Over a decade ago, computer geeks were always arguing which was better: Macs or PCs. People argued until they were blue in the face. Then there was a general realization that this was a religious war. There was the church of Mac's vs. the church of PC's. No one ever won a religious argument.

In the same way, we have people who sincerely believe that technology cannot fail in a really big way. There are others more than willing to believe that technology can cause major problems. We argue. So what do we have to do until it is late 1999/early 2000. This is a major way of spending our time.

One clue that this is a religious war is the lack of any middle ground.

One side points out (correctly) that all official pronoucements of organizations are positive. The other side points out all the systems that are not being fixed, or are not being fixed correctly.

I personally believe that the year 2000 bug will have an effect between the two extremes. I also believe that the reaction and the secondary consequences to this "middle effect" will be enough to push the counter further towards "10" and away from "5".

I hope that we can be more tolerant of differing opinions on this very valuable forum. To the extent that we can, let us assume that a posting is sincere.

By the way, we have a phrase "bump in the road" and "TEOTW..." but what do we call it when the initial, primary effects of Y2K are somewhere in between? Someone out there must be able to coin a phrase.

-- David Holladay (davidh@brailleplanet.org), March 23, 1999

Answers

David, the "5" is called "Fence Sitting."
Karen

-- karen (karen@karen.com), March 23, 1999.

I personally think that the likely effects, as well as the middle ground, can be compared to the fall of communism.

I prefer to call it "The Collapse of Our Civilization as it is Currently Configured."

But, "TCOOCAIICC" isn't any better as an acronym than TEOTWAWKI...

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), March 23, 1999.

Karen........

A typical 'religious' response...........thanks for proving David's point.

There is no 'fence' in this situation. There is rather, a large playing field and the ball could land almost anywhere on the field.

Life does not consist entirely of white and black. There are most assuredly millions of shades of grey. Unless you have a crappy video card or monitor, then there are only 256 shades.

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), March 23, 1999.

ooooh Craig, you're sooooooooooooo smart! Love that video card analogy!!!

-- gwhpha (ff@hack.boy), March 23, 1999.

David: for a related thread see:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000XxS

-- a (a@a.a), March 23, 1999.

It's simple. The computers are broken and they're not going to be fixed in time. This has NOTHING to do with technical "religion". The only thing we don't know is how bad it will be.

Get a grip.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), March 23, 1999.