Facts: 50,000 IBM style mainframes running production worldwide. For some classes of problem, mainframes are the only solution. For others, PeeCee networks can do a credible job. Some systems took decades to build and refine. If these were not repaired starting in 1990, 1995 at the latest, they will not be fixed.

The unknown is how many of these things exist, how dependent is the Fortune 5,000 on them, and what happens when they fail.

I don't know if food, power, telco's, etc are directly at risk. They may be or may not be. How lucky do you feel today? I advise taking sensible, low cost precautions.

The "three day storm" analogy isn't a good one. As Steve or others have pointed out, Y2K is probably not going to knock trees over.

However, unlike a storm, Y2K may make your savings vanish or double the cost of essential products. At this point, nobody knows.

I am still looking for a mainframe polly article. Someone who really understands Enterprise Systems who will detail why there isn't a large systems problem.

As for me, Albacore Bee brand tuna was on sale last week. I got a bunch for 84 cents a can. If Y2K isn't a problem, I got me some terrific tuna w/ mayo on white for a long time and hard working tuna fishermen got some of my money.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT,net), April 24, 1999

Answers

You are a good man Cory. Oscar Meyer Bolagna was on sale this week. $1.50 a package. So I got some extra. Good people, good values, good eating, good weather, and good music. That is my motto!

-- Lori Jo (lorijo@bigcityblues.com), April 24, 1999.

Cory,

I know personally of at least one mainframer who emailed you to take up your "challenge." He claims that you didn't even respond. I've heard in passing that others have had the same experience, but we'll leave that in the "rumor" category (the same column under which your "Bank in DC with a corrupt main file" belongs [g]).

Not that I think your challenge means a great deal; it doesn't. It merely proves what I've been saying all along -- that mainframe IS/IT types are the ones driving Y2K Doom and Gloom.

If you want proof that very large "enterprise" systems are perfectly possible with PCs, you need look no further than Redmon, Washington. There's a itty-bitty little software corporation up there (hint: the world's richest man runs it [g]) that has a GLOBAL PC-based WAN which eclipses most others. :)

Besides, the one thing that you guys have missed from Day one is that computers don't run the world. They're simply tools. Tools break; we work around it until we fix them.

The largest farm insurer in NC replaced their entire mainframe system with PCs a few years ago. Yes, they ran behind for a while -- late bills, the usual. But they're back up and running now ... and doing better than ever.

Nor did they go under -- in spite of STAGGERING losses in Hurricane Fran (approximately 50% of their insureds had losses in that storm!).

http://www.wwjd.net/smpoole

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 24, 1999.

CET: I know personally of at least one mainframer who emailed you to take up your"challenge." He claims that you didn't even respond. I've heard in passing that others have had the same experience, but we'll leave that in the "rumor" category (the same column under which your "Bank in DC with a corrupt main file" belongs [g]).

I haven't received the article but I am looking forward to it. As for the bank, consider it a 'rumor of a rumor' although Drew and a few others have seen the 'evidence'.

CET: Not that I think your challenge means a great deal; it doesn't. It merely proves what I've been saying all along -- that mainframe IS/IT types are the ones driving Y2K Doom and Gloom.

It's not a challenge, it's an open invitation.

Maybe we know something you don't.

CET: If you want proof that very large "enterprise" systems are perfectly possible with PCs, you need look no further than Redmon, Washington. There's a itty-bitty little software corporation up there (hint: the world's richest man runs it [g]) that has a GLOBAL PC-based WAN which eclipses most others. :)

Last word was the both Microsoft and SUN run their mission critical applications on IBM midrange and mainframe systems. In the case of SUN, this fact was so embarrassing that they 'spun off' the IT department, made it into another corporation, and subcontracted, outsourced their important processing.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net), April 24, 1999.

Cory,

I don't know about Sun, but define "mission critical." The programming -- which is certainly at least an ... erm, fractional percentage of Microsoft's "mission" (heh) -- is done on a large-O, humongous killer PC network running NT.

Microsoft has all sorts of computers. They even have bunches of Apples(tm) up there so that they can write stuff for them.

But their main network is PC-based.

http://www.wwjd.net/smpoole

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 24, 1999.

