SHOULD WE BELIEVE THIS????

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http://www.ptd.siemens.com/company/y2k/disclrs.html

HERE YOU GO">HERE YOU GO

-- ????? (jes1dering@home.com), December 27, 1999

Answers

http://www.ptd.siemens.com/company/y2k/disclrs.html

HERE YOU GO

-- kk (jes1dering@home.com), December 27, 1999.


Believe what? I get a blank page titled Year 2000 issues.

-- (...@.......), December 27, 1999.

Your bwoser must have a conflict:

Here's what's there:

Year 2000 Readiness Disclosures

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Apparatus Division - Jackson Circuit Switchers (outdoor - up to 550kV) Control Panels (for Voltage Regulators) Power Circuit Breakers (outdoor - up to 550kV) Voltage Regulators Apparatus Division - Raleigh Control Equipment (Medium Voltage - up to 7.2kV) Load Interrupter (Medium Voltage - up to 15 kV) Power Circuit Breakers SDV (outdoor - up to 38 kV) Reclosers (Centurion) SPM 85000 Solid State Synchronizing & Protection Module Switchgear (Metal - Clad - up to 38 kV) Distribution Automation Power Quality Monitoring Protective Relays SCOR Overcurrent Relays Substation Automation FACTS American Electric Power Pacific Gas and Electric Company Structural Metals Inc. Tennessee Valley Authority Power Quality American Electric Power BC Hydro DS BC Hydro PMDVR Duke Power Hyosung Industries PowerCor Salt River Project Scottish Power Singapore PowerGrid Meters Poly-Phase Single-Phase Power Systems Control Communications (ICCP) Control Systems Energy Market (Deregulation) RTU

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Siemens Power Transmission & Distribution

Y2K Program Office . 7000 Siemens Road . , NC 27591

888-597-1232 . 919-365-2105 fax

y2kprogramoffice@ptd.siemens.co

-- DavePrime (the_tv_guy@hotmail.com), December 27, 1999.


Over the last three to five years, large organizations around the world have been paying programmers to fix the systems. With only a week to go before the century date change, the vast majority of these firms and governments are still noncompliant. This includes the largest money center banks on earth. The threat is two-fold: bank runs by depositors and, far more important, what Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan calls cascading cross defaults, where banks cannot settle accounts with each other, and the banking system goes into gridlock, worldwide.

Because corporate computer systems are noncompliant, they have not been subjected to rigorous final testing, which can take months. This was always a major problem, as I have said on this site from the beginning. (See Testing.) In 1997 and 1998, Fortune 1000 company after company promised to be finished with all repairs, leaving "a full year for testing." With very few exceptions, organizations missed this crucial deadline. The press, which had quoted it faithfully, promptly dropped the missed deadline down the Orwellian memory hole. The U.S. government, still noncompliant, has had numerous deadlines, beginning with September 30, 1998. It never meets these deadlines. No mainstream reporter ever mentions this fact in print.

Yet few people have changed their minds about y2k since March 1, 1999. In that month, all signs of panic, even among the 1% or less of American y2k-preparationists, disappeared overnight. The U.S. press has cooperated with the U.S. government and large trade groups in assuring the public that there is no big problem, that the December 31 deadline will not be missed by any important segment of the society. (Why will this deadline be any different from all the earlier ones? No one asks.)

In every country, the public has been assured that there is no need to panic, that everything will be all right. Especially banks. Over and over, the public is assured that banks will be all right, that there is no reason to get more than a few days' worth of currency.

If everything is all right, why have the vast majority of organizations missed the numerous deadlines that they have publicly announced?

The U.S. government assures the nation that y2k will seriously affect only foreign nations (rarely named, and when named, issue immediate official denials) and small businesses. But in the U.S., small businesses -- under 500 employees -- number 24 million. One-third of them are thought by the U.S. government's Small Business Administration to have done nothing to repair y2k. These businesses employ tens of millions of people. They also supply the largest businesses that are "not quite compliant."

Oil-exporting nations are not compliant. The U.S. imports half of its oil.

The largest companies that convert oil into finished products were not compliant as of early 1999. The industry promised it would be compliant by September 30. So far, no such announcement has been made. There is a new deadline for the industry: December 31.

U.S. ports are noncompliant. But 95% of all imported goods come through these ports.

We are told that the electrical power generating industry is almost compliant, but the basis of these assurances is a series of unverified, self-reported data from anonymous firms. These reports have been assembled by a private agency financed by the U.S. power industry, NERC.

What happens to electrical power generation if fuel and spare parts cease to be produced? The typical urban power company relies on more than 5,000 suppliers. The reports issued by NERC never discuss this aspect of the y2k problem.

