Flint. There's plenty of people out here who genuinely are wavering between a y2k-recession-with-added-extras and a y2k-civilisation-wipeout. There's nothing we'd like to see more than a really well-argued and comprehensive optimistic position on y2k. I realise that you don't count as a polly compared with the general population, but when compared with the y2k-literate population, it's fair to say that you do count as a polly. At least, most people around here would consider you to be one. So on that basis it would be fair to say that you would satisfy the "polly" bit of the polly challenge. Do you feel up to the challenge? I'm not asking for this as a macho adversarial challenge, but rather as an attempt to get the issues and positions clarified. You write here a lot, so I figure you can find the time to write such a piece. How about it?

-- number six (Iam_not_a_number@hotmail.com), July 28, 1999

Answers

Flint isn't qualified. This isn't a slam on Flint. Flint is a low level electronics, microprocessor specialist. I'd welcome a polly article from Flint on why embeddeds aren't a problem or how easy it will be to fix embeddeds.

From my reading of his articles, I don't believe that Flint has done much IMS/DB, COBOL/370, or PL/I Optimiser on 100 programmer projects.

This is the real Y2K problem. Look through the want ads, you didn't see too many for PL/I programmers in the last couple years. Didn't see a lot of VAX DCL, S/3x RPG III, or even NEAT/3.

Yes, there was some COBOL done and the iFOX00-ly ladies did OK but there's a bunch of software that seems to have fallen though the cracks.

It's not a challenge either, please think of it as an invitation to a well qualified Polly, a sort of Anti-Ed Yourdon, to 'splain why the enterprise systems will be OK.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net), July 28, 1999.

number six:

I'm afraid Cory anticipated you and specifically disqualified me when he issued his challenge. He said (from memory now) "I don't care if Flint can prove that embeddeds will be no problem, I'm talking about enterprise IT systems, big iron."

Specifically, Cory's challenge is to meet him on his own chosen turf, which is the operation of legacy systems on mainframe computers. This is where Cory feels the real threat lies, not in the embeddeds. And not so coincidentally, these are the systems Cory knows best, so once you give him total editorial control of your material, he can change what you say and use his own knowledge to make you look like a total idiot.

Cory's problem is, he could only do that once and the word was out -- Cory will hold open the door, smile, say "after you", and then stab you in the back -- or at least he has developed that reputation with his weather reports. He won't accept any embedded people's challenges, it's his reports, you know.

And I readily admit I've never worked in the IT world. The closest I've come is designing subsystems, but that's hardware.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 28, 1999.

Cory,

From the majority of the articles that have been submitted to this forum - it seems that the real problem appears to be systemic i.e., a combination of H/W and S/W. What are the two legs of the 3 legged stool that everyone deems to be so critical: power and telecomm. Based on my experience in both industries (worked in VLSI Design, Power Industry (transmission and monitoring) and Telecomm (wireless & wireline)) both areas, microprocessors and enterprise systems, will be a factor on 01/01/00. I would welcome information/opinions from experts in both areas - let people then attempt to separate the wheat from chaff...Regards,

-- william holst (w_holst@hotmail.com), July 28, 1999.

Flint commented:

"Cory's problem is, he could only do that once and the word was out -- Cory will hold open the door, smile, say "after you", and then stab you in the back -- or at least he has developed that reputation with his weather reports. He won't accept any embedded people's challenges, it's his reports, you know."

Flint, you had an opportunity two years ago to set up a web site and bust your butt presenting the y2k story the way you "see it". You elected to do NOTHING, now you spend ALL of your time ATTEMPTING to denigrate those that have made a sincere contribution, what a LOW LIFE!!

Your Pal, Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 28, 1999.

When Cory issued his challenge (or invitation) there was a lot of discussion from the Polly IT crowd that he would editorialize or change content to make people look like morons. As I recall it, Cory addressed those concerns by specifying that he would do no such thing.

Flint, you said, "Cory will hold open the door, smile, say "after you", and then stab you in the back -- or at least he has developed that reputation with his weather reports." That's a fairly serious comment on the man's character. I hope you're prepared to either back it up or retract it.