Yeah. I used to live in Seattle, and plenty of people I knew worked for Microsoft. They use Macs in areas where they need them and many of their programmers use Netscape 'cause the IE then sucked. A friend of mine went to a job interview for a certain type of programming. The guy behind the desk doing the testing had to reboot his computer half a dozen times because it kept crashing (love MS!). Then he assigned a programming problem to the interviewee to figure out and program. The interviewee sat down and thought about it, as all good programmers would do, to map it out in his head. Gets near the end of thinking and realizes that what the guy is asking is totally impossible given the parameters. Goes back to the guy and says, 'do you realize this is not possible? Are you not a programmer? This isn't something you've done that you're comparing to what people write, it's just something you made up?' The guy says, yeah, I made it up, I'm not really all that experienced at that type of programming, I'm just doing the hiring... but you know, your time for solving this is up. The interviewee says, how can anybody "solve it" if it isn't possible?" Well, the guy says, most people try, you know, and if they get that far which most don't, then they realize it isn't workable, but I can see what they know by the programming they did till that point. Interviewee looks at this guy like he's a total moron and says, 'in other words, you only hire people too stupid to figure out what's workable or not BEFORE they dive into the project.' This idea that MS is some kind of glorious godforce is just weird. They're pretty well hated and scorned by many in that area -- the half of the population they don't employ, I suppose.

MS may be using WAN or LAN PC's to do big jobs mainframes normally do. But I have yet to hear that all the massive programming put into mainframes to run applications and networks for companies all over the planet has been replaced by new computers, new network, new programming. Maybe they could be. But don't we still run into that tiny issue about TIME to get it done?

P.S. If their networks are as stable as their NT system, I'd rather send people through millions of lines of code than switch to the PC's.

PJ in TX

-- PJ Gaenir (fire@firedocs.com), April 24, 1999.

Stephen "Mystical Dawn" Poole, CET: Microsoft runs about half of its network server traffic on Sun boxes because of the much larger throughput than NT 4.0. Where I work, the upper management has been trying to coax us designers into using NT for a couple of years now. Not only does NT not provide the services capable of supporting our architecture, but no one has addressed the problem of who will re-write all of the server and client applications, while we are still maintaining and enhancing the existing ones, or from where the money to undertake such an effort will come. Do a search on NT vs. UNIX and you will find countless examples of why NT is a half baked solution for most large scale or highly technical applications.

If you think that NT is our salvation for the Y2K problem, you're a lot more naive than I thought.

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

BTW, Cory ...

Facts: 50,000 IBM style mainframes running production worldwide.

You guys have an astonishing proclivity for shooting your own arguments in the foot. (At last count, dozens of Doomer arguments were hobbling aimlessly in search of the nearest Casualty department ... but I digress.)

You have detailed (elsewhere) a handful of Y2K problems that can be attributed to the "Jo Anne Effect" -- your alleged/rumored bank in DC and that insurance company in Washington among them.

Let's be generous and say that you can find me hard evidence of a DOZEN serious failures (I'm not talking about 1 or 2-day glitches; those things happen NOW, and forget Y2K). That would represent .024% of your 50,000 mainframes ... which is hardly overwhelming.

For your argument to hold water, you'd need to show me proof of WIDESPREAD Y2K-related failures NOW. There should ALREADY be serious disruptions -- not glitches, not niggles, not single-company hardships and workarounds -- NOW if your argument is correct.

(Do you really want me to go back and quote all those predictions from 1998 and 1997 of this very thing? Shoot, according to Gary North, by now, there should be mass panic and widespread bank failures [g].)

Are there Y2K problems? Sure. Some older systems won't get fixed in time. But it won't be the end of the world, because computers fail now -- sometimes spectacularly -- on a daily basis, and we work around it.

http://www.wwjd.net/smpoole

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 24, 1999.

PJ,

I'm not a big fan of NT, either. Actually, I thought that OS/2 was the better system (IBM's uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory pretty much killed that one), and Linux looks good to me now.

As for the Sun thing at Microsoft ... I obviously have different sources from you. I've never actually been to the MS campus, so I can only go by what I've been told (including the story of how Bill Gates went totally anti-Sun after the Java lawsuit [g]).

But it's a minor point, and I'd rather concede it than worry about it.

The real issue here is that PCs _can_ replace mainframes in many applications. Don't tell me there aren't large "enterprise-level" PC systems, either, because I've seen them, and have worked with them.

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 24, 1999.

CET: The real issue here is that PCs _can_ replace mainframes in many applications. Don't tell me there aren't large "enterprise-level" PC systems, either, because I've seen them, and have worked with them.

Is this good news for Bank of America, Department of Defense, IRS?

Regards,

-- Tom Beckner (tbeckner@erols.com), April 24, 1999.

the issue seems to be not can it be done butis there time in which to do it???

-- zoobie (zoob@aol.com), April 24, 1999.

"For your argument to hold water, you'd need to show me proof of WIDESPREAD Y2K-related failures NOW."

Sorry Stephen, we can't do that. It's not 2000 yet. We've been thru this a dozen times. The number of programs that do look ahead processing is TINY compared to the total number of date sensative programs. Doesn't it make sense to fix any programs that do look ahead first?

