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[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only] TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1999

What kinds of computers and software are affected?

By Michael Hyatt

Three kinds of computers are at risk: personal computers, mainframes and embedded-chip systems.

There are roughly 300 million personal computers worldwide. While many of these do control critical process-control systems, most are stand alone units that do not run critical infrastructure systems. Consequently, they are the least of our worries.

Mainframe computers are another story. No, they haven't gone the way of the dinosaur; they are still the information processing backbone of government and industry. In fact, mainframe processing power has actually increased by about 20 percent per year over the last decade. With more than 700 billion lines of computer code in current use and more than 500 different computer languages, Y2K remediation on mainframe computers has been and will remain a significant challenge.

Embedded-chip systems are Y2K's "dirty little secret." An embedded chip is a computer chip with the software code actually burned onto it. These chips are everywhere. They're in satellites. They're at the bottom of the North Sea regulating the flow of petroleum. They're in traffic lights, and weapon systems, fax machines, and cell phones. There are some 70 billion of these chips worldwide. The good news is that only about 7 percent of them are date sensitive. The bad news is that we don't know which 7 percent without checking 100 percent of them. Even a year ago this was an impossible task.

Seeing that these systems may cause significant trouble, what if we just revert to manual systems -- the way things used to be. In smaller systems, it might be possible. But over the last three decades most of the manual systems have been replaced with automated systems. The manual technology is gone and so are the people who had the experience.

Take the railway system as one example. Manual switching yards are defunct and the manual switches themselves are gone.

Or, consider Chase-Manhattan Bank, one of the largest banks in the United States. This one bank processes a trillion dollars worth of transactions per day. The only way this is possible is because of very powerful mainframe computers. An army of accountants could only perform a fraction of these transactions by hand. It doesn't take a genius to suppose what happens if their mainframes go.

URL: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_hyatt/19991221_xcmhy_what_will_.shtml

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-- snooze button (alarmclock_2000@yahoo.com), December 21, 1999

Answers

It is very obvious what will happen in 2000! The handwriting is on the wall! Look at what is happening in the world. We are already starting to have Computer problems. They will escalate and compound upon each other and cause a gradual domino effect! Y2K cannot be fixed! It is not fixable! We have only 500.000 Programmers doing the repairs. We need one Million Programmers to do the job right!

Saddam Hussein has shut down his oil production, because he knows it is no use. He knows he is doomed and that the oilwells and refineries are doomed. OPEC knows it is doomed. For the first time in 25 years they have been able to stick together and stick to their plan to cut production in order to raise prices. This is the first time they have succeeded! The price at the gas station will tell you I'm right!

Y2K will be a 2 at the end of January and then move up one or two notches every month until by May it will be a six or seven when the Banks close in Gridlock because of Cascading Cross Defaults. All Banks claim they are Y2K ready. None of them claim to be Y2K COMPLIANT!

By June or July unemployment will be at 80%. Nobody will work when the Banks are closed, because nobody will get paid. We will have until April to continue preparing and stocking up food bigtime. You will need at least 5 years of food so you will survive. Maybe even ten years!

By August we will be at a 10 and we will have an economic collapse and lack of oil will have caused it. All oilwells all over the world will shut down January 1st, 2000 because of date sensitive Embedded Micro Chips!!! Our oil reserves will not be of any use to us, because the oil wells will not operate. No Embedded Chip replacement parts are available for oil wells.

By October 2000, millions will have died from hunger all over the World. Real Estate prices will crash bigtime because of millions of empty homes! It will be a cold winter next year December without Gas or Electricity! We will have no Electricity by next fall because trains cannot deliver coal from coal mines to power plants without diesel fuel!

Food cannot be delivered to Market without diesel fuel! Food will rot on the farmers fields! Perpare for a 10 year depression!

Warn your friends and family! E-Mail this message to all those you care about!

-- jean (jbfarnworth@aol.com), December 21, 1999.

Jean, big disconnect here: oil wells will fail on 1/1/00, but we won't reach a 10 until August? Still be able to buy preps in April? NOT! You have about 175 hours left to do EVERYTHING you need to do to survive martial law, famine, epidemics, civil war, and probably nuclear/biological warfare. Exit this forum and get busy.

-- StanTheMan (heidrich@presys.com), December 21, 1999.