--Sunday NYTimes Magazine piece - referred to in --SNARK-- thread

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

Hi Gang.

I was going to just pick some quotes from this article, but the whole thing is just too entirely outrageous. So I typed it all out. Sorry for any typos. It's not on the web. (the author is dangerously clueless, and he doesn't even know what day of the week Jan. 1, 2000 is)

From the New York Times Magazine, Sunday, Jan. 24, 1999

"Doomsday Machines Our computers will be just fine - millennial angst is the real year 2000 problem." by James Gleick:

"Soon the turn of the millennium will come and go, and historians of technology will look back at the year 2000 computer problem - the Y2K "crisis." as this newspaper and many others now call it. They will draw from it a salutary lesson: we are a silly species, easily confused and given to sudden fits of hysteria.

"At least we know how to make the most of a panic attack. Here's the latest issue of Wallpaper, a British high-style magazine, advising readers on how to "bunker down" for the coming apocalypse - with flashlights and gold bars and bottled water and, for self-defense, a stylish black crossbow. And why not? Supposedly careful authorities have raised the specter of power failures, plane crashes, food shortages, bank runs - the computerized wheels of commerce all grinding to a halt as the clock strikes 12 on Jan. 1, 20000. In somber preparation for the Y2K crisis, the Government of the United States has created more committees, action weeks, budget reports, Presidental councils, Congressional acts and, of course, Web pages than it has for AIDS and global warming combined - to name two crises that actually do kill people and threaten the health of the planet.

"As for us in the news media, suffice it to say that we've gone mad - newsmagazine cover stories, special investigations, the works. We have been co-conspirators of an army of people with a vested commercial interest in seeing money spent on the problem: consultants, hardware manufactures, and government information-technology managers, plaintiff's lawyers and more. A confession: the first New York Times account of the year 2000 problem appeared in this column, back in June 1996. I'm sorry.

"The amount of time that you, a dutiful citizen of the modern world, should spend worrying about Y2K is zero. But if you care to devote three more minutes, you might consider the following:

"Software has bugs. Already. Lots of bugs. My personal computer running Microsoft Windows crashes several times a week. Bugs have shut down telephone networks for hours, fouled up bills to millions of people and caused at least one rocket to explode on takeoff. A mantra of customer service is, "Sorry, our computer are down." Somehow, dependent though we are on these finical machines, we muddle through.

"There are lots of doomsdays. People focus on 1/1/2000. But computers have had to deal with the year 2000 for quite a while now. You probably already have a credit card with an expiration date of 00. Date arithmatic has always been arbitrary and flawed; all kinds of dates can cause trouble (9/9/99 is coming soon). Many doomsayers predicted trouble for 1/1/99, and technology reporters around the globe were on the lookout...and sure enough...

"Redefining "news" Some hot items that would not have been headline grabbers a year ago: meters on 300 taxis in Singapore failed for hours beginning at noon on Jan. 1; tragically, many riders were undercharged. In Sweden, drivers could not use credit cards at 600 gas stations because of a Y2K-like bug. And in hospitals, thousands of defibrillators made by Hewlett-Packard stopped displaying the correct date and time. They did continue to defibrillate, but doctors needing the time were forced to consult their watches.

"The new McCarthyism. Virtually every computer-related company now shows off a "Year 2000 Compliance" statement, in accordance with the Year 2000 Readiness and Disclosure Act, a new law that, to oversimplify just slightly, requires everyone to swear to take the issue very seriously. In turn, companies require their suppliers and contractors to prove that they, too, are Y2K-compliant. The Securities and Exchange Commision has mandated reporting and disclosure and testing and contingency planning by broker-dealers and investment advisors and public companies and more.

"The thing is, it's hard to prove, but almost everyone and everything is Y2K-compliant already. Sure, your car is riddled with computer chips, but they don't care what day it is. Personal computers really have no year 2000 problems worth mentioning - and if you don't believe me, you can check right now by resetting your system date to 1/1/00.

"But no one can afford to look complacent. Even Microsoft has bent in the wind, feeling compelled to create the Microsoft Direct Access Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure and Resource Center - which notes shrewdly, "Helping your customers solve their year 2000 problems can mean revenue for you."