It isn't a question of if a PC network CAN replace a mainframe. Many things need to be considered. If you have a mainframe running CICS, with 5000 attached terminals in the field, is it cost effective to set up a network with n number of servers, and banks of SCSI RAID disks? Will response times be as fast? What about batch jobs, and what is their impact on performance?

This isn't really the point. We are out of time. It is too late to even consider this option at this late date. You can't set this stuff up over night. Even if you could use all off the shelf software, you've got training issues, testing, and on and on.

Mainframes do a very good job at certain things. Like it on not, we're stuck with them, until well after 2000. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 24, 1999.

Sorry Steve,

I'd like to continue the discussion but I don't have the time at the moment. Got a $30,000 banking discrepency to resolve.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net), April 24, 1999.

CET

Actually, the onus is on you. Please list as a percetage all compliant businesses versus all those not yet compliant.

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), April 24, 1999.

Mike, how you simplify.

Most likely no fortune 5000 company will be fully compliant in our lifetimes. Beyond that, we simply cannot know how many of them *believe* they're compliant, but don't dare say so. One thing about information we don't have -- we don't know what it is!

I read about a company that was about to announce compliance, because their vendor software was compliant according to the vendor, and had passed the company's tests, and had passed IV&V. But the next day, the vendor called up to say a date bug had been discovered in that software after all. Obscure, but a real bug. So the company suddenly became noncompliant! Lawyers worry about things like this.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 24, 1999.

Sysman, since you are egging this on, how about YOU give us a date. We have Yourdon on record about 4/1/99, we have North on record, we even have copies of Cory's chart - which I read as about 33% of Y2K is past us - maybe - but how about you? What date are you predicting trouble to unmistakeably show up? If you can't make a prediction, tell us why. And tell us the latest date at which you would expect major trouble to show up, if there was none before then - ie when you would give it up.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), April 25, 1999.

BTW - I have been very busy today, set up an extra drive in my computer and am now dual booting into Linux. Solaris servers, Linux workstations and Cisco routers. Run Oracle or Informix on them and use a distributed model for your applications. Makes for a very powerful and stable combination. Which brings up a point - many mainframe to WAN (software) connections are being done via HTML now. So the mainframe is being used as a sort of giant Intranet server for some purposes. Does anyone know how well this sort of thing works in practice? Have read a bunch about it but have never yet seen it close up and personal.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), April 25, 1999.

Paul,

I've said many times here that I don't think very many problems will show up in 1999. The number of programs that do look ahead processing is tiny when compared to the number of programs that have a date problem. It makes sense to me that these programs would be fixed first. So my date is 2000-01-01. Power is my biggest concern. As long as power is good to go, I think we will find ways to work around other problems, since much work has been done, and we do have 8 more months. How long after that, or how bad it will be, even with power, I don't think anybody can predict.

As for mainframe servres, while I haven't seen any, I do know that IBM has been adding all kinds of native support to their OS over the past few years. Other companies have things like back-end products that translate the 3270 data streams to HTML. I can also tell you that CICS is one kick-ass transaction processing system on the mainframe, that works great even under heavy loads. I spent quite a few years working with CICS, and other mainframe TP systems, from both the application and systems side. I thing merging the two technologies should work very well. This is an area that I do wnat to get into, after I get out of this Y2K mess! <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 25, 1999.

Damn, I did it again, typed thing instead of think! And that's want, not wnat. Bed time I guess... <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 25, 1999.

Mike,

Actually, the onus is on you.

No, it's not. I'm not the one claiming that there are all sorts of businesses out there with "secret" Y2K problems, and that it's being hidden from the general public by some vast happy-face conspiracy. :)

Please list as a percetage all compliant businesses versus all those not yet compliant.

First, YOU give ME a useful working definition of "compliant."

I'm perfectly happy with "Y2K Ready" -- even if that means cutting the stupid computers off and doing it with paper and pencil, the way we used to. :)

smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 25, 1999.

Cory,

Tomorrow is Sunday. You should take the day off. Get some rest. :)

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 25, 1999.

Stephen,

What's up with you? You keep flip-floping between someone that sounds fairly intelligent, then you make these stupid statements like this pencil and paper remark. Did you just get back from the bar? <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 25, 1999.

Sysman,

Did you just get back from the bar? <:)=

The hardest thing I drink is iced tea, sir.

OK, that was a little off (I'm late for bed myself!), considering we were discussing mainframes. But that option is still there -- and some businesses (small- to medium-sized) will definitely use it if the alternative is to switch of the lights and lock the doors ...

Let's go to bed. :)

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 25, 1999.

"I'm perfectly happy with "Y2K Ready" -- even if that means cutting the stupid computers off and doing it with paper and pencil, the way we used to. :)" -- Stephen M. Poole, CET

If you truely believe we can revert to "paper and pencil" in todays business world, without having complete economic collapse, you are the quintessential "Idiot With a Title" of this forum.

