Leading international Year 2000 consultant Peter de Jager has launched a "Project Damocles" service that will hold a "sword" over the heads of corporations that are wilfully covering up their Year 2000 (Y2K) problems. "My objective is to force manufacturers to do what is right by hanging a sword over their heads. A sword that swings into action after they allow a failure to occur," de Jager says.
"If someone has first-hand knowledge of a system which fails, either an embedded system, software application or computer platform, and the system manufacturer (which may be their employer) refuses to either fix the problem or announce publicly that a problem exists, then they should email that information" (to Damocles@Year2000.com). The information will be forwarded (with the submitter's name withheld) by registered mail to the company's legal department, and the project will keep it on file. Should the report turn out to be true, and failures are followed by lawsuits, de Jager says these files will be made available to the lawyers as part of the discovery process. - info: see www.year2000.com/y2kdamocles.html
Paper Tigers: For those still harried by the thought of widespread computer failure around January 2000, one technology expert offers this simple solution: print out paper copies. Jim Woodward, who boasts the title of Senior Vice President of TransMillennium Services at Cap Gemini America, encourages consumers to stay on top of the Y2K problem by keeping hard copies of financial records and comparing them with statements sent out once the year 2000 has clicked over.
He says comparisons between 1998 and early 1999 also may prove useful in tracking compliance. Among records worth holding on to, Woodward lists insurance statements, mortgage data, tax forms and bank records.
Postgem Move: PostGEM's managing director, Jim Treacy, is to return to An Post. John Hunes, An Post's chief executive and PostGEM's chairman, singled out the acquisition and integration of Ireland OnLine last year as "one of the significant achievements" of his reign.
US Telecom Ruling: The US telecoms industry has been thrown into confusion following last week's ruling that restrictions on local firms entering the $80-billion long-distance telephone market are unconstitutional. The ruling by Judge Joe Kendall of Dallas, Texas, is likely to frustrate the efforts of politicians and the Federal Communications Commission to break open the $100-billion local phone market controlled by the so-called Baby Bells.
IBM Superdrive: IBM researchers have developed a disk drive that can store 11.6 billion bits - equivalent to the text in about 1,500 novels - per square inch. The technology won't appear in PCs until about 2001. IBM is also due to show off a faster PowerPC processor this morning at the opening of the Macworld Expo. Apple will introduce a "refreshed" Power Macintosh G3 system with the new 275-MHz processor by February or March.
Car Email: Intel's new voice-activated in-car computer can read email out to the driver and automatically call emergency services if there's a collision (presumably while the motorist is trying to press Control+Alt+Delete). The chip maker hopes to have the computers included in cars by 2000.
In Brief: Expect Sun to announce a new line of low-priced Unix workstations within the next week. The project, code-name Darwin, will deliver high-performance systems for under $5,000, competing with Windows NT. . . Netscape's new Communicator 4.04 can use digital signatures, a critical ingredient of online banking and ecommerce. . . Sales of sub-$1,000 PCs accounted for 40 to 42 per cent of all US sales in December, according to preliminary research from Computer Intelligence. . . Network Associates, formerly McAfee, is dropping its $1-billion defamation lawsuit against rival software company Symantec. . .