-- RUOK (RUOK@yesiam.com), July 28, 1999.

Flint, you make two statements that need to be clarified:

"And not so coincidentally, these are the systems Cory knows best, so once you give him total editorial control of your material, he can change what you say and use his own knowledge to make you look like a total idiot."

When you say "can," what do you mean? Are you telling us that Cory has the capability of doing this because your manuscript is in his hands, or are you telling us that Cory would do something of this nature? has done something of this nature? This statement deserves amplification.

Cory's problem is, he could only do that once and the word was out -- Cory will hold open the door, smile, say "after you", and then stab you in the back -- or at least he has developed that reputation with his weather reports.

This is another serious statement, in which you challenge the integrity of the individual you're writing about. I suppose that you have proof of these allegations, and that you would care to present this proof? I, for one, would like to hear this proof.

He won't accept any embedded people's challenges, it's his reports, you know. Right, it is his report. He makes his predictions about the problem based on his knowledge of legacy systems -- not on embedded systems. Since his interpretation of the outcome of y2k is based on his experience, why should he range afield? You make it sound like sour grapes.

The question is, "Is your whole post a sour grapes response, or are you accusing Cory specifically of particular unethical behavior?"

I think most of us would like to know, and I think you opened the door with that last post. Please explain.

-- de (delewis@Xinetone.net), July 28, 1999.

Flint:

Your memory did fail you. Here is what Cory wrote:

". I'd welcome a polly article from Flint on why embeddeds aren't a problem or how easy it will be to fix embeddeds."

Regards,

-- Tom Beckner (xouttbeckner@erols.com), July 28, 1999.

Much as it pains me, I have to agree with Ray on this one, that's a pretty ugly thing to say about Cory, who has done Yeoman's service for raising awareness.

Where is your supporting evidence Flint? Oh, and quick get a bandage on that foot so's not to bleed to death.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), July 28, 1999.

Here is the thread that Cory issued his challenge:

Cory's Challenge

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 28, 1999.

Oh but Mr. Flint

I beg to differ with your stance, when the dust has settled in about 24 months from now. You will find that it was the hard wired embeded systems which did us in. At this moment in time, it would be an understatement to say that the embeded systems are going to be 90% of the y2k problems. And as you very well know, the lowest bidder, either from the Americas,Europe, or Asia provided the equipment and their compoent embedded systems of each individual complex, industrial or power generation. And since these sub systems comprise the whole...You will find that every major and or minor player (manufactors of equipment and embedded systems) on all the continents are represented in any large sized project.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~respectfully Shakey~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-- Shakey (in_a_buner@forty.feet), July 28, 1999.

Flint,

You have sunk to a new level of smarmy reprobate. I am embarrassed to have EVER given your posts credit for honesty and integrity. Regardless of the y2k outcome, you are and will be an arrogant two-faced loser.

-- (cujo@baddog.byte), July 29, 1999.

I will be the first to admit that I have bashed Flint into the stone age for months now. He's not the only one, just my favorite. Flint, you have honestly outdone yourself here. You have once again displayed your wet towel syndrome. A glowing example of 'gutless', taken to new heights. There have been too many to count in the last week, but I'm attempting to curb my flame-thrower these days. Be it known that I have not run out of fuel, however. Please refrain from creating tremors in my trigger finger.

:(

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), July 29, 1999.

OK, I see that I was too harsh and I apologize to Cory. What I recall from hazy memory is this:

Someone (I forget who, may have been Hoffmiester but don't hold me to it) submitted an essay for a WRP. Rather than reproduce that essay as written (according to the submitter, now) Cory chose to extract parts of that submission out of context, and reply to those parts in the WRP in such a way as to make the submitter look foolish (again in the opinion of the submitter). This was all discussed on csy2k.

Now, whether this actually happened I can't say. What was disturbing is the mechanics of the presentation in the WRPs, which cannot be denied. It is the case that (1) Cory has editorial control over the WRP contents and can do whatever he wants with anything submitted; and (2) The WRPs are NOT published on an interactive forum. So if Cory uses his editorial control in a way you take exception to, you have NO way to defend yourself.

