Reminds me of the "All Cretans are liars" tautology. On different threads yesterday, Flint and Hoff argued that anonymous reports are usually always bogus, although Flint and Hoff are anonymous themselves. Why shouldn't their conclusions then be just as suspect? The problem I have is that they seem to think we are supposed to disregard dozens of gloomy reports by folks who are too scared (and smart) to use their real names, yet we are supposed to believe reports by a single official of the FAA (NERC, FDIC, IRS, insert your favorite agency here) that claim everything's peachy. Don't they realize that in this society people are rewarded for toeing the party line and that folks who stick their necks out usually have their head chopped off? So the question is, is inferential analysis (throwing out all official reports and examining patterns in the ancillary data) accurate in the case of y2k or not?

-- a (a@a.a), September 02, 1999

Answers

I like your logic "a". We are all anonymous here, I don't know you and you do not know me. It's not the person, it's the message.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), September 02, 1999.

bardou: Do you mudwrestle?


-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), September 02, 1999.

1. Inferential analysis is the only way to go from here on in. Don't expect any more incriminating data for the next four months... After the rollover, we'll be inferring on overdrive, as Y2K failures will be smoked over like nobody's business.

2. Flint and Hoff are real people. I've forwarded NERC documents to both and have received real human replies.

3. I'm still not sure why Hoff is so passionately dedicated to deBunking everything over here, but he's the guy I'm gonna eat crow for if it's all a BITR, due to the tireless legwork he's done. I'm also befuddled by his habit of giving everybody who posts happy-faced data on their website the benefit of the doubt.

4. Flint is passionately dedicated because he simply loves debate, IMO.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), September 02, 1999.

KoS: Sounds like fun to me! I prefer red clay, it's real slippery.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), September 02, 1999.

a,

One of your fundamental assumptions here is wrong.

-- flora (***@__._), September 02, 1999.

Which one, flora? That they're both anonymous?

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), September 02, 1999.

Thanks, bardou!

Now see, if I were not annonymous, I would never have asked bardou, because knowing here, she might have decided instead to shoot me!!

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), September 02, 1999.

I meant, "knowing her", not "knowing here"...

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), September 02, 1999.

Lisa,

I think the faulty premise is that both of the posters are anonymous. I'm not sure about Hoffmeister, but I didn't have much trouble finding out that Flint C. is using his real name here. (Out of courtesy to Flint, I will refrain from writing just how easy that was to do).

-- RUOK (RUOK@yesiam.com), September 02, 1999.

This is one of those times when you're going to have to choose whether or not to accept information from an anonymous source. Sorry, I'm not going to elaborate.

-- flora (***@__._), September 02, 1999.

Oh, come on, flora, gimme a vowel?

I mean, hell, Poole was an anomymous source, and so was C4I.

I never personally outright discredit anonymous sources presenting plausible evidence... I set off to corroborate where possible.

We had one source, "busy @ the top" who was pretty good at dredging stuff up but then disappeared.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), September 02, 1999.

Flint C. and Hoffmeister are effectively anonymous. A hotmail account does not qualify. I have one, and I'll even tell you my real first name. That doesn't change my status as anonymous. To not be considered anonymous, you have to

- use your real name

- use your real company name

- use your actual job title

-- a (a@a.a), September 02, 1999.

I've got to laugh. I post using my real name and real e-mail address. Anyone who wants to can use one of the many people-finders to get a detailed map showing the exact location of my house, and I've even posted (several times) the contents of that house!

And someone posting as "a@a.a" has the brass balls to call me anonymous? Hoo haw! Well, doomer analysis all too often consists of wishing real real hard with your eyes shut. 'a' has the chutzpah to start a whole thread declaring a self-evident falsehood. Let's be generous and call this "questionable" sanity this time.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 02, 1999.

OK, flora, after a trip to the Xanax cabinet, I'm back.

"This is one of those times when you're going to have to choose whether or not to accept information from an anonymous source. Sorry, I'm not going to elaborate."

Hardly anybody here outright accepts information from Hoff (because he essentially cuts & pastes from official web pages, then proffers technically perfect arguments for his data), nor Flint (because we all know what his real position is and tire of listening to him argue with himself). That's why they stir up debates that go on for days and end up with even the level-headed regulars getting pissed off and throwing up their hands. No sale, either way.

I think we damned well realize that the answers we want (the ones that constitute a breach of national security should they jibe with our own expectations) will not be forthcoming from official sources, ever. So we read between the lines and perform IA.

Are you saying this forum tends to discount anonymous sources more than we should, or vice-versa???

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), September 02, 1999.

Wright on Cory...---...

-- Les (yoyo@tolate.com), September 02, 1999.

Lisa,

I admit to a guilty pleasure in watching most everything being ripped apart nine-ways-til-sunday here. I also was thinking it would be ironic if 'a' couldn't accept my anonymous information. Privacy has always been an issue for me, I felt that I had no right to detail any of the specifics about others.

Flint,

You've got a crazy streak that rivals any doomer's!

-- flora (***@__._), September 02, 1999.

