From csy2k...

A jam packed 36 minute presentation by Capers Jones. this is the audio companion to his "Aftermath" paper previously posted to this site. Dr. Jones Covers all the bases, his outlook is quite pessimistic, justified by his credible statistical knowledge. Curiously, Dr. Jones recommends entities keep contingency plans secret for liability purposes. This for me is the only disappontment in and incredible presentation. We need more men like Capers Jones.

XXX

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), February 21, 1999

Answers

From csy2k...

Just got done listening to the Casper Jones talk. If I had just got here as a newbie and knew nothing at all on the subject I would be right now making plans to get up early tomorrow and head for a warehouse store to buy 50# sacks of rice and beans.

Mr. Jones' most optomistic numbers, given human nature, given normal butt covering, normal sloth and greed, given our government's pavlovian reflext to lie; Mr. Jones' numbers would scare me into immediate action.

And Mr. Jones is far from being accused of being a "Doombrooder" (tm).

Every day we get another little trickle of information. Every day a little more of the fog clears. Every day the horizon gets a little closer. And every day the prognosis gets worse.

Prepare now. Prepare as if your life depended on it. Because it does.

Nunja Biznec

www.eskimo.com/~brodyaga

Politics is the "art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies" Groucho Marx

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), February 21, 1999.

Andy, thanks for the post. What happened to the csy2k forum?

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), February 21, 1999.

Andy,

I tried to search for the Aftermath posting. Do you know when it was done or what category?

-- mabel (mabel_louise@yahoo.com), February 21, 1999.

Capers Jones little piece was as far from the truth as you could get. I was SHOCKED at how far off base he was.

First of all, it is MONTHS old. Second, look at what he says about how WELL places like Australia, England and Israel are doing. Is he on drugs?

I am not merely being argumentative. He is naive. He is misinformed.

Go listen to it again.

Here are some of his comments:

"500 Federal agencies and military bases...Pitiful" "5 out of 50 States wil find 99% of their problems." "30 will find less than 90%" "Urban governments lag everyone else. Not very good at all'

36,250 places using software...3/4 will not be fully ready.

This is ridiculously naive. It is GROSS understatement even though it sounds bad enough all by itself.

All he can say is that "3/4 of US enterprises will face some 'interesting' problems."

That is the best he can do? Say that there will be some 'interesting' problems?

Internationally....

"85% of problems will be found in England, Australia, Canada, SA, NZ, Israel. Just about everywhere else less than 75%."

Again, this is a GROTESQUE overestimate of progress. In three of the several countries that he has cited as doing the best, England, South Africa and Israel, the recent news suggest that they are in desparate shape.

These countries will nor find HALF of their problems.

All in all, as BAD as his report sounds, it is NOT EVEN CLOSE to how bad it REALLY is.

-- Paul Milne (fedinfo@halifax.com), February 21, 1999.

Ray, I couldn't get a link for you. Mabel, not sure what you mean.

Paul, yep the talk was obviously given before Christmas (I'm not sure exactly when) - my own views are much more alarmist then CJ's - having said that I thought the tone of his talk was very straightforward, upbeat even, concerning the subject matter, and despite his figures. For a newbie it should definitely set off alarm bells. Yep, he talks about for example the '99 rollover and the introduction of the Euro in the future tense, and he certainly took a hammering on fora over his Euro predictions, which proved to be way off base despite his years and years of metrics experience. The JAE effect is still most definitely out there though the news of failures is not as public as predicted for the January timeframe, and yes I do agree that the latest world-wide figures are universally abysmal. It would be interesting to hear him give this same conference speech in view of the information available now - my bet is he would have to worsen the blow to his audience by a magnitude, unless of course he is gotten to or paid off like de Jager...

Andy

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), February 21, 1999.

So Andy gives us two choices for a new CJ talk: Either things are worse by an order of magnitude, or CJ has been paid off. One or the other. Right.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), February 21, 1999.

Yup, yup, yup ignore the vast majority of the people in the field who are telling you we will get by OK. Find a historian or a statistician and scare everyone to death with bad data.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), February 21, 1999.

Davis Your idiocy is unsurpassed. All 'alleged' experts aside, the EVIDENCE ALONE overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that your assessment of the situation is that of one sufering from cranio-rectal inversion.

-- An Honest Man (Davis Is Still An Ass@No.Wonder), February 21, 1999.

Paul can you get me a link to the vast majority of the people in the field who are telling you we will get by OK. The government is trying to figure out a way to tell its employees to prepare, without scaring the public to death. So maybe there is something to be concerned about. This is in no way a flaming I just need to take some of the spin out of the spin! Tman

-- Tman (Tman@IBAgeek.com), February 21, 1999.

Come on Flint, that's not what I said...

If you listen to the speech, it's evident it was made sometime in '98. The news coming in daily is far worse now than a year ago - i.e. we are running out of time with only 150+ working days left. If CJ was to make the same speech now he would have to modify it in light of these facts. If he didn't modify it I would be suspicious.

To Paul Davis, we all fervently hope you're right. I'm currently working in the field, have done for the last 21 years, and I don't see what you see.

What worries me is the consensus of opinion at russkelly.com, the experts averaging a 7+ out of 10 and slowly rising.

Does this bother you at all? Or are they all delusional?

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), February 21, 1999.

Andy:

Yes, we get a day closer every day, and few are finished or even claim to be. And hundreds of billions are being spent on millions of remediation projects, implying that most are making progress. I admit that this progress is very uneven, depending on when they started, how much needed to be done, and what the state of the starting point was (documentation, source, etc.) Most will get close enough, some won't.

The russkelly survey looks bad until you read the fine print - their 10 is about equivalent to a 6 in this group. 7+ on that scale is about 4.5 on the Yourdon Forum scale. And that sounds about right to me.

Now hypothetically, lets say CJ did a big survey tomorrow, real verified stuff, and discovered big progress has been made. In that case, how could CJ possibly communicate this to you? You've announced that he can't do it -- either he agrees with your assessment, or he's been 'gotten to' somehow. You can see from at least one post in this thread that CJ is already rejected by the lunatic fringe as being too optimistic. Data be damned, my opinion uber alles, eh?

I'm sorry if your particular shop is struggling. What suggestions would you make for improving the outlook where you are -- more people, better management, a change in focus (new equipment instead of fixing old stuff, merging with someone else, more skilled people, whatever)?

I know cursing the darkness is fun for some people. But how would you recommend more light instead?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), February 22, 1999.

Actually, without naming names, we were the first Airline to announce y2k reservations compliancy by booking the first ticket 331 days hence in 2000. So we are doing pretty well. Along as the rest of the house of cards remains up, particularly juice.

My last shop, VISA, also announced along with MC full compliancy a year ago - it all looks good on the surface with VISA/MC but IMHO they have not solved the problem of imported data - neither has any other major money centre bank - the crunch will come in 2000.

As regards the expert's scores I'll have to read again and see exactly what their numbers means :)

Gary North is a 10. Another is a 1.

So much for experts :)

Later

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), February 22, 1999.