Over the last three months that I have been following this forum, the usual ratio of GI to DGI responses has held steady in a percentage ratio of 83-88%GI to 12-17%DGI. I have the actual figures per week here somewhere but don't want to take the time to find them (exact isn't important anyway).

Suddenly, this forum has seen an increase in DGI/troll responses all the way up to 38% over the last three days. What the heck is going on?? Did someone put out a scent trail or troll bait??? Sysman, did you start this by baiting Vinnie??? (I know, I know. It's just so easy. You should be ashamed). Big Dog, it's time to become feral again.

-- Lobo (Hiding@woods.com), March 17, 1999

Answers

I take it you read two down? Could be ONE ...

BUSTED - Y2K Pro is Vinnie!

<:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 17, 1999.

Yea, I am ashamed, but I promised to never do it again! <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 17, 1999.

As you know Lobo there are many faces to y2k as it is a very systemic problem. I wish the DGIs would consider that fact. There are some pretty ugly things that can come out of the woodwork at 2000 and the bug is only one of them. Can you say WAR, I knew you could. Russia and China might get real cold and real hungry come 2000 and only time will tell. BTW the house is almost done and I might already have a buyer. Take care. Tman

PS I am still working on the final chapter of 2000 The Year of Fear it should be out soon.

-- Tman (Tman@IBAgeek.com), March 17, 1999.

You're right Tman. War, Famine, Pestilence and Death. The Four Horseman are sitting on the horizon deciding whether or not to enter the fray. There's not a day go by that the four are not active somewhere on this globe. I just hope they don't come here.

-- Lobo (Hiding@woods.com), March 17, 1999.

I wish those horses they were riding had embedded chips -

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), March 17, 1999.

As has been discussed here several times, denial abounds; people simply refuse to believe something like Y2K could happen. Maybe they search the Net for arguments to bolster their denial. Perhaps test their illogical arguments here at Yourdonlair first, trolling for counter-arguments so they can create a logical-sounding antidote. I don't think it's anything as sinister as a deliberate attempt to ridicule and discount what we post, although I'm sure lots of it is prompted by the "disinformation" (which I think is more properly termed "misinformation") disseminated by various bodies.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), March 17, 1999.

Lobo --- Do you mean "furr-al" :-) Long post follows, sorry.

I've been thankful and amazed by three things on the forum.

1. The level of civility considering the extraordinary intensity of the issue combined with the heat-seeking level of the Internet as a medium. The glass isn't 20% emtpy, it's 80% full.

2. The high level of the intellectual give-and-take. That only 1 or 2 threads out of 20 are at that level means little. Compare that to 1 or 2 dialogues out of 200 in rest of media or in your daily life. If you're here regularly, you develop a nose for the conversations that matter and quickly tune out the others.

3. The consensus that has been maintained over the past few months to keep religious topics out or to a bare minimum by the regulars. Again, given the philosphical, let alone the technical, seriousness of the issue, this has required major discipline. I am personally grateful.

As I've said before, I also have high expectations for the regular lurkers here. The sheer fact that they come regularly distinguishes them/us, sadly, from folks everywhere who are just plain swallowing the swill in the media.

Because of that, I don't feel I/we need to fight the trolls on behalf of persuading onlookers. As many have said, all that is required is the discipline to ignore them. Just ... do ... it ... ignore them. Regulars and lurkers alike can see through the foolishness.

"OK, big dog, you jerk, so why do you say such mean things to Flint or other pollys?"

Intense give-and-take with the proven regulars on the forum, WHATEVER their position, is a different story IMHO. Think Paul or Maria. What makes a regular isn't that they agree with my position, but that they have demonstrated a willingness to thoughtfully argue, work through their position. I may think their logic is illogic but they think the same of me. I felt Flint was undermining the credibility of the entire forum and doing so WITHOUT basis so I pushed back. We're grown-ups, we can handle it.

I'd love to see MORE pollys here (as would most of us), not less, but only on the basis above. I would put "Morgan" in that camp, since, again, Morgan both offers and submits to sensible give-and-take.

With due respect, I think trying to persuade DGIs is as low-return AND unnecessary here as responding to trolls. Y2K will persuade everybody soon enough, thank you.

We are here to encourage ONE ANOTHER to prepare: that is the purpose of this forum. That is why Diane, Kevin or Pat Shannon post articles, for instance. Yes, we analyze media, evidence, and speculate, but it is speculation with a view to preparation.

Everyone, trolls included, are welcome to post whenever they feel like it. Cool. It's the INTERNET, guys! But you only have to address/speak to those you want to.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), March 17, 1999.

Pay attention to the wisdom of Big Dog folks.

" Ignore the swill".

" Have the discipline to refrain from responses to nonsense".

Let's just pursue facts, reason and civility.

All best wishes,

-- Watchful (seethesea@msn.com), March 17, 1999.

