I don't know who Hobbs is. He does have something to sell. However, I find his analysis of the y2k situation ringing true with the known facts. He also gives, I believe, an accurate observation on the selling of gold by England and the market. From Newsmax.com

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Y2K is a Very Real Problem - Count On It Gregory J. Hobbs July 4, 1999

In reading some of your articles, especially "Computer Experts See Big Problems in the Year 2000" the author makes the comment that many of the systems cannot be repaired because they don't have the source code anymore and without the source code you cannot locate the date fields to correct them. That used to be true, but it is no longer true. Programs can be fixed without the source code. Date fields can be identified and corrected on an automated basis. My company, Software Management Systems, is a distributor for a new product that can analyze programs at the object code level. This product is language and platform independent. The product can identify short 2 digit year fields in operating systems, custom applications, commercial off the self software and data. It will not only identify the date fields it will define them as either critical or non-critical. After the audit is complete this new tool will, at the users command, fix the software by expanding all short critical year fields from 2 digits to 4 digits. This particular tool has the ability to identify and instantly correct short year fields. It is quite amazing. Many companies that are reporting themselves as compliant are in real trouble. Many of them have taken the conventional course of relying on information from vendors and manufacturers as to the status of their software. In addition, they have secured patches, fixes and upgrades from these same vendors and manufacturers that will fail in the Year 2000. The vendors or manufacturers, over 90% of them, have used a technique called '"windowing" to repair their software. Unfortunately, there is no technical standardization for "windowing and the manufacturers have used many different forms of this technique. Different applications using different "windowing" techniques will encounter problems. Also, none of the manufacturers have taken into consideration the "orphan files" that permeate most computer systems. These are various types of files that have been added to a system over time as applications, operating systems and GUI's are installed and removed. The errors caused by this type of oversight are not the kinds that instantly kill a system. The errors caused by this type of problem will build over time, it is estimated that a typical corporate user will reach critical mass in 4 to 8 weeks, and when the number of errors reaches critical mass the system will fail. A large corporate computer network will have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of "orphan files".

As you can see, many companies will experience failure even though they believe they have corrected their software. My company offers a free audit tool for testing computer networks. Auditing a very small sample of the computers on the network will dramatically demonstrate that the software is not compliant. Naturally the "fix" for the problem is what you pay for.

I will use the following example as a means of lending credence to our claim. As you may be aware, Microsoft indicated that Windows 98 was compliant when it was released. The developers of this technology audited the Win98 product with this new technology and informed Microsoft that Win98 was not compliant and provided them with a report that specified and identified every single short 2 digit year field in the program. Microsoft initially denied the claim but 7 months later announced that Win98 was not compliant. Win2000 was just released and again the audit was run against the product and it was discovered that there were in excess of 40,000 short 2-digit year fields in the product. What are the odds that this is going to work?

Our problem in offering this technology is trying to get it generally known that it is available. We are a very small company. We believe that we could assist many companies and government agencies in reaching compliance, but with the time left and our limited resources we will never reach them. I just wanted you and the rest of the people that use your website to know that there is a solution, it is just that no one is listening.

Your question concerning the 1-10 scale of impact by the year 2000 takes some explanation. I believe that the impact of the Y2K problem will be significant. There are two distinct areas to be considered: The social ramifications and the economic ramifications. First, I will address the social aspect of the problem. The critical factor in how bad things will be socially is directly proportional to the fitness of the electric utility companies. They are the lynchpins of our future. If the utilities managed to keep the power on for the most part or if failures are very short term in duration, 3 days or less, then there is a good chance that the social upheaval will be minimal. If there are significant power failures and for extended periods then the results will be catastrophic. Most people or families can survive for about 3 days on what is contained in the average household. After that, if there is no power or water, water is electrically fed to the general population; people will begin to take to the streets in search of basic needs. And as A.H. Maslov indicates in his book "The Hierarchy of Human Needs", man will revert to level one and become a very basic creature concerned only with survival. This will result in very negative and violent actions. Even the implementation of martial law will not be sufficient to control a hungry, desperate and well-armed population. There are not enough US soldiers, even with the help of UN troops, to police a county the size of the United States. The use of UN troops ultimately only causes US citizens to react even more violently. John Q. Public may not, on average, be the brightest person on the block anymore, (due to government controlled education, but that is another story) but he knows when he is being had and will react.