"This prophesy is self-fulfilling. One alarming feature of the early year 2000 warnings was that it would cost fantastic sums. This has already come true - never mind that much of the money has gone to the people sounding the alarm in the first place. That's not a disaster. Companies need to replace outdated computer software anyway, and the economy will somehow accommodate all the programmers who can now afford to fly first class. The genuine risk confronting the world now is that people will take seriously the terrifying millennial forecasts and get even more panicky than they are: hoard cash and groceries, sell all their stocks and arm themselves with crossbows and worse.

" Look. We humans always fret about the end of the world when the calendar reaches a big round number. We're already anxious about computers, and rightly so: they're increasingly smart, increasingly interconnected and almost as unreliable as ever. We live in a tightly knit world, where a failure in one place can have bad consequences far, far away. All this is true and at the end of this year, some computers will have problems with their dates. But dawn will break on Sunday , Jan.1, and the Western calendar will turn to the year 2000 C.E. , and the sky will not fall."

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), January 24, 1999

Answers

Wow! Jimmy Bagga Doughnuts works for NYT! Thanks, pshannon, for your dedication in typing all this out. Hhhmm, "given to sudden fits of hysteria" while reading this. We really should lock all these people up together in the middle of downtown Chicago on 1/1/2000. :)

xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx

-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), January 24, 1999.


I think west side of Chicago would be more fitting.

A Native

-- Homeboy (ima@native.com), January 24, 1999.


The President's Y2K "czar," John Koskinen, gave testimony to Congressional committees yesterday. He said that 80% of the federal government's systems would be compliant by the March 31, 1999 federal deadline. He said, "We expect that all of the government's critical systems will be Y2K compliant before Jan. 1, 2000." http://www.y2kreview.com/wk990117.htm Also, In response to Koskinen's claim that the Federal Aviation Administration would be "totally compliant well in advance of the Year 2000," Joel Willemssen, director of civil agencies information systems at GAO, said: "I am not optimistic that [the FAA] will be compliant well in advance." He said they are at risk because they started so late in fixing a lot of their systems. Boy am I confident now! He "expects" that they'll be ready. Never mind that they're missing the first deadline. There are a few things that I'm taking from this article 1) If he "expects" that they will be 80% compliant by March 31st, then they probably aren't even close to that number now. 2) Koskinen is making claims that his own sources of information don't agree with. 3) Koskinen is lying about almost everything (he did say that they won't meet the March deadline, I believe that). I expect that the President of the United States would not commit felonies. I expect that the government would tell the truth. Expecting something doesn't make a darn bit of difference.

-- d (d@dgi.com), January 24, 1999.

these happy faced assholes are basing their articles on the disinformation that the government is feeding them. "The code wil be fixed, nevermind those IT metrics. It's just millineal hysteria."

I like how the author is ticked that "the programmers" are "now able to fly first class". Fuck him.

-- a (a@a.a), January 24, 1999.


a, he thinks they should be shoved in cargo hold with the snake oil salesmen. Chain him up with JBD :)

xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx

-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), January 24, 1999.



pshannon,

Thanks for the typing job!

It's a clear case of the internationally blind, writing for the local clueless.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), January 24, 1999.


Not criticizing the humor, guys, I indulge in quite a bit of it myself on the threads. This article is disgusting, contemptible and possibly murderous, in its consequences. I know many individuals who rely on this hideous rag for their validation of reality (my parents, among them, who are struggling towards becoming GI). There is no excuse, none.

A last comment: one of the reasons I am, ironically, somewhat confident that we are not facing a government-media conspiracy on Y2K (mainly venal stupidity) is that they really don't have their act together vis-a-vis a consistent message. Notice that this article is highly critical of the do-nothing government for being too Y2K-obsessed! While I'm among the first to charge Koskinen himself with lying, there is huge amounts of the right-hand-not-knowing-what-left-hand-is-doing-saying. True of any large entity: government, corporation, etc. Sadly, that inefficiency is one of our few serious protections on this issue.

-- BigDog (BigDog2@duffer.com), January 24, 1999.


