Folks

The SEC filings are in for May folks and this is the last set till after Koskinen's Community Conversations has started. This would be a good start for getting a grip on the subject eh? So here is an edited section of the latest Motorola filing. Check into their contingency planning, they have not got assurances from utilities so it sounds like they will be going to war

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Critical facilities have been identified and the Company's plans prioritize their continued operations. These sites will be supported by generators capable of maintaining health, safety, communications and environmental operations if locally provided power sources fail. These sites will have a number of means of communicating including Intranet, pagers, cellular phones, and satellite phones.

The businesses are identifying key individuals in a variety of functions to be on-site at the Company's facilities to monitor the rollover to the Year 2000. Additionally, the Company is establishing rapid response teams that can be sent to major customer locations when and if needed in connection with the rollover. There are also plans to shift operations to different facilities if there are interruptions to operations in particular areas, countries or regions.

The plans also include procedures to maintain and recover business operations such as stockpiling critical supplies, identifying alternate supply sources, inspecting critical functions, reporting operational status, communicating with interdependent operations, and operating in contingency mode until a return to normal.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Two points in reading the filings, they always say that they aren't assured by the utilities that services will continue, and they rarely mention an expected time period for the possible failures.

If this is due diligence by a major corp to get Generators, will there be enough to go around once the communities determine that it is in their best interest?

You read this document and Motorola sounds like some kind of dammmm survivalist, hoarding, bunker building, litigation fearing and down right conserned over its business issues.

The whole Y2K filing is interesting but long (WOW) and detailed in regards to the separate divisions.

Senetor Bennett said to stockpile information. I can do that *VBG* I suggest you do to. This document would be a good start

Yahoo! Finance - MOT form 10-Q http://sec.yahoo.com/e/l/m/mot.html

May 18, 1999

MOTOROLA INC (MOT) Quarterly Report (SEC form 10-Q)

As described in the Company's discussion of most reasonably likely worst case scenarios, the Company is particularly concerned about energy and transportation suppliers. Many of these suppliers are unwilling to provide assurances that they will be "year 2000 ready."

Snip

Most Reasonably Likely Worst Case Scenarios for the Company and Company Contingency Plans

The Company has and will continue to devote substantial resources to address its Year 2000 issues. However, there can be no assurances that the Company's products do not contain undetected Year 2000 issues. Further, there can be no assurances that the Company's assessment of suppliers and vendors will be accurate. Customers of Motorola could be impacted by Year 2000 issues causing them to reduce purchases from the Company. In addition, many commentators believe that there will be a significant amount of litigation arising out of "year 2000 readiness" issues, especially for product liability. Because of the unprecedented nature of this litigation, it is impossible for the Company to predict the impact of such litigation although it could be significant to the Company. In addition to the unique reasonably likely worst case scenarios described by the specific businesses and potential litigation, the Company believes its scenarios include: (i) corruption of data contained in the Company's internal information systems; (ii) hardware failures; (iii) the failure of infrastructure services provided by government agencies and other third-party suppliers (including energy, water, and transport); and (iv) health, environmental and safety issues relating to its facilities. If any of these were to occur, the Company' operations could be interrupted, in some cases for a sustained period of time. These interruptions could be more severe in countries outside the U.S., where the Company does sizeable business.

The Company's contingency plans focus on customers, products, supplies and internal operations. Each sector is establishing emergency operations centers at key locations. These centers will be staffed ahead of the Year 2000 rollover and well into the Year 2000. During critical times they will be staffed 24-hours a day. The first priority of these centers is to ensure the performance of a customer's network or system.

Critical facilities have been identified and the Company's plans prioritize their continued operations. These sites will be supported by generators capable of maintaining health, safety, communications and environmental operations if locally provided power sources fail. These sites will have a number of means of communicating including Intranet, pagers, cellular phones, and satellite phones.

The businesses are identifying key individuals in a variety of functions to be on-site at the Company's facilities to monitor the rollover to the Year 2000. Additionally, the Company is establishing rapid response teams that can be sent to major customer locations when and if needed in connection with the rollover. There are also plans to shift operations to different facilities if there are interruptions to operations in particular areas, countries or regions.