Folks, I think that we need to get some things in perspective here, regarding this or any other Internet discussion forum. Although everyone who posts makes a contribution, and for every poster there are presumably many lurkers, the reality is that we are still, all totalled, a small drop in the population bucket, and a very biased one at that. Generating statistics based on this forum and trying to apply it to anything other than this forum is a waste of time.

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), March 17, 1999.

Hey Lobo,

it's spring break for a lot of colleges and universities right now - we saw this kind of surge in troll activity over Christmas break too...just unsupervised kids, mostly.

Arlin [who just got back from looking at places in the midwest and is now more certain than ever that DC is NOT the place to be.]

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), March 17, 1999.

Aside from the cherry blossoms in the spring, whoever claimed Washington was a desirable place to be? I mean, face it, the city does not work at all.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), March 17, 1999.

Hey, Arlin, when Paul :-) talks this way about something, you know you're in deep doo ....

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), March 17, 1999.

The reason you all feel like your being attacked by Pollyannas is because most of you are not willing to even discuss the possibility that Y2K might be less than a civilzation-ending event. The first time I got on this board (over a year ago, whew!) I remember asking something along the lines of "Do you really think the collapse of civilization is a foregone conclusion?" I wasn't flaming anyone at the time, I just wanted to know why people were coming to that conclusion. Boy, did I get flamed. "Buddy, you just don't get it, etc. etc." was the overwhelming response.

Most of us so-called Pollyannas aren't really DGIs. We simply don't buy the conclusions that most of the doomers are so certain about. We all know there will be problems or we wouldn't even bother hanging out at Y2K forums at all. Personally, I want to know what will break and what will work. The blanket answer "It's all going down" just doesn't make any sense to me.

By the way, DC isn't so bad. Outside the circle of politicians it's a pretty good place to live.

-- Buddy (buddydc@go.com), March 17, 1999.

these people have been encouraged by de jager's recent article. but now that people are getting too relaxed and there is no panic in sight, koskinen will get concerned that businesses are not preparing fast enough, so he'll ask us to panic just a little bit, just enough to prepare. managing the sheep is a tough job.

-- jocelyne slough (jonslough@tln.net), March 17, 1999.

1) Sophisticated trollery

2) Sympathetic souls trying to bring a little happyface to all those they see only as doomers

3) Perhaps a very few actual real DGIs who'd rather cut and paste than write their own stuff (hey, C&P is easier) and who really don't understand us because they never had that awful cold moment of realization that it actually MIGHT, really COULD all go down in a heap around us

4) Attempts to dissuade DGIs from becoming GIs by throwing current government/mainstream media spin into the admittedly sometimes gloomy threads here (someone please demonstrate for me a PLEASANT way to discuss the potential end of the world as we have always known it)

-- (li'ldog@ontheporch.com), March 17, 1999.

Buddy wrote:

Personally, I want to know what will break and what will work.
The blanket answer "It's all going down" just doesn't make any
sense to me.

It all has to do with things being I-N-T-E-R-C-O-N-N-E-C-T-E-D. You don't understand this, you can't understand this, its why you are a pollyanna, regardless of how much lip service you otherwise give to The Year 2000 Or Y2K Computer Problem.

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), March 17, 1999.

It will be such a pleasure next January when I can re-post the verbal dung of misanthropic sociopathic jackasses such as, well, Jack. I suspect though, y'all might be a bit sheepish about being here in January...

-- Y2K Pro (2@641.com), March 17, 1999.

I guess everybody here is an idiot, except Y2K Pro and his couple of friends. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 17, 1999.

Y2K Pro,

I would love to be here posting, occasionally, in January ... 2000 and 2001.

No, I doubt that it will "all" fall apart. Just as I doubt it will all hang together, either.

Think "global economic supply chain" impact. And what that means locally. And what someone else's "local" means to your neighborhood.

Diane, still a "5" which, on average, I define as an extended global depression, and when translated means both better AND worse, depending where you are and how well prepared the "locals" are!

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), March 17, 1999.

Mr Sprat:

It's posts like yours that make me think long and hard about Charlie Reuben's speculation that this forum is patrolled by thought police to keep the cultists in line.

Of *course* any economy is interconnected. The mantra that this degree of interconnectivity translates into fragility is nonsense. Think (assuming you're a person, not an AI). Since the current bull market began, we've had major tax law changes, a 500 year flood, the biggest El Nino on record, the implosion of the Japanese economy, major strikes, major hurricanes, and oh yes, a couple hundred billion y2k dollars spent just to tread water. Not to mention the several thousand business bankruptcies per week the US experiences just as background noise. And this brief list could of course be *much* longer.

Any one of those events should have started your precious dominoes toppling in chain after chain. And indeed a few topple every time, only to be replaced by others. And meanwhile, the economy hums right along with hardly a blip on the indicators. Maybe an economy is a lot more nonlinear than a chain of dominoes?

Yeah, yeah, I know. y2k is 'different'. This will be the Big One. Keep chanting, maybe it'll work.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 17, 1999.

