

Maryann Nichols, computer specialist with the Small Business Administration in Fort Worth, said local companies have done little to take advantage of federal loan programs, Y2K orientation seminars and other offers of help.

Only 11 small businesses showed up at a May workshop on Y2K at the Grapevine Convention Center, even though 7,000 companies were invited.

"I don't know if they just don't want to be aware of what's going on," Ms. Nichols said. "We're out there beating the doors down, and if they're going to survive the millennium, they're going to have to take steps."

Eloy Villafranca, community affairs officer in Dallas with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said 99.7 percent of the nation's insured banks and savings institutions are ready for the date change and should inspire public confidence that their money is safe.

But some level of panic is inevitable, he said. "There's going to be pockets of panic regardless of what we do because there's just people who live off that kind of thing, and that's what they want to see happen," he said. "They can profit by that."

If we all fill up our gas tanks, there could be price spikes and lines at service stations. If most people pick up their telephones at midnight Jan. 1 to check for a dial tone, it could cause service disruptions that are unrelated to Y2K. And if customers take the money out of their bank accounts, there would be shortages of cash.

"The thing I'm worried about is if things aren't perfect on this day, does that mean any problems will be associated with Y2K or that all the problems will be associated with Y2K?" said Eric Schmitt, communications support manager for TXU Corp., the electric and gas service company based in Dallas.

"If there's anything the public should hear, I think it's, 'Look, do a saneness check,'" he said. "Do a reasonability check for yourself for what's happening that particular moment and don't just assume that everything is Y2K-related."

Doses of pain

If the lack of preparedness results in large doses of pain and inconvenience for companies and consumers, some members of the panel suggested regulation could be the result.

The more closely regulated institutions in the United States, such as banks, stock brokerages and nuclear power plants, are typically considered the best prepared for the date rollover. But the information technology industry has grown up with few binding standards and little regulation, which one of the panelists said helps explain how the Y2K problem occurred in the first place.

"Do so many problems occur now that the slack that the customer has been cutting IT evaporates? We've seen it happen in other areas. We've seen it in tobacco," said Dr. Leon Kappelman, a national Y2K expert who is an associate professor of computer business at the University of North Texas in Denton. "Typically, an industry has its backlash, which is about regulation, lawsuits."

Dr. Kappelman said he was "shocked" that the $600 billion to $700 billion spent to fix Y2K problems around the world has not by itself caused public outrage. "I'm amazed that the wake-up call did not come," he said.

John L. Petersen, president of a Virginia research firm called the Arlington Institute, said incorrect calculations caused by the Y2K problem would corrupt computer data in ways that won't start surfacing until the third or fourth week of January.

But he said Russia and other countries will experience problems from the outset.

"There will be tremendous problems offshore," he said. The Russians "have no money at all to fix this."

Jim Lott, manager for timekeeping products at Dallas Semiconductor Corp., said while repairs and tests by his foreign suppliers in the Far East have gone smoothly, he is actually troubled that he hasn't heard of any failures. "That kind of bothers us," he said.

A Y2K failure occurs if a computer confuses 2000 with 1900 as a result of the decades-old programming habit of abbreviating years with two-digit shorthand. Bad data can corrupt everything from financial records to factory safety schedules and can be difficult to detect. If a computer encounters enough failures, it can stop working.

To be sure, computer failures happen all the time without Y2K and in a variety of forms. For instance, about 2 percent of automated teller machines are not functioning on any given day across the country, according to the Federal Reserve.

"There is going to be a perception problem," said Greg Webb, vice president of Sabre Inc. in Fort Worth, a computer services firm serving the airline industry. "Y2K problems aren't going to wear a big neon sign stuck up on a building that says, 'Hey, I'm Y2K.' They are going to be normal problems people have today."

Also, some failures are simply easier to diagnose and fix than others. A two-hour delay for an oil tanker at a dock in Kuwait will hardly disrupt the supply chain to the United States and other countries, but a two-week delay could be devastating, said Keith Andrews, a senior Y2K consultant at Electronic Data Systems Corp. in Plano.

Among Fortune 500 companies, 82 percent have experienced some kind of Y2K failure so far, Dr. Kappelman said. Only 2 percent or 3 percent of the failures resulted in some sort of business disruption. And while most repairs are occurring quickly, 20 percent take more than a week to fix and 7 percent of the total take more than a month.

18 hours to wait

Americans will have almost a full day to sift reports of Y2K failures from other parts of the world because the international dateline means Jan. 1 will arrive in New Zealand 18 hours before it comes to Dallas.

Panelists expressed concerns about a global cascading effect on the public from failures, whether they are real or unsubstantiated reports on live television news.

"Anything that happens on Jan. 1 will be characterized by somebody as a Y2K event," Mr. Andrews said. "Some media outlet somewhere will be happy to have their sound bite - their headline for a 24-hour news operation - to have their story before it can be validated."

Genuine Y2K failures could trigger panic as well. "If you get two Chernobyl meltdowns, you've got a problem, an emergency in Russia, and you've got a problem here, too," said Mr. Petersen.

If chemical or nuclear disasters occur overseas, Dr. Kappelman said, they could trigger "mass exoduses" of people in the United States who live close to similar kinds of facilities.

But he said nuclear power plants in this country are essentially safe, a product of a strong regulatory climate. "Comparing a nuclear facility in the United States with one in Russia is like two different planets," he said.