-- (cujo@baddog.com), April 25, 1999.

Geeze guys, Mainframes cannot be replaced in many of the areas they work in, and they can where the PC has the ability to replace them. There is and always be a place for both. As for Microsoft, Bill Gates is no genius, he doesn't even come close to me in his ability to understand most computing. His early work on computers was nothing more than hundreds-thousands could do at that time. He admits he was in the right place at the right time and had the mental attitude to persue his ideal. He probably would not have gone far had it not been for Paul Allan who was the one who pushed for Microsoft to expand, it would not be what it is today. Bill Gates and microsoft has made many mistakes, such as hiring only newly graduated people to work for them. I believe BG felt they would have the same drive he had. It was not long before people just took the courses so they could get in at Microsoft. That is where the mistakes started happening. You know just over a year ago was that they did not have any Y2K problems? Because they did not have people working there with enought EXPERIENCE to even understand the problem. One thing EVERYONE needs to realise is that had it not been for BG and Microsoft, we would have dozens of different operating systems and incapatable software and the *internet* would still only be workable for us few who were using it 20 years ago. Because of BG and Microsoft we have a STANDARD that all of you are using. Now YOU can find people the world over who are like you, think like you. You are feed from your location where you have no choice but to adapt. How many of you would have ever found each other on this or any other forum had it not been for standardisation of PC operating systems? Most people are not aware of how much they have worked towards Apple et al become campadable with PC's.

When I read an open letter to Bill Gates to help with Y2K, I realised the writer had no concept of who and what BG is. And the fact that except for a little night time on a PDP-10, BG had no clue as to what most of computing involved outside of his own company.

Cory and Steve, You are both right and both wrong. You both know what you each know best. As in this forium, you both feel the same about extremist on both sides. Realise most people (here) and out in the world have no idea of computing. Knowledge is power and ignorance breeds fear. You have to understand the people here acre scared because they do not understand the details as you do and they are doing the only thing they have the ability to do, try to be prepared in case....

Of course there are the goofie butts and outright MORONS who will always argue that it is dark whan the sun is out..but they are few and nobodies. They get off over themselfs. Insecure teens or overgrown immature teens.

Sysman and anyone else except for one person who wrote on this thread, should have stayed out of it and learned from what was being posted. Cherri

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), April 25, 1999.

Uh, OK Cherri.

SYSMAN! BAD BOY! OUT! OUT!

-- Incredulous (at@the.woman), April 25, 1999.

Oh Geeze, did I do it again? Have I again caused a thread to sto-p dead still? (just teasing- I am watching the second of the last day of my States Congress as they pass this years laws etc.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), April 25, 1999.

CET, the mainframe v. PeeCee controversy isn't so much one of capability; the biggest, baddest PeeCee server clocks at roughly the power of a 20 year old IBM 3084 mainframe.

The problem is that there is a 20-30 year inventory of software running on mainframes and serious applications development is hard on either platform.

There are classes of problem that just can't be "clicked up" in, oh, 3 or 6 hours, days, weeks, or months. Some applications take years to solve. Others take decades.

I write about mainframes because I started on them but... In the mid 1970s, I wrote Z80 assembler for my pal, Peter's PC hardware company. In the 1980's I wrote software for the IBM XT and AT, did a year on BASICA and the Basic Compiler, several years on C (using Computer Innovations C86), a little Borland C, some Microsoft C6 with Oracle V7, and IBM CSet++. Primarily biomedical applications. I've also managed PeeCee software engineering projects, helped the WeeNees (new CompSci grads) understand arrays of pointers v. pointers to arrays and such C'isms.

However, as capable as PeeCee hardware is, it's still a couple orders of magnitude weaker than mainframes. Maybe the gap will close, maybe not. Checkout "SYSPLEX" and "CICSPLEX" and "FICON" at IBM sometime when you want a shock.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net), April 25, 1999.

And then there were three...

I'm perfectly happy with "Y2K Ready" -- even if that means cutting the stupid computers off and doing it with paper and pencil, the way we used to. :)

"[Y2K] has gained fame and notoriety SOLEY [sic] because it coincides with the Spooky and Mystical Dawn of the New Millennium"

"(Yeah. Right. All three (3) computers in Afghanistan and Zaire might fail. Yep, that could kill us. Great point.)"

-- Stephen "Mystical Dawn" Poole, CETM

-- a (a@a.a), April 25, 1999.

cory,

One thing that makes a mainframe so powerful are it's channels, and today's machines have dozens of channels each. A channel is actually a small, seperate computer that deals with input/output devices like disk and tape drives, terminals and comm lines. Each channel can be transfering data to/from main storage, while the CPU keeps working. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 25, 1999.