The plans also include procedures to maintain and recover business operations such as stockpiling critical supplies, identifying alternate supply sources, inspecting critical functions, reporting operational status, communicating with interdependent operations, and operating in contingency mode until a return to normal.

The sectors and groups continue to perform various tests, including on manufacturing production lines and internal networks. Each business will also be testing its contingency plans during the third quarter of 1999. In addition, the Company has planned a test of its overall contingency plans for the third quarter of 1999.

Snip

Management believes that the most reasonably likely worst case scenario involving its business is the failure of a public safety system on January 1, 2000 (or thereafter). As a result, the two-way radio business could potentially be sued as the supplier of those systems. Management believes that its efforts to identify the customers of these systems and provide software solutions should reduce these risks.

Snip

SSG believes the most reasonably likely worst case scenario related to the Year 2000 issue is the failure of a product or system to operate for a short period of time after January 1, 2000. As a result, SSG may be sued as a manufacturer of products or systems that failed. Many of these products or systems were sold to government customers. Management believes it generally does not have legal liability to these customers.

Semiconductor Products Segment

The segment, consisting of the Semiconductor Product Sector ("SPS"), has completed an extensive review of its products to determine if they are Year 2000 Ready. The vast majority of these products are Year 2000 Ready. A limited number of products that contain a real-time clock function are identified as having a potential Year 2000 issue with the manner in which years are tracked. In addition, it is possible that an SPS semiconductor may experience "year 2000 readiness" issues due to the manner in which a customer has programmed the semiconductor or due to the manner in which the semiconductor is incorporated into a customer system or product. SPS is also making information available to its customers on these potential Year 2000 readiness issues.

Literature on the Year 2000 issue references what is referred to as the "embedded chip" Year 2000 issue or the "embedded systems" Year 2000 issue. (The word "chip" is a short-hand reference for a semiconductor product.) Many common electronic products contain "chips" or "systems" containing chips that are incorporated or "embedded" into the product. If these "chips" or "systems" experience Year 2000 readiness issues, due to the manner in which they are programmed, the product may malfunction. Because this programming is customer defined, the extent to which the malfunctioning of these products may occur due to a Year 2000 Readiness issue with a SPS semiconductor is unknown at this time.

Integrated Electronic Systems Sector (IESS)

The Integrated Electronic Systems Sector (IESS) manufactures and sells automotive and industrial electronics, energy storage products and systems, electronic fluorescent ballasts and computer system products.

IESS has completed formal assessment of "Year 2000 Readiness" of its products manufactured within the last eight years and its manufacturing facilities. Other than embedded board and system products, and Global Positioning System receivers, these products do not contain date-sensitive functions, excluding customer provided software incorporated in such products, for which IESS does not have sufficient information in most cases to conduct an evaluation of whether such functions are included.

Snip

In the case of embedded boards, systems and software products that are manufactured by the Motorola Computer Group (MCG), some of the older products do not meet Motorola's definition of Year 2000 Ready. In many of these cases, MCG has made fixes available to its customers to cure the problem. Although it is difficult to measure any potential liability from non-Year 2000 Ready products, MCG believes the risks are relatively small based on the following. Since October 1, 1998, MCG has ceased shipping any products that are not Year 2000 Ready without a waiver from the customer. Fixes have been made available for products that may remain under warranty after 1999. Many products which are outside the warranty period, have been updated over the years with products that are Year 2000 Ready. Other potential liability may arise in cases where it is not known in what applications the products are being used. There is always the possibility that some products have been incorporated by customers into critical use applications. All of the known cases are being evaluated but Motorola believes that this is the customer's responsibility.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), May 31, 1999

Answers

Another thing is that Motorola seems more conserned with reporting litigation risks as being important rather than the failure of systems in the clients ownership.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), May 31, 1999.

