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This report from Germany indicates how far behind Europe is. All talk about "old fashioned American ingenuuity" and "we can do it" is irrelevant in an interconnected world if "old fashioned ingenuity" is absent everywhere else.
This is a Reuters story (Feb. 18).
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German small and medium-sized companies are not technologically prepared for the coming of the euro or the computer modifications needed to deal with the dawning of the year 2000, a survey published on Wednesday said.
The survey, carried out by commercial software manufacturer Sage KHK and the Allensbach market research institute, showed that although 80 percent of the 350,000 companies analysed expected a punctual start to monetary union on January 1, 1999, only a third had taken action on this basis.
Similarly, for 70 percent of the companies the adjustments needed for computers to cope with the date change in the year 2000 were still not a concern. Only eight percent had taken concrete steps to deal with this problem.
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