There is not one utility in this country that will guarantee service on January 1, 2000. It would be a sad state of affairs if Americans were put in a position of having to prey on each other for survival, but that possibility does exist.

The social unrest is going to be directly proportional to the utilities ability to keep the lights on which in turn will allow basic need commodities to be generally available, even if some shortages exist.

The economic ramifications are another issue altogether. The World Bank recently completed and published, in February of this year, a report based on months of in depth investigations by its own Y2K experts who had visited virtually every county in the world that use computers in their government/industrial complex. The results were staggering. Of the 138 "developed" (computer using) countries in the world only 15% or 21 countries have taken any action to address the Y2K issue. That leaves 117 countries that have done nothing!! If that doesn't scare the hell out of you, then you are a stronger man than I am. It frightens me to my very core. The implications of this information are almost beyond comprehension. And of the 21 countries that have taken steps to correct the problem, many of them are not doing very well. Germany announced recently that over 60% of the companies in Germany will experience mission critical failures. If the German mark fails the balance of the European economy will be right behind it. The Gartner Group, a well recognized IS consulting and information-gathering organization, released a report in April of 1998 concerning a survey they conducted of the 6,000 largest companies in the world. This extensive survey revealed that 40% of these companies had yet to begin or were in the very early stages of their Y2K efforts. The average Y2K program takes 3 years to complete. My interpretation of that information is that 2,400 of the largest companies in the world will have malfunctioning or non-functioning computers in January of 2000. They released another report earlier this year that said that 80% of the companies in the US that had 2000 or fewer employees had yet to begin their Y2K programs. Every agency of the federal government has testified before congress that they will not solve their Y2K problems until well into the next century. State and local governments are in even worse shape. Experts have testified, under oath, before congress and told them that the infrastructure of the federal government will collapse. The government will never tell you that the asteroid is coming.

Sometimes the statistics or the evidence seems so overwhelming as to be unbelievable. Someone said that the public at large will continue to believe his or her preconceived notions about a situation in spite of the evidence to the contrary. The world just refuses to believe, in spite of the evidence, that the size of a year field in computer software programs and data could potentially cause such devastation.

I was speaking with one of my associates the other day about the fallout from this event. He had a very unique perspective on the situation. He said, "Forget all the statistics and other speculation concerning the Y2K issue and realize this. If just one percent of the businesses in the US and the rest of the world fail the results, economically speaking, will be serious damage to the strongest economies and it will destroy most others." And almost without exception, every expert or anyone who has studied the issue, will easily agree to the fact that more than 1% of the businesses will fail. Some project as high as 30%-40% while most will agree to somewhere between 10%-15%. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and we have approximately 1,000,000 businesses in the surrounding 13 counties. Can you imagine what will happen if 100,000 of them cease to exist. Or even at the 1% level - 10,000 businesses gone. Truly staggering consequences.

Even if you could convince yourself that all the businesses and government at all levels in the US were fully compliant the resulting failures from other countries around the world would significantly and adversely affect the US economically.

The best of all worlds results in minor power failures, minimum social disruption and a severe economic recession or depression. The worst of all worlds results in major power failures for extended periods with food riots and violence in all major population areas of the US and many parts of the world. Martial law; the suspension of all sovereign rights as defined in the Constitution; the suspension of the Constitution; the use of foreign UN troops in the US to control certain geographical areas; summary trials and executions; detention or concentration camps; the establishment of a non democratic non representative form of government; generally the end of life as we know it today.

