Y2K 25th anniversary

[NormanStewart]

Who, what, when, where and Y2K:
The stay-at-homes have plenty of chances to see the parties, or problems, unfold

By Catherine Greenman

Although computers are the source of all Y2K panic and preparation, and although the more obvious thing to do at the turn of the millennium is to raise a toast and kiss a significant other, there will no doubt be people who actually want to watch the date roll over on their computers and use the Web as a way to keep tabs on the world.

It can be done. Assuming the power doesn’t fail and the Web keeps working, there will be plenty of ways to track the advent of the new millennium on your computer. There are Webcams around the world, Y2K information sites, news sites and many other relevant places online.

If you are going to be alone with your computer, or communing with like-minded friends in far places connected only by the flow of data, there will be a lot to view and keep track of as you figure out which emoticons to use to say “Happy New Year” and how to clink glasses for a virtual toast.

Opportunities abound to watch the arrival of the new century on the Web as it occurs across the earth’s 24 time zones. The first will be Forthenews.com’s coverage of millennium events in the Kingdom of Tonga, one of the first inhabited lands to ring in the new century (www.forthenews.com, tomorrow at 5 a.m. Eastern time).

Among the scheduled events people will be able to see and hear is a Hallelujah chorus of 10,000 Tongans and taped interviews with the king of Tonga. On January 1, the site will show a series of “firsts” taking place on the island, like the first wedding of the millennium and the first airplane takeoff.

Several companies, including EarthCam (www.earthcam.com) and Perceptual Robotics (www.Y2Kcams.com), offer sites that feature images from Web cameras planted on millennium pulse points around the globe.

Although the images at both sights are somewhat grainy and take several seconds to appear, the Web cameras do achieve a certain genie-like charm in enabling the viewer to move from place to place in a click, if not a blink.

Those who visit the Earthcam site, for example, will see a map of the earth, complete with time zones and dots where each of EarthCam’s 100 cameras are located. Click on Gisborne, New Zealand (which claims to be the first city that will reach the new millennium), and you will peer through a Web camera mounted on top of the Farmer’s Building, which houses the town clock.

The camera takes snapshots at 30-second intervals, which means that you will see images of people and cars moving down the street as if you were looking at them in slow motion through a flip book. At the same time, you can listen to audio streams from a local radio station as it plays Top 40 songs or advertisements about prices of deli meat at the supermarket. Just like being there, sort of.

Paul Cooper, chief executive of Perceptual Robotics, said the company’s Y2KCam site would relay images from Web cameras at locations like the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Bourbon Street in New Orleans and the Las Vegas strip.

The cameras will run on a time-share control function, he said, allowing site visitors to position the camera remotely, take a snapshot and have it relayed back to them. The snapshots can also be downloaded and sent to friends via e-mail. Traffic at the site and transmission speeds will determine how much of a delay will occur between the time an image is snapped and when it is seen, however.

The millennium spectacle taking place in Times Square will be the focus of many Internet broadcasts, including one sponsored by the Times Square Business Improvement District (www.timessquarebid.org). The organization is covering the 27-hour-long event starting at 6:30 a.m. Eastern time tomorrow until 6 a.m. Pacific time on Saturday.

Nineteen Web cameras will be situated on building rooftops, behind electronic billboards and even inside the puppet costumes worn by people representing different countries and marching in the hourly processions. Amy Jane Finnerty, a spokeswoman for the organization, said no problems or delays in the broadcast were expected as a result of the Y2K transition.

Timessquare2000.com will broadcast video streams on New Year’s Eve, as well as visitor’s guides and message boards for posting and viewing New Year’s resolutions (timessquare2000.com). Site visitors will also be able to send messages to computer terminals in Times Square, to be read and responded to by passers-by.

For the midnight oil burners valiantly toiling to keep things running smoothly, the Bindview Corporation (www.bindview.com), a risk management software company based in Houston that consults with companies on Y2K-related issues, is giving a New Year’s Eve party online.

“We discovered that many of our clients’ employees would be online on New Year’s Eve, so we thought, Why not have a party?” said Marc Camm, Bindview’s vice president for marketing.

Mr. Camm said that although he was sure they would rather be somewhere else, the partygoers would find video and audio streams from movies like “Little Shop of Horrors,” millennium-themed chats and multiplayer grids of Half-Life, a popular computer game. The fun starts at 11 p.m. Eastern time.

And after the last ball has dropped, those who want to get a jump on celebrating the new millennium on January 1, 2001 (which is when the universally accepted Gregorian calendar says the next millennium actually begins) should head to the United States Naval Observatory (www.usno.navy.mil). The site includes a link between the clock on your computer and Coordinated Universal Time as represented by the observatory’s master clock. Once connected, your computer screen will display a running countdown to midnight December 31 in days, hours, minutes and seconds.

[NormanStewart]

Opinion: The uncertain blessings of longevity

For all the people wondering how to celebrate the turn of a century that also turns a millennium, the greatest wonder is that there are so many people still alive to think about it. The dawning wonder – and also worry, for those concerned about the quality of old age and the allocation of resources – is how many babies born this centennial may still be alive for the next one.

