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An editor of a magazine devoted to embedded chips believes that the story of noncompliant chips has been exagerated.
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``Companies are unwilling to talk about the problem,'' [Peter] de Jager explained. Many are worried about the liability issues and warranty problems that could result if their products malfunction after Jan. 1, 2000, he and others said.
But Lindsey Vereen, editor of a San Francisco-based trade magazine called Embedded Systems Programming, says all this fuss about computer chips is nonsense. . . .
The chip in a car's engine controller, for instance, doesn't care what day it is, only how long the engine has been running. That helps it to monitor such things as maintenance schedules.
Engineers for the Big Three US automakers insist that even their most electronically advanced cars won't be affected by the Year 2000.
While Vereen conceded there may be problems with equipment that contains older chips, he blamed politicians and nontechnicians for ``fanning the flames and implying the problem is greater than it is.''
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