Cherri: if your long awaited "A pollyanna'a view" response to Cory is as hard to follow as your last post, you may not want to bother.

-- a (a@a.a), April 25, 1999.

Oh, and along the same line, some devices can be hooked up to multilpe channels. For example the IBM 3880 and 3890 disk controllers can be attached to up to 4 channels. This means that you can be moving data between 4 disk drives and main memory all at the same time, all without bothering the CPU. This is one reason why a mainframe can move huge amounts of data. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 25, 1999.

I always think of something else after I hit the button! Many big data centers have many 3890s, each connected to it's own set of channels. So if you have 10 controllers, you can be talking to 40 disk drives at a time. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 25, 1999.

PC's are good at processing data..to a point. But there are many more things that computers are used for than just data. That is where mainframes come in and are the best. Multi tasking is rather cute in PC's but means something completly different than in a mainframe. In a mainframe....there is actual multi tasking...running subroutines at the same time without having to share *time* to do it with whatever is run. You can have your main program running which will pick up info from the subroutines as needed. PC's can only do one thing at a time. Sure tie in PC's that you assign subroutines to and have them give data when asked...but then that is what a mainframe does and always has done. In the world of PC's (I still call them baby computers) there is so much they can do and have done. But they..no matter what their spped, cannot do what mainframes have done and will continue to do. As I said before each has it place.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), April 25, 1999.

Sysman, Channels and controllers? You really are in one area when it comes to computing are you not? yes not many people understand every area of computing...but some do..a few I suppose..but SOME do.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), April 25, 1999.

Cherri,

You make some valid points. I realize that there are some applications where a PC network won't work (at PRESENT [g]). But since the Doomers enjoy talking in percentages and failure rates and "not enough time to fix all the problems," I simply mentioned it as a viable option in many cases -- often overlooked by IT/IS types because they simply don't think that way. It never even registers on their scopes.

And by that point I will continue to stand without apology. That farm insurer that I referred to in another post is a great example. (When I was there, the president asked if I knew a school system that would take his old IBM stuff as a donation. He was delighted with his PeeCees. [g])

Had I been thinking, I should have known that I was touching a raw nerve when I suggested the PC approach to mainframers. After all, there is fanatical resistance to this approach by them (which point I think is now proven -- in spades -- by this thread [g]).

PC networks are a completely different paradigm. But I deliberately avoided a discussion of the technogeek details because it DOES frustrate the non-technical reader.

The real question is why I let myself be drawn into a snake pit like this, fully knowing that it's tangential to the real question: will Y2K cause The Collapse that the Doomers anticipate?

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 25, 1999.

Cujo,

I most assuredly do think that small to medium-sized businesses can use "paper and pencil" (that's a picturesque way of saying, "doing it by hand"), because that's what they do NOW when the computers fail.

One of the silliest contentions in Doomer arguments is that, if the computers die, we'll stand around and wring our hands and whine, "ohhh, whadda we DOOOOO?!?" Bull. We'll find a way to work around the problem until the computers are fixed -- JUST LIKE WE DO NOW, ON A DAILY BASIS.

Or do you honestly believe that if, say, the POS system dies at Waldenbooks(tm) or K-Mart(tm), they'll just lock the doors and die? If you believe that, YOU'RE the moron, not me. :)

In fact, if the Doomers are right, unemployment will drop to .001% in Y2K, because temps and fill-in personnel will be hired at an unprecedented rate. [g]

Buy your stock in Kelly(tm) and Manpower(tm) now; there's no time to lose ...

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 25, 1999.

Cory made the following problem statement:

Facts: 50,000 IBM style mainframes running production worldwide. For some classes of problem, mainframes are the only solution. For others, PeeCee networks can do a credible job. Some systems took decades to build and refine. If these were not repaired starting in 1990, 1995 at the latest, they will not be fixed.

The unknown is how many of these things exist, how dependent is the Fortune 5,000 on them, and what happens when they fail.

It is amazing how this thread disintregated into comparisions of PC's versus mainframes and name calling. I think Cory stated the problem well, I'm still waiting for an intelligent discussion of the problem.

-- Watcher (anon@anon.com), April 25, 1999.

Watcher,

I think Cory stated the problem well, I'm still waiting for an intelligent discussion of the problem.

Actually, I thought that the .024% thing was pretty important, but no one here will discuss that. Neither is there much willingness to discuss that we haven't seen much in the way of Y2K disruption yet.

Let me ask you: what do YOU think it would mean if it could be demonstrated that only .024% of these 50,000 systems have experienced failures in Y2K look-aheads? Give me your honest opinion.

http://www.wwjd.net/smpoole

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 25, 1999.