A thousand years ago the average person hardly had time to wrinkle before life winked out, at 30 or 32. It would take 900 more years for life expectancy to extend by half, so slowly did learning about the body grow. It was in ancient Egypt that medicine first divided into specialties. But in the farms and towns of Europe in the Middle Ages, life was still stunted by diseases passed from the animals and animal wastes that people dwelled among. Behind the walls of monasteries, where knowledge lived, little more was known about human biology and the various ways in which death teased upon it than Hippocrates had theorized in the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., or than Galen learned by dissecting a Barbary ape in the second century A.D. The interiors of apes, it turned out, differ in important ways from those of people. The methodical exploration of the bones and organs and vasculature of humans did not begin until about the time the Spanish set out to find another way to China and bumped into a peninsula they called Florida, where they searched in vain for the Fountain of Youth.

Now some people have begun to wonder if perhaps science is not on the verge of finding it. New faces, new hair, new curves, flatter surfaces, focused minds, dispelled depressions, transplanted lungs and kidneys, plastic hips, collagen lips, knees, libidos – Viagra! Thanks to better public hygiene and drugs to cure infection, the average life expectancy, about 45 in 1900, has extended in this century to almost 78. Many more people live to greater age, and once old, resurface and repair themselves in ways that past generations could not imagine.

Yet refurbishment is not revitalization. Medical knowledge, in effect, has created a new stage of life – an extended old age. But because science brought it into being before all the attendant social and ethical questions could be answered, it is an age whose quality, effect on the larger culture and true end are still unknown. Rather than a place of youth, Florida has become a leisure and withering ground for the old, a vision of what countries with aging populations have in store. For the old themselves, for their families and caregivers and for social scientists and politicians, feelings of a mixed blessing abound.

For the United States and other nations, the issues are huge. How best to use these new old years? How to pay for them? It is not just that people are getting older. Their working lives are shorter. American men retire five years earlier than in 1950. Men who used to die not long after they quit working now routinely live another decade, women a decade and a half. People today often live almost as long in retirement as they did in youth before they worked. But the later years can be a stressful state. The honored generation of the Great Depression and World War II, now deep in its 80’s, has discovered the diseases so prevalent in a newly common old age: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, macular degeneration, diabetes – and heart attacks, which were still unrecorded in 1900.

Their children, drawn into the illness drama, have made a sad discovery of their own. Medical science, which easily extends life beyond the point at which it is still physically or intellectually active, has created a painfully common new question: Who has the right to end it?

The ante, as poker players say, is going up. This century and millennium close by chance on a transitional moment, between what we know and the enormously greater sum of what we are about to know. It is beneath the surface of existence, in the genetic substructure of the human cell itself, that the intense lamp of science now shines. The genetic engineering revolution comes at a time when the largest generation in history is still young enough to hope that its last decades can be extended by that knowledge. We are within a few score years of knowing ways to prevent, treat or cure many of the major illnesses of old age – perhaps even of knowing the outer limits of old age itself.

Already the children of the boomers are growing up without a fixed sense of the natural limits of life. They, their parents and their children could coexist in a glut of healthful longevity such as the world has never known. We cannot conceive what competition that will provoke among generations for resources. The likelihood is that many of us will live to know.

[NormanStewart]

Reading Eagle (December 30, 1999)

New Year’s Eve threat linked to 1998 bomber

CONCORD, N.H. – The person who planted two bombs in the heart of Concord a year ago now has made a threat for New Year’s Eve.

Police intercepted a letter addressed to the governor Wednesday, in which someone threatened to bomb a First Night celebration somewhere in the state.

Authorities believe the threat came from the person or people who left two bombs in Concord in late October 1998, because the ornate handwriting on the envelope received Wednesday looked identical to handwriting on bomb-related letters received last year.

One bomb caused a small fire at the Concord City Library; the other was found unexploded on the steps of the state library, across the street from the governor’s Statehouse office. The person made other threats but in those cases no bombs were found.

[NormanStewart]

Emergency officials ready for Y2K disaster

WASHINGTON – Hundreds of federal emergency officials have fanned out across the country and will await the stroke of midnight in each U.S. time zone Friday with an eye toward Y2K disaster.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has established 10 regional centers to monitor potential catastrophes in the United States and its territories.

Beginning today, FEMA will have its emergency support team in full gear around the clock through Sunday. More than 800 personnel will be working through the weekend.

The agency can draw on resources from as many as 26 federal agencies and the Red Cross if Y2K emergencies arise.

“FEMA is confident that nothing serious will happen, but we are prepared to respond just like we would for any other natural disaster or any other emergency situation,” said Robert Adamecik, associate director for FEMA response and recovery.

[NormanStewart]

Before New Year’s starts make amends to others

By Doris Wild Helmering

I propose two things before 2000 arrives. Say “I’m sorry” to three people and “Thank you” to seven people.

Both these actions will increase your self-awareness and build your character. They will help you to be a better person in the future. They will also make a positive impact on another person’s life.

Think of three people you have bruised or hurt in some way. You may have made a sarcastic comment or had an argument when you made some hurtful remarks.

You may have failed to support someone at a time when that person most needed your support.

For example, you might say the following:

• “I’m sorry I didn’t return your call last week.”

• “Sorry I was so crabby the other night.”

• “I’m sorry I treated you so poorly when your arm was broken.”

• “I apologize for not being more supportive when you were going through your divorce.”

• “I’m sorry for holding a grudge for so many years and refusing to make up.”

Apologies remind you of your own weaknesses and help you be more accepting of others. They reduce internal tension. They make for a better relationship.

Now think of seven people you want to thank. For example:

• “Thanks for all the nice Christmases you gave us in the past.”

• “Thanks for introducing me to classical music, or fly fishing, or a particular author.”

• “Thank you for inviting me to your party. We had a wonderful time.”

• “Thanks for encouraging me to go back to school and get my degree.”

