I was speaking with someone over the weekend who works at Seagate here in OKC, they make disk drives. Three weeks ago they installed new software to make their order tracking software y2k ready. It immediately began to delete orders, apparently randomly. They are using various work arounds, but here it is, 3 weeks later, the problem hasn't been found, and the person who talked to me said that they basically had "no idea" as to what was happening in their software.

This is a company which is rapidly downsizing its US workforce in favor of robotics and overseas slave labor, so it may be that the chickens of its short-sighted labor policies are coming home to roost, in addition to their software problem.

Certainly, anybody who does business with Seagate ought to be very pro-active in checking their order status to make sure they haven't been deleted. Oops!

-- robert waldrop (rmwj@soonernet.com), September 20, 1999

Answers

Oh, this cannot be true. As everybody knows, all problems can be fixed in, oh, two or three days. ;-)

-- Lane Core Jr. (elcore@sgi.net), September 20, 1999.

They should be able to just do it by hand right?

-- all (vegetable@crisco.fat), September 20, 1999.

wow...I'm glad I've always gone for Quantum or Maxtor drives...

How complicated can this software be? It was only for order tracking and it was intended to only make it Y2k ready.

The closer we get to the rollover the more fearful I've become that the worst case is entirely possible. Didn't they test this program before implementation? 01/01/00 will be in essence the biggest "live" test of this interconnected system - unprecedented in our known history.

We're toast.

Mike

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-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), September 20, 1999.

Yeah, Robert, quit tryin' to FUD us.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), September 20, 1999.

Another personal anecdote. Was at one of the premier "photographic companies" located in upstate NY for a day. Asked a friend who was not directly involved with remediation but had dealings with the IT crowd working to address y2k. When asked what he sees from his vantage point, he answers "fear".

-- Dave (aaa@aaa.com), September 20, 1999.

Well, Kodak and Xerox are in Rochester.

-- Amy Leone (leoneamy@aol.com), September 20, 1999.

Oops, what is FUD?

-- robert waldrop (rmwj@soonernet.com), September 20, 1999.

Could be a disgruntled employee that screwed things up. I believe as we get closer to Y2K, we'll be hearing more about computer glitches that will be labeled sabatoge.

-- may be so (maybesoo@maybesoo.com), September 20, 1999.

FUD = Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), September 20, 1999.

http://www.seagate.com:80/y2k/y2kcurrent.shtml

>At Seagate Technology, Inc. (Seagate) we take the Year 2000 issue seriously. We have achieved 99% completion of our formal program including: analysis of potentially affected business and process systems, replacement or remediation of all non-compliant systems that we will need in the new millennium, certification of our products for compliance, and evaluation of key suppliers Year 2000 programs to assure business continuity.<

Hmm 99% completeness. I wonder if similar situations are occuring in other companies that claim to be 99% complete or substantially complete.

-- John Ainsworth (ainsje@cstone.net), September 20, 1999.

I'll bet well over 90% of the U.S. population lives within 5 miles of a 7-11...

my site: www.y2ksafeminnesota.com

-- MinnesotaSmith (y2ksafeminnesota@hotmail.com), September 20, 1999.