Mr. Gleick is a superb financial journalist but he clearly hasn't done his homework on Y2K. That puts him in company with the vast majority of journalists. Notice that such articles never engage in hard data analysis of any sector, never consider reports by the CIA, CSIS, GAO, GMIT, Cap Gemini, etc., and never consider IT metrics. As Mark Twain noted, people believe what they want to believe. What else is there to say?

-- Don Florence (dflorence@zianet.com), January 24, 1999.

Alert!

There may be a trend here. A bad trend. I saw the following message a couple of days ago. The message uses every angle and guilt trip in the book to discourage any further preparation. It's so carefully crafted, it sounds as if a PR firm put it together.

You can see a point-by-point rebuttal to this message at Gary North's site. The message also takes a cheap shot at Ed Yourdon with this quote, "Telling people that the cities will become like Beirut will give the less desirable element an excuse to do just that!"

You can read Gary North's rebuttal to the message at the link below. The message without Gary's rebuttals starts right after the link...

http://www.garynorth.com/y2k/detail_.cfm/3608

Hi Ladies and Gentlemen.

I hope that you all have the chance to read my letter. I am a latecomer to freaking out about the upcoming calamity and letting it take over my life. I went through the psychological stages of ignorance, denial, and the rest in about 15 minutes while reading the first few "Y2K is going to kill you and everyone you know" web pages. I've already started stockpiling canned food, bags of rice and beans and bought tons of warm clothes. I've even started to apply for jobs far away from the city. I already live in a rural area, though it is right on the outskirts of Washington DC. The long and the short is that no matter how much I envisioned my planning of contingency, I was still too close to the city.

I now spend nearly every hour of the day looking at Y2K sites. Particularly, Gary North's none too helpful site. Of course as I read and read, his overwhelmingly negative views (and many of yours, my esteemed preparation mates,) about life seem to do little more than make me more and more upset which in turn makes me less able to prepare.

And what is my final preparation goal?? What am I really expected to do? I am 26 years old, do NOT own my own house and CERTAINLY do not have the resources to buy some mountain in the Ozarks and outfit it with upwards of $50,000 worth of solar crap and generators! And besides, am I expected to just leave my friends and family to die on their own at the hands of unruly mobs? Mobs I might add which are being CREATED by alarmist literature written by the likes of Gary North. He states, "THERE WILL BE A RUN ON BANKS!" And Tada! Everyone says, "Oh No! There's going to be a run on the banks!" and they withdraw all their money. Well great. Thanks Gary, you've just created a run on the banks.

No, rather than Gary's convoluted view of how to repair society, (apparently by high-tailing it into the mountains and helping no one but yourself...) I rather subscribe to Paloma O'Riley's view. We must begin spreading a POSITIVE message if we can hope to prevent a panic and truly get people to prepare.

Telling people that the cities wil become like Beirut will give the less desirable element an excuse to do just that!

Why are you encouraging violence? Why won't you use your "superior intellect" to help instead of talking about how nothing will be done to help?!?! (I'm sorry if I'm venting on you guys, but Gary himself won't list his e-mail because he is far too much of a coward.)

Gary North has now ruined my outlook on life. I am actually near suicide thanks to him. There are more like me that are easily frightened and he, and the rest of you who operate in a fear mongering way rather than doing ANYTHING to help communities strengthen themselves are going to be DIRECTLY responsible for the chaos and even MURDER. I do not approve of ANYONE trying to murder anyone under any circumstrances, be it war or peacetime. I think that is the worst offense. North and his negative, selfish fear syndicate is fueling the hate and terror in this country as much or MORE than Saddam or Osama Bin Laden. (Well that may be an exaggeration,) But it's pretty bad. If any of you have a way to contact him, PLEASE forward this to him.

Bottom line. Aside from stockpiling, (and if Martial Law is declared and supplies are short the authorities will simply take my stock away,) what can I do with not enough money to buy a luxury solar powered ranch in the country?

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE ME DO?

WHAT WILL YOU TELL YOUR AGING PARENTS?

Thank you for your time in reading this letter. I hope it sparks some sort of positive message.

Sincerely,

Sean

*********************************************************************



-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), January 24, 1999.


Sean ,

The first thing you might do is ; GET A LIFE

-- Mike (mickle2@aol.com), January 24, 1999.



Moderation questions? read the FAQ