Just because you have thanked someone once doesn’t mean you can’t thank him again. Thank yous are a form of recognition. They make the other person special.

When you thank someone, you say, “I recognize what you have done for me. I recognize our connectedness and interdependence.”

Thank yous are your lifelines to the past and future.

Doris Wild Helmering is a syndicated columnist. She is a psychotherapist and author. Visit her on the Web at www.doriswildhelmering.com. Her column appears on Thursday in the Reading Times and Reading Eagle.

[NormanStewart]

Networks touting grand millennium plans

ABC is providing the most elaborate coverage, which will last 25 hours and employ the full resources of ABC News to capture celebrations across the globe.
By Frazier Moore, Associated Press

Peter Jennings will anchor “ABC 2000,” a 25-hour, live program from ABC’s Times Square studios in New York. The program will feature a team of ABC News anchors and correspondents covering millennium celebrations around the world. (AP)

NEW YORK (AP) – The last thing you’ll do this millennium, and the first thing you’ll do in the next, is watch television.

That’s the assumption of quite a few TV networks, each of them touting grand plans for ringing in the millennium – again and again, zone by zone, until you scream, “OK, I get it!”

Watching Dick Clark at Times Square is a New Year’s Eve tradition as old, it seems, as Father Time. But this year, it’s the whole world, not just a snarled Manhattan crossroads, that will be on view.

And what an elegant display of circularity! That is, the miracle of technology will let you globe-hop from your living room as never before. In turn, your jitters about technology gone awry should guarantee that you will be watching. After all, you’ll probably be holed up in your living room, or somebody else’s, trying to stay out of harm’s way.

Networks with an eye on the world this millennial weekend include CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and even Pax TV.

But ABC has seized the most attention for its plans. Signing on Friday at 4:50 a.m., “ABC 2000” will last 25 hours and employ the full resources of ABC News (and then some) to capture live performances, breaking news and celebrations across the globe.

Why does “ABC 2000,” at least on paper, upstage rival efforts? Maybe because, however epic its scope, it also boasts a personal endurance exhibition by Peter Jennings – the broadcast’s go-the-distance anchor.

“Somebody said to me, ‘If we’re going to do this, do you want to do the whole thing?’” Jennings said. “I said, ‘Yeah, why not?’”

One world, one man. Clearly, ABC wants to own the millennium, with Jennings the face of Y2K.

His current on-air record is 14 hours anchoring Gulf War coverage.

“I have no idea whether I’m going to wilt before this is over,” he said, “but I do know that I wouldn’t want to miss any of it.

“The idea is to let the occasion unroll before us. From first light in the Pacific, all the way across Europe, North and South America, and beyond, before we come around again. And in all these locations, there will also be an entertainment package, which is our chance to participate in a global party.”

However state-of-the-art this extravaganza will be, you may recall that TV threw such a “global party” a generation ago.

On June 25, 1967, a two-hour, black-and-white special called “Our World” became the first live, worldwide telecast in history. Among its far-flung segments: the Beatles appearing from London’s Abbey Road Studios for a premiere performance of “All You Need Is Love.”

Produced for one simple reason – because, at last, technology had made it possible – “Our World” linked broadcasters in 14 countries.

By contrast, the Millennium Day Broadcast Consortium brings together 66 countries for its massive co-production that will air for 25 hours.

As a member of the consortium, ABC will dip into that broadcast feed to supplement its own coverage.

Another member, PBS, plans to carry the feed in its entirety, starting Friday at 4:45 a.m. for the first midnight of the new millennium. It will arrive on Kiribati, a remote country of 33 Pacific islands between Hawaii and Australia.

Then the first major country to follow suit will be New Zealand, as stand-up comic (and PBS host) Will Durst is pleased to point out.

“You would otherwise never hear this outside of the community of sheep-shearing,” he said, “but ‘As goes New Zealand, so goes the world.’”

Bruce Mundt, producer of “PBS Millennium 2000,” promises “a leisurely and, we think, viewer-friendly pace” – not to mention one that’s commercial-free.

Based in Washington, D.C., with hosts Durst, Gwen Ifill and Scott Simon, “the show we envision will be a companion to whatever family-and-friends activities are going on,” Mundt said.

“Everything that we’ve been reading indicates that people are going to be staying home with smaller, intimate groups, and they’ll have the TV on. This program will be for them.”

Maybe. But many viewers may find they’re ringing in the new millennium with the time-honored practice of channel surfing.

For one thing, no one knows for certain what those hours will hold. A shutdown of some sort? A calamity somewhere? You may want to flip around to stay on top of things.

Even so, remember to holster your remote at some point. Then pour a glass of bubbly and toast the show.

[NormanStewart]

Kids discuss hopes, dreams for future in ‘Nickellennium’

The Nickelodeon network will broadcast the six-hour, commercial-free documentary for 24 hours beginning just after midnight.
By David Bauder, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) – Ask 8-year-old Maddy of Lincoln, Nebraska, what she wants for the new millennium, and her answer reflects the practical concerns of big sisters for at least 2,000 years.

“I want to make a machine,” she said, “to make my little brother go away.”

The Nickelodeon network found out what’s on the minds of kids for the next millennium because it asked. The simple idea makes for some compelling New Year’s programming that sets Nick apart from the celebration – and from apocalypse-watchers.

For 24 hours starting just after midnight Friday, Nickelodeon beams the “Nickellennium” documentary with children talking about their hopes and dreams. The six-hour film is repeated three times without commercials, but viewers are told that McDonalds is the sponsor.