Added Sabre's Mr. Webb: "It's very, very important that people know an outage of power in Moscow doesn't mean TXU won't have power."

Entertainment programming could fan the flames of public fears, panelists said, citing an upcoming disaster TV movie that will air Nov. 21 on NBC.

Panelists expressed a great deal of uncertainty about how severe the technical problems will be, and there was a consensus that some failures are inevitable. Some may have nothing to do with the Y2K bug, said Gerry Roth, vice president for technology operations with GTE Corp. He and other panelists said hackers and even cyberterrorists would try to spread viruses and other types of computer chaos during the date change.

Panelists also cautioned that not all technical difficulties will be immediately apparent.

Mr. Roth said the Irving-based telecommunications giant has fixed all its Y2K problems, but he expects to see failures elsewhere, mostly after Jan. 1.

"There may be 30 or 40 percent on or around the New Year, and the rest from a gradual deterioration after that," he said.

Several mentioned the unusual leap year and Feb. 29, 2000, as a date to watch for failures. Mr. Lott said a diagnostic test by a firm in South Africa caused a leap-year failure in a chip that incorrectly changed Feb. 29 to March 1.

Many problems are found only through rigorous testing, panelists said, so companies, government agencies and individuals expecting to complete repairs in the last weeks of the year are at considerable risk.

Insufficient testing of a new computer system at candy maker Hershey Foods Corp. caused a business disruption of the type that could happen with the date change, Mr. Roth said. At Halloween, "there weren't any Reeses Pieces and there weren't any Hershey Kisses because they failed. It wasn't properly tested," he said.

There was a difference of opinion among some panelists about how well the transportation sector will fare during the date change. Dr. Kappelman said he considers transportation the sector most prone to economic disruptions. If airlines cancel flights to airports experiencing Y2K problems, and trade slows down because of customs problems, local disruptions could become larger economic setbacks, he said.

Mr. Webb of Sabre argued that the aviation industry has worked hard to resolve Y2K problems and conducted outside audits of the world's 70 busiest airports to ensure their readiness.

"The airline industry as a whole cannot afford to have even the slightest glitch, because it's safety-related," he said.

Slowing spending

Panelists also addressed concerns that technology spending could plummet in the next few months, as businesses lock down their systems after completing Y2K remediation projects. International Business Machines Corp. warned last month of a Y2K spending slowdown, causing the stock market to plunge.

"Most of us have implemented some measure of moratorium for a change in our systems," Mr. Roth said.

But they agreed there will be pent-up demand next year to implement new computer systems, particularly for managing customer relations and electronic commerce over the Internet, panelists said.

For all the pain that Y2K has caused organizations, panelists agreed some good has come out of the process. "It has been a good exercise," said Bob O'Neal, director of research and information services for the North Central Texas Council of Governments. "This might have really offered opportunities for public institutions to get more efficient."

Corporations that carefully studied their technology processes, eliminated inefficiencies and invested wisely in equipment may well find themselves at a distinct advantage over rivals that did patchwork projects, Dr. Kappelman said.

"Some of these projects were phenomenally well-run and were used as an opportunity to really do things in a new way," he said. "And in some places, the same business-as-usual that created the mess just sort of added to it."

The inefficient companies will...

snip

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IP: Logged Loon Member posted November 07, 1999 09:08 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.dallasnews.com/business/1107biz1y2kwatch.htm

-- Jon Johnson (narnia4@usa.net), November 07, 1999

Answers

This does seem to now be typical of Y2K news coverage, with the body of the article giving eye popping indications that Y2K may be a lot more than anyone perhaps thought previously, but with the article's beginning and ending being relatively nonchalant. Still, I don't think that John Q. Public has yet taken the time to actually think about it, much less put it together. Not much time remaining, either....

54 days.

Y2K CANNOT BE FIXED!

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.~net), November 07, 1999.

I live in Dallas, and there was also an article in the Arts section on the fact that the media coverage of this has been nil lately. They mention that media coverage of Y2K was much heavier this time last year. The people at NBC who are bringing out Y2K: The Movie are quoted as saying they were amazed when they got permission for the title, b/c they figured it would have been taken by then. They also toyed w/the idea of an earlier date to show it, since they figured it would be lost in a deluge of Y2K related movies and shows by November. Guess how they explain the dearth of coverage? B/c it makes people too uncomfortable. If that isn't telling, I don't know what is. Good article.

-- preparing (preparing@home.com), November 08, 1999.

Remember John and Jane Q. usually only read the Headline and the first paragraph. This story begins with talk of regulation, Ho, Hum, Yawn, hey pass the sports would ya... This is better coverage than usual but why start out with something few of the public really care about?

-- squid (Itsdark@down.here), November 08, 1999.

If regulation of the IT industry occurs you can bet that UNIONS for programmers will be next. Can you imagine what the world would be like if all programmers were unionized?? "Sorry maam, I know the system is down but I can't help you because the guy who compiles our code is out until next Thursday. No, no, that doesn't mean it'll be fixed Thursday. We're due for a linker upgrade this weekend but the linker guy is out for two weeks at union mandated sensitivity training. When can you expect it to be fixed? Gimme your number and I'll call you when we're about to bring it back up."

Hmmm....come to think of it time and a half for overtime might not be all that bad considering the number of 20 hour days I put in.... GRIN

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), November 08, 1999.


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