From the Malaysia Star:

http://www.jaring.my/~star/monday/07ghy2kbi.html How management can take charge of the Y2K problem

Studies of real-life experiences in North America and Europe have shown that 98% of companies struck by a disaster in their computer room go bankrupt within six months if they do not have a business continuity plan in place.......

........... if companies must fall back on using manual typewriters, pen, paper, abacus and office boys to survive the effects of the Year 2000 problem, then they must be prepared.

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We dont even have abacus operators in this country!

An immediate government abacus training program must be started immediately. Write your local congressman today. Hmm, could this substitute for welfare?

rocky

-- rocky knolls (rknolls@hotmail.com), September 09, 1998

Answers

Now, thats Y2K optimism that you can count on!

-- Joe (shar@pei.com), September 09, 1998.

One of the cheapest consumer items on the market today is the solar-powered calculator.

-- Buddy Y. (buddy@bellatlantic.net), September 09, 1998.

I like abacusses (abaci ) for addition, but you need a slide rule for multiplication, logs, square roots and cube roots, trigonometery functions, etc.

Does an abacus have a spell checker?

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 09, 1998.

Does an abacus have a spell checker?

You can count on it!

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), September 09, 1998.

I knew there was a reason I kept my all-magnesium self-lubricated temperature-expansion-compensated slide rule in its nerdy belt-hung case. Golly, it had precision all the way out to three digits. <<<>>>.

-- Dan Hunt (dhunt@hostscorp.com), September 09, 1998.

Dan, I only have 10cm long one made of bambboo like wood. Good enugh., though.

-- gottogo (whoopee@outhouse.hol), September 09, 1998.

Craig, enjoyed the humor! :-)

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), September 09, 1998.

A true story, apropos of not much in particular:

In 1978 my aunt bought my uncle, who earned his living as an electrical engineer working on power plant design, the biggest baddest Hewlett-Packard engineering calculator on the market for Christmas. She kept telling him to get with the program and join modern society. He agreed to use it on one condition: It had to work as well as his trusty slide rule. (I remember that slipstick. It was made out of mahogony, was about seven inches tall and had three different slides on it. Must have weighed about 5 pounds.)

Anyway, he sat down and for three days did nothing else but test the calculator against his slide rule. When he was done, he agreed that it seemed to be accurate enough for him to use. He used it until his death seven years ago.

That was the last time I ever even saw a slide rule.

-- Paul Neuhardt (neuhardt@ultranet.com), September 09, 1998.

Drat, I knew mine was out of date - i can only get two decimal place accuracy on the right side (past 3.16). Bummer, man.

Seem to me "we" (my father's and grandfather generation) built the Empire State building (in a depression!), the Brooklyn bridge, Golden Gate bridge, Oakland Bay bridge, Grand Coulle Dam, Boulder Dam, CA water projects, NY itself, and Rome without computers.

Of course, they also made the Pentagon and Capitol.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 10, 1998.

Robert, I didn't say 3 decimal places of precision - but 3 digits of precision total. ...

-- Dan Hunt (dhunt@hostscorp.com), September 11, 1998.

Oops. Or is that O.OPS x 10^3

-- Robert A. Cook. P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 11, 1998.