Y2K guru predicts Olympic disaster
BY SIMON VANDORE

Summary Description A Y2K expert has predicted chaos in transport and other areas leading up to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

Introduction
A leading millennium bug expert has predicted trouble for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

Body
"I can't see any way that the Olympics is going to go ahead as planned," said Karl Feilder, CEO of UK-based Y2K fixing company Greenwich Mean Time and an official spokesperson for the Federal Government's year2K awareness program.
Visiting Australia for a series of speaking engagements and advisory meetings, Feilder said air traffic control problems in 2000 would make it difficult for Olympic participants to travel.
"The Olympics revolves around the prospect of getting people from every country in the world together and competing," he said. "Now, Australia, in case you hadn't noticed, is actually a long way away from many places in the world.
"When I flew here over the weekend, I left from the UK, I flew over the North Sea, into German airspace, across Russian airspace, through Afghanistan, into Burma, into Thailand, left Thailand across Singapore, Indonesia, and then down into Australia. The only two countries that I think will be sorted out in air traffic control are the UK and Australia. So how the dickens do I get here?"
Feilder said transportation was only one aspect of a greater problem, predicting a combination of Y2K-related events would present further obstacles to the success of the Olympics.
"I think the overall domino effect will conspire against the Olympics occurring as they should," said Feilder. "In some countries maybe the aircraft will be flying, but you won't be able to drive to the airport because something will be wrong with the traffic system."
He expected the peak demand for his company's Check 2000 software would actually be during 2000, as most small businesses would ignore the problem until it hit them. Even though the Sydney Olympics are scheduled for September 2000, Feilder said he did not believe the world would be ready by that time.
"We've been working on the problem for three, four, or five years now -- there's nothing that leads me to conclude that if you start in January 2000 you're going to be finished by August. If anybody could fix it that quick they'd already have done that. A lot of countries I don't think will address this until it really hits them hard."
Feilder denied he was scaremongering, or trying to drum up business based on fear.
"No. I just tell it how I see it," he said. "I don't want to scare people at all, I want people to realise how severe the problem is. Not to panic about things that they can't control, so there's no point in worrying about the electrical supply, or the telephones here in Australia. There are plenty of people already working on that.
"What you need to understand is that things that are within your sphere of control, you must look at. You must check every single PC and you must address the mission-critical systems.
"It doesn't mean fixing everything -- it's too late to fix everything, and everything doesn't need to be fixed. We've got too much technology as it is; this is a chance to have a good spring-clean."