I could literally go on and on with information from news sources from around the world about how unprepared we are for this event. On a personal level I have sold literally every asset that could be adversely affected by this event. Remember the old adage "You buy when everyone is selling, and you sell when everyone is buying." Everyone is buying real estate so sell it. Everyone is buying stocks (I don't know why the fundamentals are horrendous) so sell them. Everyone is selling gold so buy it - it is at a 35 year low at $260.00 per ounce. You mentioned on the Brian Wilson show that the Bank of England (a central bank) and the Swiss were selling gold large scale. You may be partially right. The Swiss just recently amended their laws so as to eliminate the requirement to have 40% of their outstanding currency in gold reserves. The Swiss had affixed a value of $92.00 per ounce many years ago when that policy was instituted so in reality instead of having a 40% gold reserve they currently have about a 130% gold reserve against currency. They are intending to sell gold but according to government releases they will not begin to sell off their reserves for least another 2 years. The Bank of England has said they are selling off their gold reserves, but I am not sure that I believe them. If they are selling it, who is buying it?? I believe that just by releasing the information that they are selling gold in large quantities they have intentionally depressed the market and are in reality buying gold. It makes perfect sense if you look at it. Large central banks have the ability to control markets with words. They are hyper inflating the stock market so they can sell at the top (the insiders are selling not buying) and they are taking their profits and buying gold at the deflated prices they created. I got a little sidetracked there but in final response to your question, I put the risk at 8.5 to 9 on your scale and I am betting everything I own on it and I am not a risk speculator by any stretch of the imagination.

Disregarding my own precautions in this matter, I truly hope that I am wrong. I do not want to see the US social and economic structure severely damaged or collapsed. Unfortunately, weak leadership and incompetent management by our government and our corporate community may have brought us to the brink.

As someone recently said, "the ship is sinking and all we are doing is putting a coat of paint on it."

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-- bb (peace2u@bellatlantic.net), July 07, 1999

Answers

Polly mode on:

"You can't trust ANYBODY that's trying to sell something. Capitalism is inherently EVIL and anyone who looks to make a buck off Y2K must be LYING!!!"

Polly mode off:

Now that we've gotten the standard Polly response out of the way, I think Mr. Hobbs makes several good points. I certainly think the economic fallout from Y2K is being underplayed.

-- Nabi Davidson (nabi7@yahoo.com), July 07, 1999.

Can anyone elaborate on how a 1% business failure can bring the world to its knees? Don't 1% of businesses fail all the time anyway? I would have guessed the number was even highter.

-- confused (now@as.usual), July 07, 1999.

1% of new businesses fail. He's talking established firms, and only using that as a best case example. The more likely numbers, he says are

"as high as 30%-40% while most will agree to somewhere between 10%-15%."

-- (@ .), July 07, 1999.

Most businesses that fail as a matter of course are not critical to the infrastructure or mission critical needs of other businesses. They go out of business because of better competitors, bad management, or poor product. The 1% mentioned in the article is across the board from small to large businesses, from not necessary to mission critical suppliers and vendors.

BTW, I am looking for the reference for the 117 countries doing nothing. If anyone has seen that would you post it please. TY

-- BB (peace2u@bellatlantic.net), July 07, 1999.

"a new product that can analyze programs at the object code level. This product is language and platform independent. The product can identify short 2 digit year fields in operating systems, custom applications, commercial off the self software and data. It will not only identify the date fields it will define them as either critical or non-critical. After the audit is complete this new tool will, at the users command, fix the software by expanding all short critical year fields from 2 digits to 4 digits."

Not hardly likely. Not at the object code, i.e. machine language, level.

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), July 07, 1999.

I believe this is the report Hobbs is referring to concerning the fact that only 21 computer using nations were doing anything at all about y2k. That means that 117 countries are doing squatilla. The information was not released to the public. This article was printed in the New York Times:

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February 1, 1999

Group Won't Publicize Year 2000 Ratings

An international group of banks, securities firms and insurers has dropped its controversial plan to publicly rate the year 2000 computer readiness of the world's major trading nations.

Critics of the organization, which is known as the Global 2000 Coordinating Group, had feared that the rating plan would ignite a flight of capital from low-rated nations that could make it harder to head off year 2000 computer problems. The group dropped its plan on Friday, after a three-day meeting in London.

The influential 250-member group, which meets every six weeks, first announced its intention to rate more than 30 nations at a U.N. meeting in December. The criticism came from federal regulators, some developing nations and some of the group's own members.