Cherri,

That's what happens when ones hobby is also ones job. I've been involved with mainframes for 31 years, and learned a great deal on the details of how they really work while I was with IBM for 5 years. My first home "PC" was an Atari-800, same setup as the Apple-2. In fact the first piece of software that I ever bought for home was the MAE assembler for the Atari. And as I mentioned to Stephen, I still have my original, working, classic IBM-PC here in the corner.

Stephen,

Do you think your bank will cash a check, and make a note of how much it was for, if their computers are down? If so, let me know. I'll be sure to clean out my account, at each of their branch offices, then retire. Do you think the assembly line at GM can run if the robots are down? I suppose a bunch of guys can stand in line with rheir arc-welders and do the job. Do yot think your phone will ring if the telco computers are not working? The days of the operator at a switchboard are long gone. I could sit here for hours and give you examples of things that WILL NOT WORK without computers. Get a grip man. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 25, 1999.

Oh, and as far as your .024%, that's my guess on how many programs do look ahead processing, when compared to the "big picture." <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 25, 1999.

Cherri, as I recal you volunteered to respond to Cory's request for a Geek Polly perspective on y2k in this thread:

Cherri Volunteers Here

Are you a lady of your word? You have spent a considerable amount of time on this thread telling us about computers, could you PLEASE follow up on your promise to Cory.

Many Thanks, Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), April 25, 1999.

Sysman,

The fact is that CORY (and several other noted Y2K Prophets) specifically said last year that we would be seeing significant Y2K disruptions by NOW. Do you deny that? If so, do you want me to start dragging out the quotes? :)

The fact that YOU didn't say it is to your credit.

I am fascinated at the way that this particular issue -- the fact that virtually ALL previous Y2K predictions have failed (most of them quite badly) -- is being ignored, sidetracked and obscured by handwaving, smoke signals, and ad hominem attacks on the one asking the questions.

I think these are valid questions, deserving of answers. Here's one; give it a shot: how come nothing really bad happened on April 1st ... since we were WARNED quite specifically that bad things WOULD happen?

Here's another: how come the Jo Anne Effect has yet to materialize to the degree implied by Cory last year? He's digging like a trenchman to find every possible example of failure; I granted that he might be able to find a dozen good examples, and calculated that to be .024% of his 50,000 figure.

Actually, we'd probably agree on the answer(s) (at least in part). My contention would be that, just as they overestimated the seriousness of the look-ahead problem, they have overestimated the rest of the field. Is that not possible? :)

On the banking thing: More sidestepping. I gave two specific examples: Waldenbooks(tm) and Wal-Mart(tm). If you want to discuss banks, fine; but that's not what I was talking about, and you know it.

http://www.wwjd.net/smpoole"

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 25, 1999.

Sysman,

Correction: K-Mart(tm), not Wal-Mart(tm). My wife is currently cooking her patented spaghetti, and the smell is driving me to distraction. :)

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 25, 1999.

If I may be so bold I would like to say how very much I am enjoying this thread. Thanks to all, well maybe not all, of you.

This sure beats the N.W.O. plots with Klinton! They are using black helicopters to sterilize our brains, and rob us of our precious bodily fluids! nonsense that is the rage here these days.

Regards,

-- Mr Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), April 25, 1999.

Stephen M. Poole, CET commented:

"I think these are valid questions, deserving of answers. Here's one; give it a shot: how come nothing really bad happened on April 1st ... since we were WARNED quite specifically that bad things WOULD happen?"

Stephen, let's get a life here. Have you heard any officials from NY state stand up and say they have successfully run ALL of their year end processes with totally remediated software and no fudging? Don't think so. Just because a few NY officials stood up on 1 April 1999 and said there were no problems does not make it so.

Please DO NOT MISLEAD folks regarding this date.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), April 25, 1999.

Ray, just because you stand up and say you haven't been hit by a meteor doesn't make it so. Just because you might not be aware of it doesn't mean it didn't happen. If it really is a fact that you haven't been hit, citing that fact is still MISLEADING!

Sometimes you need to face facts, Ray, even if you really don't like them. April 1 came and went, and we had no problems.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 25, 1999.

Flint, love to see you jump in here. Stephen can't hold a candle to you when it comes to "Double Speak".

Thanks for NOT letting me down!!

Your Pal, Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), April 25, 1999.

Ray, you need to make up your mind. First you say that citing facts is misleading. Then you say it's double speak. Which is it really?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 25, 1999.

This is for the woman who posted that she bought Oscar Meyer Bologna. I live near about 7 miles from the shithole that stuff is made at. It's OK if you like floor scrapings. Go with Hilshire Farm if you can.

-- Oscar (Ismell@weenies.com), April 25, 1999.

Ray,

Have you heard any officials from NY state stand up and say they have successfully run ALL of their year end processes with totally remediated software and no fudging? Don't think so.

Alright; no finessing and handwaving here. The predictions said that things would be noticeably and obviously BAD by April.