I posted earlier at what might be happening, I'll be brief here. Remember the post that said this forum is being monitored by the military and/or certain government agencies? Remember last month when we had a new bunch of trolls?

Now here we are a month later and we have another batch of new trolls and last month's have gone away. Do you get the idea that monitoring this forum is a one-month long duty assignment for the folks involved? I'm betting that the "new guys" can't resist jumping in during their first few days and that's what we're seeing. Maybe in four weeks we'll get to see another new crop, or will we get a return performance by last months "nom de guerres".

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), March 17, 1999.

Does anyone else ever think about the fall of the Roman Empire, when they hear people say we are too 'strong' for it to happen now?

-- (wondering@cyber.space), March 17, 1999.

Nice poetic concept, the 4 horsemen. However, I've always had a problem with the asymmetry of it. I mean the first 3 fit together well, as causes of mass death, but Death itself doesn't really fit in. Either have just 1 horseman (Death), or have just the first 3, or add a 4th that fits the theme ("things that can CAUSE mass Death"). How about y2k ?

-- Blue Himalayan (bh@k2.y), March 17, 1999.

They put messages here. At least one collects files to give to law enforcement. Sounds to me like they're the ones panicking.

http://www.smu.edu/cgi-bin/Nova/get/gn/719/3/1/1/1/1/1/1/1/2.html

-- (look@at.this), March 17, 1999.

Interesting point, Arlin.

It will be interesting to see what this forum will be like when summer break rolls around...

-- Tim (pixmo@pixelquest.com), March 17, 1999.

By viewing some of the posts lately, I swear this board has been taken over by the people over at the Gary North Is a Big Fat Idiot forum.

-- Jenny (nosnart@GI.com), March 17, 1999.

I think Jenny is right. I just went to look@it link and it is GNIABFI forum! Mutha is a regular. They're talking about Norm's "attack" on us. References to Vinnie.

Should we attack them (grin)?

<:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 18, 1999.

You know what they say about wrestling a pig.....

-- (old@mcdonald.farm), March 18, 1999.

Interesting observation, Jenny...

-- Tim (pixmo@pixelquest.com), March 18, 1999.

I don't see a single troll in this thread. Everyone posting here has been posting for awhile. Some of you are the new guys.

-- Buddy (buddydc@go.com), March 18, 1999.

Flint, the calamities you reference are in a sense "business as usual", and indeed we adjust reasonably well to them. An isolated hurricane here, a bankrupt business there, even when they happen simultaneously, do not take down entire systems.

Y2K is different. It does have the potential to take down entire systems because it may be all pervasive in those systems and additionally will occur simultaneously.

Then, one needs to consider the subsequent domino effects....

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), March 18, 1999.

Jack -- Exactly. "Prepare for the extraordinary." (CNN)

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), March 18, 1999.

Duh, whoever you are. I just took another look at GNIABFI, and I see someone took my "advice". It was tongue in cheek, but if you are going to "attack" them, I suggest you use facts instead of sarcasm. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 18, 1999.

Flint's comments made a small bulb (of unknown brightness) go off in my head. We all worry alot about the effect caused by simultaneous disruptions of dependencies. But it occurred to me that just as there are hidden dependencies whose number and negative impact we can't measure, there are also hidden redundancies, equally important.

Comments? Am I being even less articulate than usual? Is that possible?

Just-in-time processes certainly make the whole house of cards more fragile, but the way we do things currently is not the only way to do things.

Big Dog, another perspicacious assessment of this group. Been here about a year, and I am always amazed at how many well-thought comments there are. A rarity on the internet, in my expeience.

I dunno. Just thinking out loud. I've never denied the possibility that things may not be as bad as we expect. Arlin-(wondered where you'd got to, boy)-who is the military commander who said of intel: "The first report is always wrong." Alot of the "data" we use to form an image of the future actually amounts to hearsay or opinion, so if a "polly" comes to happier conclusions I'm not surprised. Alot depends on one's worldview before ever hearing about Y2K. "The World as it Is is Good" encourages people to defend it. "The World as it Is is Bad" assumes eventual disruption.

As usual, thank you all for contributing.

-- Lewis (aslanshow@yahoo.com), March 18, 1999.

This one's for sissyman:

You're so interested in whats going on over at biffy...why not read a collection of "classic threads" I found compiled?

It's at post #575...and deals with a bunch of fallacies on Y2K. It's thru these posts and others that I learned why most moderates don't want to 'debate'...one must grant too many starting assumptions...(BILLIONS of embedded systems, power WILL fail, Banks won't make it, they started too late, etc.)

*click* sarcasm on

Your mamma wears combat boots...wouldn't want my sterling rep for ad hominem to get soiled...HAH ha ha!

-- Mutha Nachu (---@thinkbeforeyouspeak.com), March 19, 1999.

Mutha- Tell us the truth: are you really Troll Maria on an acid trip?

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), March 19, 1999.