More news attention on the preparation status of the utilities industry. http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/special/y2k/features/worry/index.html This one from the 10/6/1998 issue of PC Magazine

-- Melissa (financed@forbin.com), October 13, 1998

Answers

Speaking as a journalist, that is one awful article.

He throws out a lot of numbers and speculation, but never names sources except that this agency or that asked for info. Well where did he find that info from? Who told him? What report was this issued in? While I know most of this, a first time reader wouldn't.

My favorite line had to be:

"In June, the NRC wrote the operators of America's 108 nuclear plants, demanding a statement of compliance, or concrete plans to be compliant by the end of 1999. The number of compliant plants so far: 0."

Did the plants deliver the statement? Did they have the concrete plans? He says they are to be compliant by the end of 1999, but here it is October 1998 and none are compliant. Yes I wish they were compliant, but his statement makes no sense.

"Conectiv brags that it will spend all of $5 million to fix its Y2K problems, and it has 7 programmers working on its 25 million lines of code. But the 7 programmers will be able to check and fix only a small fraction of those 25 million lines."

Maybe because 25 million I would ASSUME is the total amount of their code (he doesn't say) and as anyone studying this problem knows that you don't have to fix every line of code.

I could go and on tearing this article to shreds, but I think Mr. Seymour REALLY needs to brush up on his journalism skills.

Rick

-- Rick Tansun (ricktansun@hotmail.com), October 13, 1998.