(Do you realize this year is approaching half over, with no sign of the horrible collapse in sight?)

You've also ignored Canada and Japan, Britain's financial year on the 6th, the infamous "9999" problem, the Euro, K-Mart starting its fiscal year, the airline reservation system, and bunches of other dates and things that the prophets told us to watch ... and thus far, nothing really bad has happened. They've been able to drag up a few exceptional cases and scattered examples, but by and large, things proceed normally.

If Doom Prophets, Inc want me to change my mind and believe that TEOTWAWKI is scheduled for January, I have a right to question how accurate they've been at prophecy thus far.

Oscar:

If you're worried about bologna and wieners, go to Raeford, NC sometime and watch how they make turkey rolls. Or to Smithfield, NC and watch them make pork sausage. :)

www.wwjd.net/smpoole

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 25, 1999.

Stephan:

Just an aside on your comment about temps. I manage a temp service office in Southwest Michigan. Actually, my employer has four offices in various Michigan cities. Unless there are a *LOT* of businesses going OUT of business or otherwise laying off employees (for whatever reason), there is not enough "temp" labor to go around. Not to mention temp labor that can accurately record anything using paper and pencil.

Sorry, but if there is a massive spike of demand for people to run manual workarounds, I honestly don't know where we could find them. As much as I would love to. Sounds like steady, long term billings to me. Although there could be credit risks.......

-- Jon Williamson (pssomerville@sprintmail.com), April 25, 1999.

Hey all, great news the Mar-Apr bank statement showed up and...

There's now an extra thirty-two thousand dollars on the consolidated bank statement! That's three months now. This problem is persistant. The guy with the big savings account made a deposit and earned a little interest.

Just because it started on January 1999, that doesn't mean it's a Jo Anne Effect. It could be that the bank is just funning with the clients. What jokers they are.

Everyone, repeat after me, shout it out so CET can hear you, "No problems with banks. Your money is safe in banks. Y2K banking problems are just hype. I have a big-brain."

As for the rest of you. Check and double check your bank's math. File all your statements and checks from now on. Those idiots are outa control. You might want to keep some cash in a coffee can or other safe place.

Also, I looked closely at the savings account with the 32 grand in it. The bank is paying a whopping 1.5% annual interest.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net), April 25, 1999.

Thanks for the post, Cory H. The amusing part is that it didn't really say anything.

-- Amused (smiling@somewhat.now), April 26, 1999.

Stephen,

Your K-mart question. Sure, you could put calculators at the check-out lanes. Are the cashiers going to write down the inventory number of every item that is sold? Better hire more cashiers, the lines are going to be pretty long. Who's going to go thru these lists, and figure out that today we sold 3 of these, and 5 of those? Or do you want people to walk around the store, and take notes when there are only a few items on the shelf? OK, how many people are needed to keep inventory of the whole store? They've got a bunch of things at K-mart. May take a few of people. How are we going to get our order to the warehouse? Hire somebody to stay on the phone all day, reading inventory numbers and how many we need? Better hire somebody at the warehouse to write it all down. Gee, I hope nobody makes a mistake taking the inventory number. We could end up with a bunch of x, while the shelf is empty for y. Maybe the number is invalid, doesn't matter, we still have no y. Profit margins are pretty slim. Guess we better raise the prices to pay for these new people. And the warehouse is charging us more to cover their bigger payroll, so we gotta raise the prices a little more. And we can't validate credit card purchases any more, so they've raised their rates to cover their losses. I wonder how many people will continue to shop here, not being able to find what they want, waiting in longer lines, and spending more money? I wonder how long we will stay in business?

Your predictions question. I don't know why other people came to their decisions. I know why I came to mine, and I thought I was clear. The number of programs that do look ahead processing is TINY, when compared to the total number of programs that have a date problem. Those that do are well known. They would be fixed first, because they are needed first. Also, I still stand by my statement that most embedded systems failures will not happen until 2000. What don't people understand about this? <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 26, 1999.

Cory,

I thought you were to busy to talk to me? :)

Assuming that you're not exaggerating and making this up, OK; you MAY have found an example -- ONE example -- and you're playing it like a violin. This is in spite of the fact that there is absolutely no evidence that this alleged failure is Y2K related.

ONE example. It MAY be Y2K related. Read this slowly:

I fully expect for there to be some failures -- I mean, a few whoppers here and there, too. I granted you an even dozen; that would represent .054% of your 50,000 mainframes.

This really isn't that difficult, Cory.

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 26, 1999.

Sysman,

You've obviously never worked in a store where the POS system has failed -- and they do fail all the time now, believe me. These stores have inventory control problems NOW, too, even with their slick UPC-reader and IC systems.

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 26, 1999.