I notice you snipped a rather important piece of information regarding work towards compliance. They say this will be compliant AND they have a contingency plan:

"All of the Company's sectors and groups have substantially completed Phases 1-4, all but one of the groups also have substantially completed Phase 5 and all but three of the Company's groups also have substantially completed Phase 6. All of the Company's sectors and groups are expected to complete the Six-Phase Program by at least the third quarter of 1999. The work being completed in 1999 is being separately monitored and tracked with appropriate target completion dates. "

They are

-- Y2K Pro (2@641.com), May 31, 1999.

If Motorola has created an upgrade to a noncompliant device and notified the customer that it's available, it's the customer's responsibility to act on this notification. I can't fault Motorola for making this clear.

In general, contingency planning involves thinking up everything that *can* go wrong, deciding how much of each category the company can do anything about if they're ready, and taking steps to be as ready as possible.

I'm starting to notice that a few people here and on csy2k have taken the position that any item for which there are published contingency plans, constitutes an *admission* that the item being addressed will fail. I have trouble with claims that since XYZ Corp. is buying generators, *therefore* they expect power failures, or that if XYZ is investigating alternative methods of communication, therefore they expect communications to fail. If they're evaluating alternative suppliers, they expect their existing suppliers to fail, etc.

This seems to be an easy trap to fall into, an extension of (what seems to me) the general sense that because we're making personal preparations, *therefore* we'll need them. Not everything that can happen, will happen.

The other day I spoke with a woman who was extremely upset. She was leaving her husband because he "wouldn't support her efforts to prepare." Turns out her idea of preparations was for him to quit his job, sell the house, move to an Amish-style community, and learn blacksmithing and non-mechanized farming! Her 'assessment' of y2k impacts assumed the inevitability of *every* worst-case scenario. She said, Look at what these big companies are preparing for! They wouldn't make such plans if they didn't expect to need them!

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 31, 1999.

Flint

VERY GOOD! You get a cookie! There is nothing like prudent preparation. There are some though that think no preparation is needed at all! Now if some folk think Y2K is a crock and tell others that.

I am on record in this forum than folks shouldn't run out and get generators if they do not have a critical use (Like water pumps) They also do not need fancy dancy communication equipment. Or a bunker.

But why are you not figuring out that it is a problem and that we are running out of fence sitting time. We have folk that have a mission of making Y2K a non issue. Y2K is an issue. Your community has to know what the business entities are doing! That is the idea of the Koshinen game plan.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

In general, contingency planning involves thinking up everything that *can* go wrong, deciding how much of each category the company can do anything about if they're ready, and taking steps to be as ready as possible.>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Flint you have said wise words. They are preparing and so should you. Now how do you think people will find out "everything that can go wrong" if they are not exposed to the information above. I am sure when Motorola phones a supplier - utility they get LOTS of attention. Well if they have no assurances that the utilities and suppliers are going to continue that indicates a risk.

Well should that risk be noted in the community?

Flint I kind of wonder how long you are just going to look at this problem. To shift the general awareness of the public to understand this and prepare for the possibilities is going to be a long process. We only have 6 months to go (I don't consider prepping in December a smart idea) Folks are going to figure this out to late. They will panic. This should have been done last September.

So burrying this problem and equating the problem to the extreme like going to the bush is way off. I never used TEOTWAWKI or have ever told people to do anything like join the Amish.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Koshinen states

Our goal is to get through the first couple of months of next year. And so we do not want people unprepared.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

At the rate we are going Koskinen and you are going to have to start talking from the front of your mouth rather than the sides.

There is a problem Flint, and information like the SEC filings are important for people to see that the Big players are taking this seriously. And I am going to continue doing it.

I have been at Y2K since Rick Cowles was sounding the alarm and folks like you were saying he was foolish and no such problems in the power corps could happen. Well if they were listened to then we would have no power for the rollover. Thankfully the industry got aware and something good might happen.

But I was reading Rick while watching the Ice Storm in Quebec. I had bad visions. I know what it is like to live in the winter with no power.

It is a real drag Flint, so if you are not part of the solution then you are turning into the problem.

