[TowerTalk] US Tower price increase

[Roger (K8RI) on TT]

Y2K wasn't a problem because we spent hundreds of thousands of hours 
fixing programs that would have been the problem.

The real problem was discovered and fixed before the calendar rolled 
over.  Many, or most early  programs did not have the ability to handle 
the calendar roll over as they didn't have the ability to handle enough 
digits. Remember many programs were written in languages to work with 
old CPUs.

Even today many areas use customers use custom software when stock 
spreadsheets and databases could do the job, including the medical 
profession.  That is why there are medical organizations as well as 
companies still locked into Windows XP. Many of those custom programs 
require rewriting to work on newer operating systems.

Some of those medical programs require they integrate with many other 
programs as well as integrating across the internet to many other 
sites.  So after needing to work with numerous programs, they have to 
provide security.
The custom programs have to be "fill-in-the-blanks) as many Drs and 
Nurses do not know how to use stock spreadsheets and databases
I say this as I was a project manager that worked with laboratory 
Information Information Systems (known as LIMS) that required FDA 
validation which is far different than the validation for engineering 
projects. That validation was a royal PITA that had to be proven for 
"every" action of the system by FDA approved validation individuals and 
teams.  IOW, even with the knowledge we had to hire the validation.

In our case the validation consisted of a stack of operations that 
formed a pile of steps that was a bit over an inch thick. Performing 
those steps produced a stack that was over 4 feet tall.

So not only did the Y2K require fixing programs, but every program that 
was used in the medical field also had to be FDA validated. I would 
assume that tower certification/engineerring for government use might be 
similar and require a very expensive procedure an expensive paper trail. 
OTOH items sold to the government tend to be far more expensive than 
those sold on the open market.  If the government places a large enough 
order, then it's logical the same price will be applied to individuals. 
Otherwise the price would cut into the items sold to the government.

Hover if a government contract is not involved, a 3X, or even 2X price 
increase4 would seriously decrease their sales.

The ACA program implementation violated the FDA and existing rules.  
Every one of those programs was required to pass validation, but that 
was skipped allowing for many program implementations to fail, or suffer 
from bugs.  Private industry would have sufferer great penalties if they 
used programs.

Structured programming with flow charts minimizes bugs and side effects

73  Roger (K8RI)