IP: Netly News interviews government Y2K czar

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 09:49:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>




http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1884,00.html


The Netly News
April 8, 1998


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        The true millennium bug problem isn't a lack of information --
   it's too much of it. You can't wander the Web nowadays without
   noticing feverish millennium doomsayers and misc.survivalism refugees
   battling it out with calmer folks who insist, just as forcefully, that
   only minor inconveniences will arise. What's really going to happen
   when computer clocks touch 1-1-00?


        Yesterday we sat down to chat with the government's new Y2K czar,
   John Koskinen, and asked him. "This is not a technical problem," he
   insisted, but a management one. While we can't entirely go along with
   that -- the nasty, niggling technical details are the important ones
   -- Koskinen has a point. Granted, it's cloaked in the language of
   universal bureaucratese (he likes to insert "raising awareness" into
   practically every conversational mouthful), but are government
   officials listening? Koskinen already has met with every cabinet
   official and is now preparing a kind of octopus strategy in which
   regulators reach out to firms they oversee. "We now move to the next
   phase," Koskinen said. That means incremental steps: a Y2K
   council will be announced next week and a web site will be unveiled
   even sooner. Will some corporations fail? "Yes. Hopefully not too
   many." Why not stress the dangers? "Would we do better if I stood up
   tomorrow and said this is a national crisis?" Koskinen replied.
   Probably not. But at least it would be a good quote.


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      We remember marveling at how hip Hedy Lamarr was when the
   Electronic Frontier Foundation gave her a prized Pioneer Award a year
   ago for her work on wireless technology. Guess we were wrong. The
   reclusive actress is suing Ottawa-based Corel Corp. for using her name
   and picture on its web site without permission. Lamarr's claim:
   invasion of privacy. Jurisdictional issues aside, we can't help
   thinking that if she wanted people to stop talking about her, filing a
   lawsuit isn't exactly the best idea.


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