And on the legal side you will note as to the 911 they were not saying that it is their obligation to assure that they take the lead in informing that there will be failures, only that they will not be legally responsible. Now this might be true but it isn't going to help the young mother when her child needs medical attention and 911 doesn't work.

Tell me Flint can't you see that?

Now that is TEOTWAWKI. That is panic.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), May 31, 1999.

Brian:

*sigh* By now I simply can't understand what you're saying. I've always said it was a problem. I've listed my expectations, and they're not trivial. I've detailed my preparations, and they're not trivial either. I've encouraged people to prepare for *more* than they expect until I'm tired of it. I've *never* said Rick Cowles was wrong, and I believe he knows what he's talking about. So just where are you coming from anyway?

It's *exactly* the process you demonstrate, of jumping to incorrect conclusions in the absence of, (or in my case *despite*) the material available to us that I'm fighting against. I can't help but notice that you agree with what I've actually written, but spend most of your effort here taking issue with what I never wrote. Try again.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 31, 1999.

Y2K Pro

I didn't post this thinking that Motorola is going to fail, I don't care at all. Just the fact they take Y2K seriously and are preparing.

Flint

You may realize there is a problem and I believe you, it is just minimizing the threat as you and the polly camp does can have really disasterous effects in certian areas. And heat and water are two that folks can prepare for and should prepare for. But they have to take the problem seriously. And in preparing for heat loss you have to take it very seriously. Waffleing will not help. If you would like to put some information on what you know about such a matter I would love to hear about it. Say a single mother in a trailer, what does she do? Nothing? because there is nothing wrong as in the statements from the power corps? Motorola is preparing. They do not trust the power supply. What is more critical a childs life or the power corps image. The power could cut off at midnight and by the morning the child will be dead. I know cause it almost happened to me. (as an adult)

I have truely been there and done that. As a Canadian it worries me. And no one else talks about it seriously.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), May 31, 1999.

"Many of these products or systems were sold to government customers. Management believes it generally does not have legal liability to these customers."

Wow, gotta love this country - either government is totally inept or such a deal Motorola has made with certain official...

Seriously, if you are concerned about emergency services you may want to ask your local police, sheriffs, fire if they have verified the compliance for their communication equipment and VDT's (video display terminals). Some VDT's have Y2K issues. You may also want to ask about your 911 and dispatch systems.

jh jh

-- john hebert (jt_hebert@hotmail.com), May 31, 1999.

Brian:

I don't feel that refusing to *exaggerate* the threat by reading what isn't there is the same as minimizing the threat. My effort has always been to try to identify the threat with as much precision as the available material allows. If you feel that a responsible person jumps to unwarrented conclusions, considers only carefully selected evidence, and engages in distortion and misinformation in order to force what we know to fit predetermined conclusions, then you and I will never agree.

Yes, loss of power is a possibility that always exists, and indeed happens almost everywhere with varying frequency and duration. And yes, y2k may very well increase the probability of such a loss, and certainly won't improve things. I have no criticism with Motorola or anyone else if they choose to take steps to guard against such a power loss. In fact, I recommend this. I think everyone should assess their use of electricity, determine what problems they'll have without it, and work to prevent those problems in whatever way will work best for them. That's only sensible.

It's also, as far as I'm concerned, quite a jump from being able to handle power loss, to being convinced that power *will* go out, much less stay out for any extended period.

Look at it this way. I'm a firm believer in carrying fire insurance. Houses burn down. But the *probability* of your house burning down is very low. Do you think anyone who presents the actual probability of your house burning down is arguing *against* insurance? Do you think these probabilities should be kept secret, lest the weak-minded draw dangerous conclusions, and decide against insurance, or smoke alarms, or fire extinguishers? Do you think anyone who 'reveals' these 'secrets' is an arsonist or a shill for the insurance companies? If so, then we will never agree.

There's a big difference between guarding against known dangers, and trying to determine just how clear and present each danger really is.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 31, 1999.

Flint

I have to say that my knowledge of the power supply is poor and much better discribed by others on the forum. I will leave it to their better informed opinions.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), June 01, 1999.