Ice-9 was a factor in a novel by Vonnegut. This author compares it to the problem of imported data.

I have said for over two years that this is the Achilles heel, the unsolvable problem. It is rarely discussed because of this.

This is from COMPUTERWORLD (Aug. 2).

* * * * * * * * * * *

In Kurt Vonnegut's book Cat's Cradle, the story revolves around a substance called Ice-9, a form of water that freezes at room temperature. By its nature, if it gets loose from the test tube, it will spread -- to puddles, to ponds, to rivers and finally oceans, until all the water on the planet is locked up in crystalline form. It's an end-of-the-world scenario.

What got me thinking about Ice-9 is some preliminary data I've seen from a recent International Data Corp. (IDC) survey of 1,000 North American companies on their Y2K preparations. It looks pretty good. As of March, less than 4% of companies hadn't started their Y2K work, and less than 2% expected to miss the Jan. 1 deadline. About a third of the companies had already finished testing or were Y2K-compliant.

Enter Ice-9. In the Y2K world, the Ice-9 equivalent is the Y2K bug imported from outside your organization. Your company may be Y2K-compliant, but what about the companies with which you share data or applications? Over half the surveyed companies shared data with others, with companies in banking, finance, transportation, communications and health care particularly wired. Those aren't the industries we want to go down on Jan. 1.

There is actually a quantification of the likelihood of importing Y2K problems from the outside world. Called the Beach-Oleson Pain Index, after its authors, Gary Beach (publisher of CIO magazine and former Computerworld president) and Tom Oleson (IDC's Y2K expert), it relies on the number of external connections as well as the number and type of applications connected. Large companies with complex systems environments, thousands of applications and hundreds of suppliers and business partners have the highest probability of importing problems. (They're also probably spending the most to prevent Y2K problems.)

In the latest survey, the probability of the average company importing a "catastrophic" Y2K problem is less than 0.2%. And even the probability of importing a "business-critical" bug is under 5%. Most of our imported problems will simply be annoying or embarrassing.

Those are pretty good odds. But there's one area the Beach-Oleson Pain Index doesn't address, and that's the geography of those external connections.

From all accounts, Y2K compliance around the world varies tremendously by country. In another IDC survey of 15,000 companies in 15 countries conducted in December, only 8% of respondents in developed countries expected to miss the Jan. 1 deadline with their Y2K fixes. That number was 61% in emerging countries. Clearly, if you are sharing an application or getting a critical data feed from a power plant in Russia or a mining company in Micronesia, your "pain index" may be much higher than the average.

Alas, the first survey I mentioned indicates that one of the last areas for Y2K testing is the data feeds from outside the company. Less than a third have one for testing external data feeds.

Ice-9 was fiction. Y2K problems brought in from the outside aren't. . . .

link at

http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/all/990802B

via garynorth.com imported data file

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), August 14, 1999

Answers

With Ice-9, if a solution is found then it is a silver bullet - it would work in nearly all cases like an antidote does in medicine. As we all know, that is not the case with Y2K.

As far a imported data, Ice-9 seems far worse. Since water is even more widespread and homogenous than computer systems, the Ice-9 situation could get out of hand in a matter of days, possibly even hours. It would be detected immediately. With computer systems, it would probably take much longer to "infect" other systems, with varying degrees of severity, and not necessarily detected in a timely manner (i.e., discover problem the day after your last good backup was overwritten - don't ya hate it when that happens).

-- Jim (x@x.x), August 14, 1999.

And a very timely article on (yet another) data importation problem appears today on Gary North's www.garynorth.com web site:

Hong Kong Official Fears Imported Bad Data

Once you understand the implications of what imported non-compliant Y2K data can do to an otherwise Y2K compliant system, and thus why that "full year of testing" really was needed to proof out external interfaces, you realize why the pollyanna position is to deny, deny, deny that the problem exists. The imported data problem really, truly demonstrates that the situation is hopeless!

Y2K CANNOT BE FIXED!

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), August 14, 1999.

Ahhhh, I have arrived. My namehas been mentioned in a thread title. Let me pause to put a bungie cord around my head, to keep it from swelling too much.....

There, I'm assuming, Andy, that you expect me to disagree with you. I do and I don't. As the joke goes, I'm not a computer expert, but I play one, on TV, but I do know enough to know that imported data, is nothing to take lightly.

On the other hand, it's the prediction of exactly what corrupt data will do, that sparks the controversy. Could be a 10, could be a 2, hell, it could be a 40, for all I or any of the rest of us know.

Don't think for a minute that because I take jabs at some of the conspiracy theories floated about on the board that I'm not preparing. I don't think it's necessary for the Illuminati, or the U.N. or the Russians to be out to get "us", for there to be a problem, next year. We've done a fine job of creating our own problems. My objection to said conspiracy theories is A) Reality is usually more mundane than that and B) It makes all of us who are preparing for disaster look like a bunch of whackos, and does a lot to keep the Pollies solidly in the Polly camp. It's unconstructive effluvium and I would love nothing better than for "Conspiracy Theory" to get it's own board and those posts kept away from here.

The best reason to prepare for Y2K, has nothing to do with Y2K. Look at what happened in Salt Lake City. Because the Mormons stress such preparedness, they were able to mobilize quickly to alleviate the suffering and restore normality. Everybody should stockpile, for disasters.

The other point to the novel "Cat's Cradle", that is getting missed here, is that the end of the world comes suddenly, without expectations, not because of some obvious problem that everybody would prepare for, but because of some quirky little experiment that no one, but a handfull of misfits knew anything about. Vonnegutt's assertion in this book and in other works, is that the best and brightest of us, on a good day, with a favorable wind, and the right humidity level, might have half a clue (but never more than that) as to what's really going on. Our so called intelligence is just so much hubris. We are clever apes, with clever toys, and that is all.

Take me to task about my Y2K views, if you want, but OOoooooooooo, don't ever take me to task on Vonnegutt, especially on "Cat's Cradle". I can cite chapter and verse the way most Fundy's can quote the Bible ;-)

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), August 14, 1999.

I have long thought that humans were like icebergs with respect to what proportion of their behavior ON THE AVAERAGE was rational and consciously motivated. (Some are substantially above 10%, while many, alas, are observably below it). Bokonon, you are obviously well-informed, and your thoughts make a lot of good sense. Please post more often.

www.y2ksafeminnesota.com (new stuff)

-- MinnesotaSmith (y2ksafeminnesota@hotmail.com), August 14, 1999.

Really, Jack, maybe you should start actually reading the articles Gary posts, instead of relying on his spin.

This post, for example. For the life of me, I can't find any reference to "imported data" in the whole article. It does discuss potential problems with goods and services from external sources.

Maybe you could point me to the pertinent part of the article that actually discusses imported data?

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), August 14, 1999.

Thanks for the compliments, Minnesota. It's always nice to hear that I'm not just moving hot air around, figuratively speaking.

If I posted anymore, though, I wouldn't have a life. I type at warp factor-Sludge, you see(G).

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja. com), August 14, 1999.

You are right, Hoffmeister, even though in fact I did read the article, it never actually uses the d word. It just quotes the guy as worrying that Y2K compliant systems are in danger of "catching the potentially disasterous computer glitch" from trading partners.

I should have realized that there are many ways for a Y2K compliant system to "catch" the Y2K computer glitch in addition to bad data. Toilet seats, for example. Or shaking hands with a network protocol that has not washed its hands. Gosh, there must be dozens of ways!

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), August 14, 1999.

multiple italics off

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), August 14, 1999.