When you combine these two factors with the knowledge that Cory by definition is going to disagree with your position, you have ample grounds to be very cautious and reluctant to participate under those ground rules. And I was careful to qualify what I said by emphasizing that Cory had gained a *reputation* for such treatment, whether or not that reputation was deserved.

I know that Cory has subsequently promised not to do this anymore, and I notice he didn't do it to Arnold Trembley. So I believe Cory. But the above conditions cannot help but have a chilling effect on optimistic essays.

NOW (hopefully this isn't too far off the subject, and apologies in advance if it is):

There as very clearly a fundamental difference of opinion among many as to the *relative* threat posed by embedded systems as compared with IT systems. Cory (as I read it) is on record as claiming that it's the IT systems that are the big danger, while the embeddeds are not. By contrast, Shakey here expects embeddeds to be 90% of the total y2k problem.

My speculation is that Cory feels embeddeds are not nearly as systemic in the same way as IT systems -- that is, an individual embedded failure doesn't usually have far-reaching effects, while an IT bug can propagate through many systems. Therefore, for embeddeds to be 90% of the total problems, we need a *whole lot* of embedded failures everywhere, whereas we only need a few key bugs in a few key IT systems to cause global difficulties.

Because of this difference in the nature of these bugs, it isn't really possible to have the same perspective from an embedded viewpoint as from an IT viewpoint. You can become very expert in the functions of every embedded system within your own operations, and still know almost nothing about those systems in other operations. Even the incidence of embedded problems in, say, your utility doesn't necessarily translate into the same (or even similar) incidence in some other utility. Embeddeds tend to be fairly unique.

(Footnote: Some off-the-shelf embedded systems are known to be widely used (for many purposes). When these have bugs, the practice has been for the manufacturer of such systems to notify customers to be on the lookout for them. In my experience, such notifications are NOT taken lightly or ignored)

In this respect, I tend to agree with Cory, and not with Shakey. I've written before about the "layer cake" nature of embeddeds, and how date bugs (if any) tend to exist at higher levels of the cake, where fixes take the form of software upgrades (on disk), rather than hardware replacement. Additionally, most embedded noncompliances have (upon investigation and testing) proven not to compromise the physical function of the device.

So as remediation has proceeded, the embedded problems in practice have been discovered to be far less than they were in theory. This does *not* by any means rule out locally severe problems (big explosions, toxic chemical leaks and the like). From what we've learned, we can be fairly certain that (1) these WILL happen; and (2) there won't be that many of them.

So to use a medical metaphor, IT bugs promise to be far more contagious. Again, I have never worked with IT systems. Like many here, I tend to fear most what I understand least. In theory, fixing (say) 90% of the embedded noncompliances cures 90% of such impacts, while fixing 90% of the IT problems has no such linear relationship. Testing is the key.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 29, 1999.

Close, Flint.

I posted an article to c.s.y2k. Cory decided to cut a piece of it out of the post, and reuse it in his WRP, where he added his own little, umm, comments.

What bothered me was that Cory never responded to the original post in c.s.y2k, nor to the followup after the WRP. Just seemed strange he thought it important enough to include in the WRP, but not to respond in a forum where an actual "dialogue", as opposed to a "monologue", could take place.

But hey, they're Cory's WRPs, and he can do what he wants. That's why I posted my response to his "challenge" here and on c.s.y2k, instead of submitting it for his WRP. Like I said, he can do what he wants. Doesn't mean I'll volunteer for the experience.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), July 29, 1999.

HOFFY!

That savaging of your "article" wasn't about you. It was about my mom's dog. Your article was just Y2K lead in to a mom-story. And by the way, mom thought it was a scream. I showed it to her and she howled with laughter.

Tell you what, drag it out of the archives, post it in a new thread and lets let TB2K vote on whether you were savaged or not, whether you or mom came out the worse, ask if anyone recalls your article at all or did they just remember the mom-story.

You can even let chicken, dino, vote several times.