The group had gathered information about the year 2000 readiness of various nations. On Friday, it said it now planned to share that information with the United Nations and the Joint Year 2000 Council, an international coordinating committee.

"We concluded that the focus should be kept on efforts to stimulate self-assessment and disclosure by every country," said Tim Sheapard-Walwyn, Global 2000's chairman, who works for UBS A.G. in Zurich.

-- BB (peace2u@bellatlantic.net), July 07, 1999.

Jerry,

While I have no idea if the claims are accurate, it seems you are jumping the gun to just "brush it off." Why don't you do some research and check it out before throwing a wet blanket on it. The company seems to be readily available to talk to, indeed anxious to provide *proof* of what they say. And it seems you could even get some free sample software to experiment with. So, they didn't find any real problems in Microsoft products, is that what you saying? I don't know if you are a techy in this field, but if you are you should be verifying this before dismissing it, and if you are not then your stated opinion is meaningless.

-- Gordon (gpconnolly@aol.com), July 07, 1999.

Hey, who is this Mr. Dobbs? Gordon, do you know who he is? Have you done any research to validate Dobb"s claims? Just wondering.

-- Barb (awaltrip@telepath.com), July 07, 1999.

If he thinks y2k will be a 9.5, what difference does it make how well his product works.

-- a (a@a.a), July 07, 1999.

Oh, never mind, I GET IT. Anyone regardless of who they are, as long as they support the TEOTWAWKI mentality, even if they stand to profit financially from others accepting their info without verification or discussion, will be defended to the HILT. I'm concerned about y2k but come on, people, let's get real here.

-- Barb (awaltrip@telepath.com), July 07, 1999.

a, good point!

-- Barb (awaltrip@telepath.com), July 07, 1999.

*********Martial law; the suspension of all sovereign rights as

defined in the Constitution; the suspension of the Constitution; the

use of foreign UN troops in the US to control certain geographical

areas; summary trials and executions; detention or concentration

camps; the establishment of a non democratic non representative form

of government; generally the end of life as we know it today. ******

This is something that is so of the wall that I have to comment on.

Where should UN troops come from??

UN member states will have enugh to do in there own countries to

ship them anywhere.

There is NOT enugh UN personal available for deployment into

the US to make any difference.( especialy how do you want to

coordinate them >?)

The soldiers patroling the streets will be our own missguided sons

the honest ones will be home with the families. The disonest rif raf

still serving will shoot you. Lets face it 50% of the men in the army

this day's are rif raf, the military is not getting anybody else to

"serve".

-- justme (justme@justme.net), July 07, 1999.

This is less valuable than the analyses of some of the regulars here and the 1% business failure rate is ridiculous. However, as a strict opinion piece, I agree with many of the points. Windowing is not as crazy as he makes it sound, nor is it as straightforward as its boosters claim. The jury is out.

Note that Barnett of the Naval War College has been reported to project up to 15% business failure as their predicted Y2K impact in U.S. alone. Across the board: Fortune 500 through SMEs. A very damaging long-term hit with big social consequences should it come to pass, including another round of heavy power concentration in the fewer that survive.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), July 07, 1999.

OK, www.newsday.com has archives where the story is located. This Dobbs person is not listed as one of the reg staff writers, no BIO info about him. His article states "I believe" so most likely these are his opinions though he may well have some facts to base his opinion on. However, I'm not going to defend his viewpoint or tell others to do ANYTHING based on this guy's opinion.

-- Barb (awaltrip@telepath.com), July 07, 1999.

Over the last 4-5 years I've looked at lots of scanning and remediation tools. Never saw one yet that even came CLOSE to an accurate automated fix. Two of the leading AI tools are pretty fair, like an idiot-savant, coming up with answers quickly but totally missing the point.

I'm not saying this tool is being oversold, but I'd have to watch it work.

On the other hand, the economic analysis sounds pretty reasonable.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), July 07, 1999.

Gordon,

It's been a while, but I have done a little object code debugging and more than a little object code altering. Usually some form of the source code was available, even if not a "machine readable" form.