Cory,

One other thought. You mention that people should check their statements carefully. To that, I would add: keep your receipts and cancelled checks, and copies of all contracts, too (including insurance forms).

But Cory, I've ALWAYS done that. (Shoot, our bank tried to get us to switch to that thingie where they don't have mail our cancelled checks back; I told them flatly, NO. I wants m' checks.)

Right now -- and FORGET Y2K -- from time to time, someone will mis-apply one of our payments and claim we didn't make it. I simply grab the cancelled check and fax a copy to them.

If anything good is coming out of Y2K, it's that a lot of people who used to blindly trust "Da System" are finally learning what us older curmudgeons have known all along: keep yer paperwork straight.

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 26, 1999.

Sysman, you are flip/flopping all over the place on hardware here. While the K-Mart system eventually REPORTS to a mainframe, POS transactions are handled by a network connected to the cash registers.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), April 28, 1999.

Paul,

Yes, I realize that. The above was in response to Stephen's pencil and paper remark. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 28, 1999.

Appears we need a definition of "compliancy" everybody can live with. Give me your opinion of:

Y2K "okay"?

"Able to stay in business through the first month of Year 2000."

Y2K compatible?

"Able to stay in business through the first quarter of Year 2000."

Y2K compliant?

"Able to make a profit (or increase profits) the first several weeks of Year 2000."

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), April 28, 1999.

Y2K "okay"? "Able to stay in business through the first month of Year 2000."

[Can handle any y2k problems by using contingency plans]

Y2K compatible? "Able to stay in business through the first quarter of Year 2000."

[No foreseeable risks, but contingency plans available]

Y2K compliant? "Able to make a profit (or increase profits) the first several weeks of Year 2000."

[Everything is a-okay, we checked, fixed, tested and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that y2k will not affect our business] [It's the others that we are unsure of and so we have contingency plans just in case...]

-- J (jart5@bellsouth.net), April 28, 1999.

in response to Cory:

Been doing some checking on banking (no pun intended). Just in my local area, I was able to uncover three(3) seperate instances from three(3) seperate banks, in three(3) seperate years. I WILL NOT be naming any of the banks, but they are big-boys I assure you.

BANK 1

1987, mis-transfer of funds resulted in $65,000 added to an individual's account It took 6 months to straighten out! luckily, the individual did NOT touch the funds. (typical stuff of calling the bank, telling them "thats not my money" bank claiming "we've tracked this, its not our mistake". once the problem was found? "bank: you WILL relinquish those funds immediately!") nice.

BANK 2

1993, mis-transfer of funds results in $15,000 added to a business account. It took 4 months to fix that one! (bank lost several customers over that one)

BANK 3

1995, mis-transfer of funds results in (approx) $30,000 added to an individual's account. It took 2 months to straighten that out. (litigation ensued, as the individual attempted to "take the money and run" [in the words of Steve Miller])

Sorry, "Hadalittletomuchsaki". This has happened before, and will no doubt happen again. Better tell your friend not to touch the funds, or big trouble can result.

and to use your own words "Everyone, repeat after me, shout it out so Cory can hear you, "I am Cory, the almighty! I have a big-fat head!"

-- More Rice Wine, Anyone? (kissmy@ss.y2kfreaks), April 28, 1999.

gee...wheres CH when you need him?

-- (no@bo.dy), April 28, 1999.

I am amused by Poole's suggestion that a computer system problem is really not a problem at all because the work can be done as before with paper and pencil.

His attempt to offer this as a solution illuminates the value of any statement I have seen him make on this forum or c.s.y2k.

It appears Wells Fargo has had a few problems this week, according to the news. Attempting to picture Poole as a pencil and paper salesman in the CEO's office making his pitch is laughable. The punchline develops as the CEO inquires where these materials can be purchased in the required quantities, and where the paper records can be filed for reference.

Quick on his feet, Poole tells another lie to counter the CEO's question. In some magical fashion this can be done, and soon will be the leading edge in processing. After all, computers are not a necessity, they have always been nothing more than an alternative.

When asked where these materials can be stored prior to use, Poole reinvents just in time material delivery, no problem storing the paper and pencils prior to use and in just a day or two he will have his brother-in-law bring the CEO all the temps he needs to staff this paper and pencil operation. And by the way, maybe his cousin, the desk and filing cabinet salesman should stop by to lend a hand.

Now, about those calculators, I am sure he recommends PV's with battery back up, "can't take any chances".

No, upon reflection, this doesn't fit Poole's style. He won't be satisfied with the million dollar commission on the paper and pencil sale, his downfall will begin with the pitch to turn the computer room into a fitness center and put all the heavy work on a PC network.

"Look at MicroSoft and Sun" he says. "This is your lucky day".

-- Tom Beckner (tbeckner@erols.com), May 01, 1999.