More than 600 children representing 29 countries were interviewed for the show, which will be seen in 122 nations and nine languages through Nickelodeon’s international network.

Although Maddy’s desires are worth a few chuckles – she doesn’t want her brother eliminated, just sent off for some long vacations in space – the film is meant to be a serious examination of youthful concerns.

“When you listen, you find they have a lot to say, and a lot of profound things to say,” said Linda Schaffer, the documentary’s producer. “It’s not ‘Kids Say the Darndest Things.’’’

Schaffer approached Nickelodeon with the idea in 1997. Network executives gave her seed money, even though they hadn’t decided how to mark the passage into the year 2000. They considered throwing a big party, but were struck by the power of what was being said by the children Schaffer had found, Nickelodeon president Herb Scannell said.

Since Nick’s corporate mantra is to always listen to kids, “Nickellennium” kept looking better as the New Year approached, he said.

“I think it is a reflective time,” he said. “For all the talk of ‘Let’s party like it’s 1999,’ there’s a sober sense of what 2000 is.”

The kids talk about life and love, about their parents, the environment and their friends. They come up with some fanciful ideas for inventions: One girl talks about being able to receive e-mail in her head by moving her tongue, and printing out a message through her mouth.

“A lot of wisdom is in the very young and the very old,” Schaffer said. “They have a unique ability to lift this truth veil and let us see things as they really are.”

Despite the image of a computer-savvy generation, Schaffer found as many children worried or skeptical about technological advances as were excited about them.

“They want to hold a pencil in their hands,” she said.

The environment was a universal concern, with children in India talking about inventing a pollution-sucker to clean up the air and children in Zimbabwe worried about poachers exterminating entire species of animals.

“Their concern felt very genuine to me,” she said. “It didn’t feel like it was something they had heard in class.”

Schaffer had hoped kids in world trouble spots might point the way to a better future, but it didn’t always work out that way.

While in Israel, she found two 11-year-olds, a Jew and a Palestinian, who lived around the corner from each other. Not only had the two never met, neither had ever talked to any child of the other nationality. Schaffer wanted to bring them together for an interview.

The Jewish child’s parents agreed. The Palestinians balked, but after hours of cajoling, finally relented. Then the Jewish family backed out, worried about their safety. All the work went for naught.

“It made me realize how deep this goes and how naive it was for me to try to make a bigger statement,” she said. “We struggled with that more than any other piece. There was a lot of dark stuff that came out in the kids.”

Africa’s beauty was tempered by its human tragedies: One 11-year-old who was interviewed at length about his mother subsequently lost her to AIDS.

It’s clearly not the typical viewing experience for a Nickelodeon fan. For many, it will be like looking into a mirror. “Nickellennium” may also draw an atypical Nick audience: Schaffer believes many adults will watch parts of the documentary with their children, or by themselves to see what young people are thinking.

“You get the feeling of concerned optimism when you watch this show,” she said. “These kids are innocent but not naive.”

[NormanStewart]

Buchwald: Who’s got the remote?

By Art Buchwald

If Americans follow the script, most people will be home on the evening of the millennium. They will be watching television, which has gone all out to produce the biggest shows in history to welcome the year 2000.

The problem for the stay-at-homes is who will control the television remote control. The person who holds the clicker in his hand has the power to bring in the New Year all around the world.

It is a responsibility so great that only the best and brightest will be permitted to put their finger on the channel button.

I predict that this could happen in a typical American household:

Tucker Gibson grabs the clicker before his wife can touch it. He tells her, “Tonight is too important to let an amateur surf.”

This doesn’t go over very well with Edith. “Tucker,” she says, “you had the remote for the entire decade. I want to bring in the year 2000.”

“It’s too risky. I am the only one in the family who knows how to select a channel with my eyes shut.”

“Change to ABC. I understand Peter Jennings is on for 24 hours.”

“If that is true we can always get to ABC later. Let us see what NBC is doing.”

Young Reg Gibson says, “Switch to MTV. I’m sure they have a better show.”

Tucker replies, “Do you mind if I do the clicking?”

Edith complains, “You just went by CNN. I think we should at least see what the people in Baghdad are doing.”

Tucker says, “If we watch CNN, then we also have to watch Geraldo Rivera on MSNBC.”

Young Reg says, “What station is carrying ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’”

“They’re not showing it on New Year’s Eve.”

“Why not?”

“For the same reason they’re not showing Guy Lombardo. Everyone be quiet. I’m going to Mike Wallace.”

“Why Wallace?”

“He’ll tell us who the crooks will be in the New Year.”

Edith asks, “Couldn’t I click once for good luck?”

Tucker answers, “You can if you promise to give it right back to me.”

Edith takes the remote and the screen goes blank.

“What happened?”

Young Reg says, “I think it’s the Y2K bug.”

“Give it to me,” Tucker demands. “It’s almost midnight.”

Reg does the countdown. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.”

Tucker yells, “Bingo!” and pushes the remote button. On the screen he gets the wrestling channel – the only one that is working.

And that is how the Gibsons and many others will bring in the first day of the next 2,000 years.

Art Buchwald is a syndicated columnist for Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

[NormanStewart]

Internet operators have security worries on top of Y2K

The big fear is that hackers and other troublemakers may try to initiate or escalate any computer system problems by infiltrating on-line viruses.

NEW YORK (AP) – Web site operators and people who run computer systems will be watching for more than the Y2K bug on New Year’s Eve.

They will be on guard for viruses and other mischief spread by hackers looking for some start-of-the-millennium attention.