As for the chemical industry, the news is not reassuring. The U.S. government's Chemical Safety Board sent a warning about noncompliant chemical plants to all 50 state governors on July 22, 1999. Yet this industry is the major exporter of goods industry in the U.S.

The U.S. Navy published on the Web, and then pulled (no explanation offered), a report on the risks to 144 U.S. cities due to failures of public utilities. The U.S. government and then the Navy went into damage control mode when the findings of this report were posted on a Web site that, within days, received so many hits that it had to be shut down and redesigned. Updates to the Navy's June, 1999 "Master Utilities" report have reduced many risk assessments, but the risks are still serious.

There is little but bad news coming from the nation's water and sewer utilities. Think of your community without water or sewer services for, say, a month.

The universal refrain is: "We can run it manually." For a few hours, maybe. But where is there publicly available evidence that large public utilities have produced detailed operations manuals and have implemented extensive training programs to be sure that employees can run all systems manually for days or weeks or months? There is no such evidence. The slogan is a public relations ploy.

I am not a computer programmer. My Ph.D. is in history. For over three decades I have studied the operations of bureaucracies. I have served as a Congressman's research assistant. I have seen how the U.S. government operates. All things are going according to standard operating procedure: public relations handouts, unverified positive statements, and verbal assurances that everything is fine here. Serious y2k problems are limited to the Other Guys Over There.

But the computers of the Other Guys Over There exchange data with "our" computers. Bad data from their computers can reinfect our computers and their data. This, the PR people never discuss in public. Even if our computers somehow can be programmed to lock out noncompliant data, then the computerized systems that rely on shared data will break down. Think "banking system." (See Imported Data.)

Things will not break down all at once in early January unless the power grid goes down and stays down. But the domino effect will create ever-increasing institutional noise and confusion throughout January and beyond. Your check will not be in the mail. (See Domino Effect.)

(To view my original home page, which I removed on October 20, 1999, click here.)

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-- susie Q (susieq@aol.com), December 27, 1999.


It's one of those dumbass web designers that designed the page to work in Microsoft (of course), but not on Netscape. I tried both, Netscape is fubarred.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), December 27, 1999.


Maybe I'm overly tired Dave, but is this a list of compliant, or non compliant hardware?

Obviously, susieQ GI.

Got seeds?

-- Michael (mikeymac@uswest.net), December 27, 1999.


Michael,

Susie Q is LadyLost It posting a cut and paste from Gary North's website intro. She's spamming other threads with it. It doesn't matter what she posts, or why she posts it, spam is spam and a troll is a troll.

-- (TrollPatrol@sheesh.now), December 27, 1999.


Hawk, must be your ISP, my Netscape worked fine, finally.

Question still stands though. If this is a list of compliant hardware, it's a BIT short, considering the size of Siemens, and the inventories they have. It is much too long a list if it represents potential problems. Guess that's why I'm called a doomer. I don't find the good news in either. Anybody care to enlighten me on the strengths of this report?

I do know, that I once knocked out an entire island by digging through a 72kv transmission line. Within minutes, white trucks with sirens and yellow flashing lights were screaming all over the place. Seems the shopping centers, and banks have a problem concerning vaults when the power is out. There is an immediate *need to know* mindset when this happens. It really was a mislocated line, by about 30'. You can't miss it if you can't see it. That blue ball of flame and smoke are easily brought to mind even today. Arced a big hole right through that thick, hardened steel bucket.

So how do they go manual during the daylight hours if the power is out? Short answer is they can't/won't.

-- Michael (mikeymac@uswest.net), December 27, 1999.


SusieQ......

you wrote: "Things will not break down all at once in early January unless the power grid goes down and stays down. But the domino effect will create ever-increasing institutional noise and confusion throughout January and beyond."

This is SO true...thank you for pointing it out one more time, for those who are new and haven't seen this before!

You are "unique" in getting the truth out!

Thank you!

-- Birdlady (Birdlady@nest.home), December 27, 1999.


Thanks for the heads up TP er uh T Patrol. Geesh, I go out for an ice cream cone, and a food saver, and when I get back you can't tell the trout by their spots anymore. Heh heh.

-- Michael (mikeymac@uswest.net), December 27, 1999.


Birdlady,

If you don't recognize Gary North's words that Lady Lost It is spamming the forum with now, you might be interested in a visit to Gary's site: Gary North

-- (TrollPatrol@sheesh.now), December 27, 1999.


No Michael, nothing wrong with my ISP, it works fine on Internet Explorer. What I was referring to was when you go over on the left side of the page and click the "year 2000" link, or any of the links, the page gets all screwed up. Try it. Even though it appears ok on the initial load, it doesn't properly reload for Netscape, but does with Explorer.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), December 27, 1999.

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