None of that experience involved trying to decide whether the contents of some location in memory was, or was not, being used as a date.

Without source code, even with source code generated by a "disassembler", the odds of making that decision correctly may be better than .5, but I doubt that they could get very close to 1.

For just one example, a common use of dates is to decide if the date of one entity is larger, equal to, or smaller, than the date of another entity. At the object code level, such comparisons give no hint that the comparands are dates. In fact, depending on how the source program was coded, the comparisons may use character instructions rather than numeric instructions, thus making it seem, at the object code level, that the comparands are not even numbers.

So, I don't know that such a program as mentioned in the opening post of this thread could not possibly work well, but I do belive that "it's not hardly likely".

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), July 07, 1999.

Confused,

To answer your question about the 1% issue... Since this would be 1% of establised businesses (been around for more than 3 years), the unemployment rate would jump up 1% - on average. As the percentage of failed businesses increases, so does unemployment. Now a 1%- 5% failure would trigger a recession, severity depending on the percent. As we go above 5% we approach having a depression.

Think of it this way, if your city lost 1% of it's businesses, then a lot of people would be out of jobs, but it would only have a minor impact on your life. If your city lost 5% of it's businesses, then you may end being the one out of a job, if your company is one of them. And if your city loses more than 5%, even if your company doesn't go under, you may still be out of a job. This would be caused by cutbacks your company is forced to make in a depressed economy, that in turn causes further depression.

IMHO, DJ

-- DJ (reality@check.com), July 07, 1999.

This guy Hobbs is as full of sh** as a Christmas goose!

His purported "product" will supposedly, ". . .analyze programs at the object code level", and is, "language and platform independent".

Utter horsepatookey!

At the object code level, a computer program is nothing more than a very long binary number (like 0010101110001010100010101000101000000101101010010101010, except usually much, much longer). While it is true that if a tool analyzes code at this level it must be language independent, it is also true that it cannot be platform independent.

The reason for that is simply that the same binary number does not mean the same thing to all platforms. Neither are the instruction formats (where you "break apart" the binary number to form individual instructions) the same from platform to platform.

This is why a virus that will affect Windows 95 will just be a meaningless number to the MAC operating system and why a Trojan Horse program written to operate on pee cees will be meaningless to midframe or mainframe computer code.

Every "platform" (such as the Motorola 68xxx series or the Intel 80x86 series) has its own unique Assembly language. There is a one to one correspondence between an assembly code instruction and an object code instruction, so you can reverse engineer, or de-compile, an object code program into its corresponding assembly language program. Any farther than that, and you're guessing and it requires special translation software to run, for example, Intel code on Motorola hardware. That's how Macs can run some DOS based programs, and that's how new mainframes can process code written for older mainframes (although the mainframes usually do the translation in hardware).

Now theoretically, Hobb's product could examine the binary number that is the object code and compare it against every known hardware platforms set of assembly code, and if it identified the platform successfully, then it could attempt to ascertain whether or not particular numbers represented dates or not. If you believe that his software can and does do that, let me know. There's a bridge in New York that is currently on the market and I can get you a "special" deal.

-- Hardliner (searcher@internet.com), July 07, 1999.

FIX2000 by Intelliquis

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@It's ALL going away in January.com), July 07, 1999.

Jerry B. and Hardliner,

OK, that's a much better approach to your doubting this software. I gave up on "silver bullets" last year, but I'm not a programmer or even more than average consumer knowledgeable about these tools. I just didn't like to see a debunk without some more detail as to why you think it is just business PR being handed out. You both dug in a bit deeper. Thanks. Now, if that outfit wants to prove itself and it's product they will be presenting a lot of evidence to back up their claims, otherwise we're just on the same train we've been on right up till now. Also, from what I gather, even if there was such a silver bullet available, there just isn't enough time now to get all the work done in the biggest baddest programs, like the DoD, IRS, international banking, and of course the embedded chips that will have some impact, whatever that turns out to be.

-- Gordon (gpconnolly@aol.com), July 07, 1999.