The threat has prompted several Web site operators to shut down beginning on Friday. For some companies, security breaches could cause greater problems than Year 2000 glitches.

“We are anticipating that there will be some increase,” said Kathy Fithen, manager of a group that monitors online security threats at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “We are anticipating some of the intruders will try to masquerade the attack as a Y2K failure.”

At least three viruses are timed to hit Saturday and could delete files on infected computers. Five other viruses that struck earlier pretended to be Y2K fixes or New Year’s greetings. Anti-virus companies have distributed software updates to kill those viruses, but new forms of attack are possible.

Security experts said many virus writers and hackers might consider the start of the new millennium – when the world will be worried about computer problems anyway – a chance to get a lot of publicity.

Widely available automation tools could help hackers crash Web sites by flooding them with too much traffic. Or an intruder might change a Web page or subtly redirect traffic to a fake site that proclaims the end of the world.

Besides the security worries, heavy holiday traffic and isolated Y2K outages could clog the Net. Leading Internet companies will run a command center in Washington in conjunction with President Clinton’s Y2K team. It will watch for problems.

The FBI will run a separate center to watch for security breaches.

The Internet is relatively new and constantly evolving, so there is little outdated, Y2K-vulnerable equipment to worry about. And the Internet was designed by the military to withstand attack. Even if portions go down, traffic could still flow through other channels.

But Barbara Dooley, president of the Commercial Internet Exchange Association, said sporadic problems are likely. Phone and power problems abroad, for instance, could make portions of the Internet inaccessible to U.S. computers.

Sites ranging from eBay to the New York Botanical Garden plan {o shut down during the century change. Some are doing so solely out of concern for power interruptions and other Y2K malfunctions, while others cited security threats as well.

Broward County, Fla., will prohibit public access to its county databases and bar employee access to internal e-mail accounts to keep viruses from spreading. The Web site of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management will carry only a greeting from its director.

Not everyone shares the concerns, though. Wal-Mart picked January 1 to launch its redesigned Web site.

[NormanStewart]

Spend New Year’s Eve with Will’s ‘Willennium’

By Laura Dempsey, Voices correspondent

Will Smith’s new CD, “Willennium,” is definitely going to be playing on people’s stereos all around the country when they bring in the millennium.

The funky beats and almost funny rapping keep people actually listening to the songs and learning the words, while dancing along to them.

Smith has mixed in some of the old, some of the new and even some of the just plain good stuff his fans, and others, love.

Smith has some big hits on this album, including “Wild, Wild West” and “Will2K,” but there are many potentials for hits in the future.

“Who Am I” “So Fresh” and “The Rain” are some of his signature tracks that will definitely get recognition.

Smith also has a huge number of collaborators on this album. K-Ci, Lil’ Kim, Tatyana Ali, Mc Lyte, Biz Markie, Eve, Kel Spencer, Dru Hill, Kool Mo Dee and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, are just some of the examples of the great talent he shares the spotlight with on “Willennium.”

But one of the most surprising contributors on this album is Smith’s own partner in crime from his early rapping days, DJ Jazzy Jeff. They are both featured as executive producers on this album and share a song together titled “Pump Me Up.”

They sound like they have never taken a hiatus from their rapping days, and might even sound better now that they are experienced in the business of rapping.

One of the most original concepts that Smith had while creating this record was to not include swearing. On an MTV interview, he remarked that it wasn’t necessary to include swearing on an album, and even though it took some editing, he achieved his goal.

Some songs are not too strong in their overall ability to “rock the beat,” but the whole album is a no-miss. Smith isn’t known for failing at too many things, and his new album, “Willennium,” isn’t about to be an exception.

Laura Dempsey is a sophomore at Schuylkill Valley High School.

Will Smith’s new CD, ‘Willennium,’ rates up there with his best.

[NormanStewart]

One more day to go!

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[NormanStewart]

Half a day to go!

[NormanStewart]

The stream starts at 5 a.m. ET!

[NormanStewart]

The New York Times (December 31, 1999)

In Times Square, crowds savor a historic moment, give or take 30 hours

Revelers get a head start on Year 2000 celebration
By Jane Gross and Jayson Blair

The millennial celebration in Times Square began a day ahead of schedule, filling Midtown Manhattan with hundreds of thousands of merry-makers and forcing police officers yesterday to divide their attention between unexpected crowd control and last-minute security preparations, including vehicle searches and harbor patrols.

Times Square is usually a ghostly place on December 30, once neighborhood office workers have snuck out early in anticipation of the holiday. The Police Department had expected more pedestrians than normal this year, but nothing like what materialized on a day set aside for security sweeps: sealing trash cans and mailboxes, searching the tops of buildings and cars entering garages, and setting out the sawhorses and concrete barricades that would contain a New Year’s Eve crowd expected to reach two million.

By midday yesterday, the sidewalks between 52nd and 42nd Streets were all but impassable, as tourists and New Yorkers alike craned their necks trying to see the unlighted Waterford crystal ball, took snapshots of each other taking snapshots and donned glittery hats and cardboard 2000 eyeglasses.

“I’ve never seen these streets like this the night before,” said a lieutenant at the Times Square substation, who estimated a crowd of half a million at the party before the party. As he spoke, several officers burst into the room, seeking help in managing the tangle of people and cars, which had yet to be banned from the area.

“Fleury and Perez can’t do this, just the two of them,” said one officer, hoarse from hours with a bullhorn at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 43rd Street. “Pull somebody from the north post.”

