April Fools!

It's April 1 in parts of the world now.

-- Jay (jj@aol.con.au), March 31, 1999

Answers

Ha ha ha. OK Jay, I'll give you credit for the first April Fools joke here. Now, I hope it's the last!!! <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 31, 1999.

I'm sure it won't be. We're waiting for DiETeR's unmasking!

-- just (some@one.waiting), March 31, 1999.

Yeah, good one.

BTW - do you really think no one has noticed how the day for problems keeps getting pushed back? 9/1/98, 9/9/98, 11/1/98, 11/11/98, 1/1/99,the EURO introduction, the airline booking date - now we are up to the first of April and it seems everyone here has backed off to 7/1/99. Hey, cmon now, set a date for trouble and stick to it. And no fair trying to blow up teeny crap - major trouble means AT LEAST some entity had to shut down for at least FIVE DAYS - one working week to be MAJOR TROUBLE. Crap, I have seen computer glitches shut down offices for two to three days - just common software or hardware trouble. Shut down the boatyard here for 22hrs 50min just last week. That was trouble for me with a capitol T - but we aren't on the street selling apples yet!

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), March 31, 1999.

Paul, you've got a point there. I just hope it remains that way!

Today I heard the government say that they would be 90% compliant. It is March 31, after all. Tomorrow, I expect them to come out and say, "April fools!".

Mike =================================================================

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), March 31, 1999.

Paul, I'm curious. I've gone back through a lot of the archives here, and I don't find any posts claiming that there would be "some entity shut down for at least FIVE DAYS - one working week" on 9/9/98, 11/1/98, 11/11/98 or 1/1/99. Could you point these posts out to us, so we could answer your question? Or perhaps you have us all mistaken for Gary North?

-- curious (none@none..), March 31, 1999.

I think the prevalent view, at least of the informed, has been "slow internal bleeding," not "heart attacks."

-- Don Florence (dflorence@zianet.com), March 31, 1999.

I saw on washingtonpost.com (sorry, no link) that 92% of the gov. systems are now 100% compliant! The other critical systems are coming along at a fast snail's pace and will be done by the end of summer! I am SO relieved! Here I thought we would have to worry about the gub'ment not being ready. Why they will even have a whole 3-4 months to test! :( Does anyone else feel "relieved" ?????

-- linda (smitmom@hotmail.com), March 31, 1999.

...I can just imagine a lot of the doomers got VERY excited at Jay's post - how dissapointed they must be...

-- Y2K Pro (2@641.com), March 31, 1999.

Paul

Your list of dates reminds me of the many times industry and government have pushed back their estimates.

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), March 31, 1999.

Paul,

>Hey, cmon now, set a date for trouble and stick to it.

There has already been trouble. You refuse to acknowledge it.

>And no fair trying to blow up teeny crap - major trouble means AT LEAST some entity had to shut down for at least FIVE DAYS - one working week to be MAJOR TROUBLE.

So you artificially exclude consequences other than entity shutdowns of at least one working week? Well, that's one way to avoid acknowledging trouble - define it out of existence.

Do you acknowledge that major corporations and government entities have spent multiple billions of dollars fixing Y2k bugs before they caused actual shutdowns? If not, you're just ignoring evidence. Those expenditures could have been directed to more productive programming if it weren't for the Y2k problem. They constitute a form of damage, or "trouble".

As Don pointed out, "slow internal bleeding" is also a form of trouble. [As it happens, that was the proximate cause of my father's death, though "cancer" is what I usually say. Dad could probably have lived a few years longer if he'd continued to receive regular blood transfusions (just one or two pints a month), according to his doctor. But he chose not to do so because of the unpleasantness of other effects of the cancer.]

How do you measure the damage associated with companies' being forced to merge with others because the cost of Y2k remediation would have been disastrous, so they had to accept takeover by another, more Y2k-prepared company?

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), March 31, 1999.

I don't believe in reincarnation, but I swear if there is such a thing, that y2kpro and Paul Davis were present and ragging on Noah when he built his ark.

-- (listening@its.thundering), March 31, 1999.

HA - so that is where this thread went - lost the darn thing. You want a quote about April 1 being a bad time. Sure thing:

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I expect that the "Jo Anne Effect" will be a big slap in the face for a lot of companies, early next year. They will see that they can't wait until December 31 1999 to fix their problems - everything really should be done before the fiscal year end.

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to email me.

-- Jo Anne Slaven (slaven@rogerswave.ca), September 12, 1998

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A quote from EY here

O Captain, my Captain, I hope someone has told you that the problems will begin long before the strike of midnight. They have already begun: 37% of the companies in this country have already experienced Y2K problems. On January 1, 1999 they will experience many more, and it will be much more difficult to sweep them under the rug. On April 1, 1999 we will all watch anxiously as the governments of Japan and Canada, as well as the state of New York, begin their 1999-2000 fiscal year; at that moment, the speculation about Y2K will end, and we will have tangible evidence of whether governmental computer systems work or not. On April 6, the government of England and many of the private-sector companies begin their fiscal year; on July 1, another 46 states begin their 1999-2000 fiscal year. On August 22, 1999 the clocks on the GPS satellite system will do a "roll-over," resetting to zero the 10-bit counter that counts the number of weeks since the satellites were launched. On September 9, 1999 we may or may not experience some problems with old mainframe systems, depending on which experts you listen to. And on October 1, 1999, the U.S. federal government begins its new fiscal year. We don't have 535 days to fix all of these problems; we now have less than six months.

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The tangible evidence seems to be rather lacking.

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Then there is Cory Hamasaki and his chart that shows (showed) January and April as being about 2/3 as bad as 1/1/2000 - Paul Milnes rants about the Jo Ann effect - all these people have posted here.

Why a week? BECAUSE - if it is less than a week it is no worse than many problems happening all the time. Computers, networks, email systems, routers and control systems crash all the damn time. THAT is why there are still workarounds built into the system - and why computer tech jobs are pretty much recession proof.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), April 05, 1999.

Boy, some were fooled even more.

fyi...there never was a Jay or jj@aol.con.au

I made that up.

-- longtime internet troll (1@2.3), April 05, 1999.