Now pick yourself up and have at it.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net), July 29, 1999.

Cory, bud, didn't know I'd fallen.

For anyone interested, here's my original post on c.s.y2k:

http://x24.deja.com/=gh/[ST_rn=ps]/g etdoc.xp?AN=418057997&CONTEXT=933294887.1555497059&hitnum=15

And here's Cory's WRP:

http://www.sonnet.co.u k/muse/DCW-104.TXT

Anyway, like I said above, do what you want. They're your WRP's. But you never have answered why you decided not to address this post in c.s.y2k, instead of in the WRP, where I couldn't respond.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), July 29, 1999.

Tweedle Dee Dee, Tweedle Dum, now we have Hoffy and Flinto trying to figure it all out. This out to take a couple of gigabytes at least. Throw in an extra k ot two for those BIG words.

Your Pal, Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 29, 1999.

I hope everyone read both links.

What do you remember? Something about the appropriateness of testing in 1999 as the DeeCee government may be doing in a few months or mom and her dog?

For those of you who don't follow c.s.y2k, Tim Burke did a piece about how I was lucky that mom didn't decide I needed the bath. "cory will be so clean, so clean."

Anyway Hoffy, I think you're wrong about the testing but here in TB2K, I apologize for selectively quoting your article. It wasn't meant to put you in a bad light.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net), July 29, 1999.

And isn't it interesting how the Bobsy twins have come together in such a coordinated manner !! Oops almost forgot Chucko, are you out there?

Your Pal, Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 29, 1999.

Well, Cory, wasn't looking for an apology. I consider anything I post fair game, and public info, if you will.

It wasn't the selective quoting that bothered me as much as the choice of response medium.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), July 29, 1999.

Flint said: "number six:

I'm afraid Cory anticipated you and specifically disqualified me when he issued his challenge."

Oh ok, I didn't know about that. Still, It would be nice to see a competent optimistic global analysis, regardless of the technical speciality of the writer.

Ray, don't be a dickhead. Flint and Hoff both arrived on this thread because it covers an issue they're both involved in. No big deal. I don't know why you'd be hassling Chuck a.n.d. He's not one tenth the butthead Flint manages to sometimes be, he's actually quite cool. I think he has just been getting sick of you being inflammatory at every opportunity.

(I guess now I'm being inflammatory by saying Flint is a butthead. Well he IS!, but I shouldn't be saying that... I just need to establish common ground with Ray so he might listen and chill out.)

-- number six (Iam_not_a_number@hotmail.com), July 29, 1999.

Number Six, time grows short my friend, I can see you and Flinto and Hoffy filling up disk space with a bunch of BABBLE while WDC is trying to figure out how to pay their welfare recipients.

Time to move on my friend, take time to READ some of the posts made to this form lately,you might be enlightened.

Your Pal, Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 29, 1999.

Ray can't help being a dickhead, because, well, because he....Hey Ray, weren't you the "Oh my time is short, too short to spend time bickering, preps, preps, preps are what is important" guy? Why is it that you can find so much time to be an asshole when time is so short? Why aren't you on the prep forum? Why do you have so much time to argue when time is so fuckin short, huh Ray?

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), July 29, 1999.

Ray, I read nearly everything here. And while I can sometimes waste time yadda yadda-ing with the best of them, I still think that analysis is very useful for understanding what's about to go down. Probably more useful than most of your recent posts. I do understand that rather than analyse the issues, you might be inclined to yell "Y2K...AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" seeing as it is probably going to be disasterous. But lots of us have uncertainty as to how the cookie is going to crumble, and if you were to mellow out a bit it would help everyone to stay on topic and avoid flames.

fellow doomer,

-- number six (Iam_not_a_number@hotmail.com), July 29, 1999.

For what it's worth the article I submitted to Cory was published in one of his WRP's in it's entirety, not a word changed.

Flint as usual showed his true colours, and his lame "apology" (which wasn't even an apology, a pathetic attempt to change the subject) about sums the man up - Flint doesn't have the qualifications or knowhow to lick Cory's boots.

Amazing.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), July 30, 1999.