Some of the people milling in Times Square in the late afternoon said they had come to savor the historic moment, give or take 30 hours, and planned to be at home when the ball drops. Others were just passing through, heading to the subway or to Grand Central Terminal and muttering at the inconvenience, as New Yorkers love to do. But a surprising number had come to get the lay of the land, figure out the optimal viewing spot when the big show really started and decide how early to show up.

“I’ve been asked hundreds of times, ‘Where’s the best place to stand? What time do I have to get here? Where’s the stage at?’” one officer said.

Officers in Times Square also spent a lot of time helping out-of-towners figure out the location of the New Year’s Eve ball, which in daylight was barely visible atop a 77-foot pole above One Times Square. With all the neon around them, the tourists turned this way and that, unable to find it.

“Sir, where is the ball?” one man asked a police officer on 43rd Street.

“It’s on top of the Cup-o-Noodles,” came the reply. “You can see it better if you move uptown a couple of blocks.”

Police officials said that they had anticipated people turning up in Times Square ahead of schedule – although not necessarily in these numbers – and had staffed the area accordingly for the last four days. “This is a special and bigger celebration,” said Marilyn Mode, the department’s spokesperson. “There’s a tremendous influx of very happy tourists. But it’s still under control and orderly.”

While the crowd and the officers in Times Square were jovial, the serious business of securing the city moved into high gear.

Some of the activity was expected, like removing garbage cans and welding shut manhole covers. But there were also previously unpublicized security measures, like Coast Guard patrols of the waters around Manhattan Island, with special attention to historic monuments like the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, which could be the target of terrorists.

There were also random searches of cars entering the city via bridges and tunnels, dogs patrolling terminals at the three area airports, hundreds of extra state police officers in New Jersey covering the highways between Philadelphia and New York and a helicopter hovering over Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s home, as it has done for the last three days.

In the Times Square area, where cars were to be banned at midnight, police officers were posted at garages to examine automobiles for bombs or other dangerous materials. The officers crawled under vehicles, opened trunks, looked beneath floor boards and took license numbers, just in case.

“Nothing surprises me, with all the concerns about security,” said Kyong Park, a musician, who was parking his car at a garage on West 43rd Street.

The officers at the garages, working in pairs, tried to deflect drivers’ anger at the time-consuming searches with humor. Examining a hotdog cart, one officer asked jokingly, “Is that really a propane tank or is it anthrax?”

Amid all the preparations, an underground electrical cable shorted out at Broadway and 43rd Street around 9 p.m., injuring two Con Edison workers who were inspecting the cable, the police said. One worker suffered minor burns on his legs and another cuts and bruises, said Joseph Petta, a Con Ed spokesman.

While the accident prompted an unusually large response from emergency workers, Mr. Petta said it caused no service interruptions and were not expected to affect tonight’s festivities.

An unprecedented phalanx of medical workers and equipment was also being massed at Times Square. The Fire Department’s normal New Year’s Eve complement of 19 ambulances has been expanded to 48, fire officials said. And for the first time, the department will have 20 buses on standby – 10 at the Jacob Javits Center and 10 at Bellevue Hospital – to transport seriously injured people from Times Square. The buses can also be used as mobile units, to treat minor injuries on the spot.

In addition, the Fire Department has bought 10 golf cart-type vehicles – small and maneuverable with room for two passengers – that can be steered through the most congested areas to pick up injured revelers.

The Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the city’s public hospitals, has assigned 40 extra physicians to its emergency rooms.

The area airports and other ports of entry were also the scene of heightened security. At Kennedy Airport, the number of customs inspectors has risen to 125 from 75 in recent weeks; at Newark International Airport to 60 from 40, officials said.

And the local authorities are in close contact with law enforcement and emergency service agencies around the world, according to Police Commissioner Howard Safir. He said city officials will be talking to their counterparts overseas about untoward events, such as power failures, which could give New York an early warning of what might happen here.

“I’m satisfied we have done excellent planning and have excellent resources,” Mr. Safir said. “What we need now is a little bit of luck and to let people do their jobs.”

[NormanStewart]

To our readers

International Herald Tribune

This is the last edition of the International Herald Tribune for this century and this millennium. We will be back on your doorstep or on your newsstand on Monday, January 3, 2000. It has been more than 112 years since James Gordon Bennett Jr. started the Paris edition of the New York Herald, so we have been fortunate in being able to record the events of this extraordinary century and to bring them to our readers. The arrival of a new century and a new millennium produces more than the usual incentive to pause and reflect. It is a rare moment for all of us to think about where we have been, how far we’ve come and, perhaps most enticingly, where we are headed. But it is also a moment for more personal thoughts, including the wish for a happy and healthy new year to all of our readers around the world.

– The Editors

[NormanStewart]

New Year’s

The holiday, actually January 1, is legally observed today.

• NEW YORK

  GOVERNMENT OFFICES: Closed today and tomorrow.

  POST OFFICE: Open today, closed tomorrow except main post office at 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue.

  BANKS: Open today, closed tomorrow.

  PARKING: Alternate-side regulations suspended today and tomorrow. No-parking zone, in effect today and tomorrow, extends from West 34th Street to West 59th Street between the Avenue of the Americas and Eighth Avenue.

  SANITATION: Normal pickups, for garbage and recycling. No street cleanings.

  SCHOOLS: Closed.

  FINANCIAL MARKETS: Open until 1 p.m. today, closed tomorrow.

  TRANSPORTATION: City buses and subways on a Saturday schedule today and tomorrow with additional service. Long Island Rail Road on weekday schedule today and weekend schedule tomorrow with additional trains today and tomorrow. Metro-North on a weekday schedule today and a holiday schedule tomorrow with extra trains both days.

• NEW JERSEY

  GOVERNMENT OFFICES: Closed today and tomorrow. Motor vehicle inspection stations open today, closed tomorrow.

  POST OFFICE: Regular service today. Closed tomorrow except for Express Mail and special delivery.

  BANKS: Open today, closed tomorrow.

  SCHOOLS: Local option.

  TRANSPORTATION PATH: Trains on regular schedule. New Jersey Transit rail service will operate on a normal schedule with additional service.

• CONNECTICUT

  GOVERNMENT OFFICES: Closed today and tomorrow.

  POST OFFICE: Regular service today. Closed tomorrow except for Express Mail and special delivery.

  BANKS: Open today, closed tomorrow.

  SCHOOLS: Local option.

  TRANSPORTATION: Metro-North on a weekday schedule today and a holiday schedule tomorrow with extra trains both days.

[NormanStewart]

Internet stars obscured the overall picture: In a year of records, most U.S. stocks fell

By Mitchell Martin, International Herald Tribune

It is easy to overlook amid the current Wall Street frenzy, but most U.S. stocks fell in 1999. The major market indexes are closing out the year at record levels, but most of the big winners have been related to the Internet.

In the new year, the smart money is likely to be invested in companies that are building the Internet and the tools to use on it, rather than those that hang their virtual hats there, even though it was the latter that had some of the most stellar returns.

For 1999, the dichotomy between winners and losers was most evident on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The system’s composite index, which measures all of its stocks, has risen 84 percent, the biggest calendar-year gain for a major U.S. average, barring a huge sell-off Friday. But dig a little deeper and you find out that most Nasdaq stocks were down this year.

That is a normal state of affairs, said William Rhodes, an investment strategist with Merrill Lynch & Co. in Boston. The Nasdaq, home to start-ups and has-beens, lists a lot of stocks that are prone to bad years.

What is unusual, however, is that even with the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 showing double-digit gains, most U.S. stocks were down. With less than a week left to go in the year, falling issues outnumbered advancers 3,780 to 3,213 on the New York and Nasdaq markets combined, according to Birinyi Associates Inc., a company in Westport, Connecticut, that analyzes investor activity.

The reason for the apparent discrepancy is that while technology stocks had a record year, other industries did not. Escalating energy costs hit fuel-dependent transportation stocks and also increased costs for power-generating utilities. Utilities, which often sell bonds to finance the construction and maintenance of their networks and plants, were also hurt by rising interest rates.

Financial, real estate and consumer-product stocks were also hurt by higher rates.

In the middle are industrial and service companies with gains on the order of 20 percent, making for a year that would have been unremarkable without the technology boom.

“I think that the stock market has been taken over by the individual investor,” said Edward Yardeni, chief economist of Deutsche Bank Securities. This individual “has concluded that valuation does not matter, that we are in the new economy with no prospects of recession anytime soon and expectations that perpetual prosperity is here to stay.”

These Pollyannas, he said, are “pouring money into the market in very small trades,” largely in the stocks of upstart technology companies. Many investors have abandoned traditional methods of valuing these issues, leaving a limited supply of shares to rise to levels that match the seemingly insatiable – and irrational – demand.

It worried Mr. Yardeni that institutional investors have felt obliged to follow along in order to produce investment returns of the same scale as the gains in the averages. “Many are convinced that this is a speculative bubble,” he said, “but they have to play.”

Investment advisers said it was increasingly common for formerly sober long-term clients to complain about “laggard” stocks, those that had not doubled during the year.

The most spectacular gains, of course, have been posted by the so-called dot.com stocks, issued by companies whose businesses largely occur on the Internet. But even excluding them, there is reason to be optimistic about 2000, and another double-digit gain in the Nasdaq may be on the horizon.

Joseph Battipaglia, chief investment officer of Gruntal & Co., who has been among the most accurate forecasters of the current bull market, said that the growth of the Internet would lead to earnings gains on the order of 30 percent for Nasdaq companies in 2000.

By contrast, he predicted that the S&P 500 companies would see their profits grow just 13.6 percent, a good performance by historical standards but one that would be in single digits were it not for the technology companies.

The companies Mr. Battipaglia is looking at include concerns such as Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc., whose products facilitate the growth of the Internet. They are among the 10 companies on the Nasdaq that were worth more than $100 billion this week, and that cadre alone accounts for 40 percent of the market’s capitalization and thus the composite index. The two biggest, Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc., are worth almost $1 trillion, or a fifth of the index

The dot.coms, by contrast, comprise only about 10 percent of the Nasdaq, Mr. Battipaglia said. They are small fish in a big pool.

Yahoo Inc. is the only dot.com among the 10 biggest Nasdaq stocks. Excluding Qualcomm Inc., which only joined the top 10 on Wednesday, the group’s 1999 price increases ranged from 12 percent at MCI Worldcom Inc. to 255 percent at Oracle, as of Wednesday’s close.

So while many analysts scoff at the valuations placed on the dot.coms, the top Nasdaq stocks remain favorites.

“You would be foolish not to own something in there,” said Mr. Rhodes. “They are the leading stocks in the Nasdaq now,” he said, “and they are critically important for American economic health. To a certain extent, they have replaced industrial companies.”

Wall Street falters late

Stocks closed mixed Thursday, shedding gains late in the session.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed 31.80 points lower at 11,452.86. The Nasdaq composite index ended 4.60 points lower at 4,036.86.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index registered a small advance, closing up 1 point at 1,464.46.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 17-to-13 ratio on the New York Stock Exchange.

Volume has been light all week, and markets will close at 1 P.M. on Friday for New Year’s Eve.

Traders suggested holiday volume was especially light this year because of the transition to Year 2000. Any trades made Thursday or Friday will be settled next week, and many investors have opted to stay out of the market until the impact of Y2K computer conversions is clear.

Yahoo Inc. ended 15 5/16 higher at 419, and traded as high as 448. The Internet search and directory service was reiterated “buy” by an analyst and its shares are expected to reach $550 in the next year, up from the analyst’s original target of $385.

Young & Rubicam rose 7 1/4 to 70 3/16. The advertising company will replace General Instrument in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index after January 5.

Treasury bond prices edged up, pushing the yield on the benchmark 30-year issue down to 6.42 percent from 6.44 percent late Wednesday.

[NormanStewart]

A war and a courtship, all by letter, lovingly, on New Year’s Eve

By David Stout

This is a war story with a happy ending, although in a way it hasn’t ended at all.

It began on September 9, 1944, when Tech. Sgt. Nathan Hoffman and an Army buddy went to New York City for a little fun before shipping overseas. Nathan Hoffman was in his late 20’s, used to the quiet ways of his hometown, Waco, Tex. He was awed by the crowds and lights of the big city.

Nathan Hoffman’s buddy was from New York and introduced him to a cousin, Evelyn Giniger. Evelyn had grown up in the Bronx and liked to dance, as did Nathan. The two had a good time that first night, and the next – five nights of dancing near Times Square.

“Can I see you tomorrow?” he asked after the fifth night.

“Yes,” she said.

Instead, an orchid was delivered to Evelyn’s door. “I’ll be seeing you,” a note from Nathan said. The men of the 12th Armored Division had been restricted to base just north of New York. Hours later, they were on a troop ship headed for Europe.

“In leaving, I have only one regret – that I was unable to see you just one last time,” Nathan wrote Evelyn on September 18, 1944.

They wrote each other virtually every day for the 16 months he was gone. They were getting to know each other, courting, actually. The letters led to marriage, but Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman never imagined that a half-century later the letters would become part of Washington’s celebration of a new millennium.

A couple of years ago, they had their hundreds of letters published in volumes for their son, two daughters and five grandchildren.

“We were just trying to leave something behind,” Mrs. Hoffman said the other day in their Washington hotel room, as the couple relaxed after the trip from their home in Waco. She is 76. Her husband turned 85 on December 22 but has the look and energy of a man a decade younger.

Months ago, Andrew Carroll, a Washington writer and historian, heard about the letters. Mr. Carroll has been collecting and preserving wartime correspondence in an effort he has christened the Legacy Project. He found the letters valuable not just for the sentiments they expressed but also because there were so many from Evelyn. Too often, letters from the home front were lost or discarded because the soldiers and sailors had no place to keep them all.

Steven Spielberg heard about the letters. Mr. Carroll sent copies to the filmmaker, whose “Saving Private Ryan” has intensified interest in World War II. Mr. Spielberg included the Hoffmans in his short documentary “The Unfinished Journey,” to be shown on New Year’s Eve in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

President Clinton will be there, as will famous people from Hollywood. And the Hoffmans will be there, reading from their long-ago letters.

The young Nathan had trouble putting his deepest feelings on paper, at first. “But the censors limited what we could write home about,” Mr. Hoffman recalled.

So, having to fill up the paper somehow, he turned to his emotions. On October 26, 1944, he wrote, “Baby, I am not asking you to make any promises with regard to the future.”

He was, of course. But he need not have worried. “Every day, I miss you a little bit more,” Evelyn wrote on December 27, 1944. She knew that Nathan was a clerk-typist behind the lines, but she was still afraid. “The knowledge that you’re getting closer to the front makes me tremble every time I think of it,” she wrote that December 27.

There was reason to worry. The 12th Armored Division had been placed under Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army, which was in the thick of fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, and lots of clerk-typists were being given rifles and put into foxholes.

Nathan Hoffman remained a clerk-typist, but it was not easy duty. A headquarters is a busy place in war, and he went 36 hours without sleep. And while he was not supposed to be in combat, the German artillerymen didn’t know that. “Shells would land near the building, every seven minutes,” he said. “The Germans were very methodical.”

Back home, Evelyn had dropped out of college. She wrote Nathan about her work in a plant that made freezer components for the military. On April 30, 1945, she asked Nathan if he was thinking of her as much as she was thinking of him. “I do love you more deeply and differently every day,” she wrote.

On May 2, 1945, with the war all but over, Nathan wrote of his visit to a concentration camp at Landsberg, Germany. “We took a little side trip to see some of the atrocious work that Hitler and his ilk have imposed on the world,” he wrote.

Perhaps the impersonal words were part of an emotional shield. The other day, he said that the rags and bones and smells of the camp bother him more now than they did a half-century ago.

The letters of Nathan Hoffman and Evelyn Giniger did not end, as so many others did, with a heartbreaking telegram from the War Department. They ended when he came home to Waco in January 1946. She had gone there to wait for him, and they were married a month later.

Nathan Hoffman prospered in his family’s wholesale-produce business. Life has been wonderful to them, Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman agreed. They acknowledged that they are a little old-fashioned, nostalgic for a time when they were young and Americans pulled together for a great cause, a time when people wrote letters.

“Who writes letters anymore?” Mrs. Hoffman said.