Flint, one again you miss my point precisely, probably intentionally. What I said was, unless someone is speaking as a named source for company X, you and Hoff tend to dismiss the report out of hand. And cut the "brass balls" crap - you are just as anonymous as I am on this forum - we both have shared email with other folks here. In fact, you were one of the first ones I corresponded with! What difference does it make if I call myself 'a' or 'flint'? I guess I should have picked a flashy name like 'Hoffmeister' huh.

Now instead of ranting and raving to evade the issue, would you care to answer the question that is posed by this thread:

Is inferential analysis accurate in the case of y2k or not?

-- a (a@a.a), September 02, 1999.

Wright on Cory...---...

-- Les (yoyo@tolate.com), September 02, 1999.

Lisa, I admit to a guilty pleasure in watching most everything being ripped apart nine-ways-til-sunday here. I also was thinking it would be ironic if 'a' couldn't accept my anonymous information. Privacy has always been an issue for me, I felt that I had no right to detail any of the specifics about others.

Thanks, everyone, for all the kind vowels. I'd like to solve the puzzle now.

Flora is Cory who 'a' resonates with entirely. (Me too.)

But that can't be true, since Cory is nowhere near a private person.

OK, who has archives of flora's contributions? Diane? Linkmeister?

-- lisa (cramp@hurl.spasm_twitch), September 02, 1999.

lisa,

I don't know who Les is, I thought that post may have been thrown on this thread by mistake. Don't get excited, I'm basically a technologically challenged nobody who enjoys reading this forum when I get the chance. I've corresponded with a few here, and thought about referring you to some who might vouch for me. Then I got to thinking, and it didn't seem right that I should cave into some kind of weird peer pressure if this is really a forum that respects anonymity.

-- flora (***@__._), September 02, 1999.

a, I'm terribly sorry to OT your thread.

You already know this, but I'll take a stab at why neither Flint nor Hoff acknowledge IA as rational on the part of the doomers:

Hoff thinks we all enjoy the doom life (and therefore defensively resort to IA in the face of all the "empirically" positive evidence), for some reason, and Flint hasn't the innate cynicism necessary to understand what IA is or why it would be useful, let alone a credible approach.

-- ok (lisa@work.now), September 02, 1999.

Sorry Lisa, but once again I disagree with your logic. Maybe the intent of the forum should be spelled out, because I apparently missed something. I find this board to be a tremendous educational experience EVERY DAY. I enjoy the debate between the two camps in this issue and must admit that I think the doom camp outnumbers the pollys tenfold. Nonetheless, Flint and Hoff are a breath of fresh air, regardless of their anonymity.

Honestly, who really cares? This whole thread reminds me of teenagers having an argument. What's next, 'my dad is stronger than your dad'.?

Regards.

-- Bad Company (johnny@shootingstar.com), September 02, 1999.

Hey, Bad, I love Hoff and Flint too....

As to a's question: what's your opinion as to the efficacy of inferential analysis?

-- rebel souls, deserters we are called.. (lisa@work.now), September 02, 1999.

Well since no one will answer my question, I guess I'll have at it.

Around here we have a saying: A rumor is just a rumor until you've heard it from a secretary.

-- a (a@a.a), September 02, 1999.

'a', in a way you're correct.

My opinion on what Y2k is and is not is based on my experience.

But, as lisa so "nicely" put it, I don't base my arguments here on statements based solely on what I've seen. I try to base them on publicly available information.

You can believe my opinions, or not. Usually, you can get a general feel for someones overall experience over the course of postings, anonymous or not. But I don't base my arguments solely, or even mostly, on my personal experiences or opinions.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), September 02, 1999.

Well, remember the crow promise, Hoff.

Hell, I'm halfway in a position to persuade this HMO to buy the HR module of R/3. Ever been to Austin? Bring the wife.. :=}

-- lisa (lisa@glurg.burgle), September 02, 1999.

Lisa, from what I've seen of HR, it's not something I'd get into. Lots of cluster tables, real pain in the rear to work with.

Might be in Austin for other reasons, though. Doesn't another large, three-letter corporation have a somewhat large facility there?

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), September 02, 1999.

Hoff: a bunch of large companies are running it here. Tivoli, bought by big blue, even rolled it out not too long ago. SD, and FI, I believe. Dell was considering it but somehow proved it couldn't handle the transactional volume.

They even have a tech support branch downtown.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), September 02, 1999.

'a':

Yes, certainly I believe inferential analysis has its place. Specific statements contradicting the overwhelming preponderance of evidence ought properly to be suspect.

In the case of y2k, if the evidence is preponderantly anything at all, it's ambiguous. Some outfits are in excellent shape, others are in terrible shape. Most are in some unknowable shape, at least to you and me. The number of severe bugs that will strike can't be estimated very well, and the impacts of those bugs, in terms of quality, quantity, and duration, are guesswork.

I mentioned once before talking with two remediators where I work. These two work side by side on the same stuff every day. And one of them expected very little to go wrong with the very code they work with, while the other feared for the continued viability of the company. (Since then, a whole battery of fairly exhaustive (and successful) testing has calmed down the worrier).

NOW, for a while, the official company position (to customers and regulators) is that we're in great shape, while this anonymous remediator would have said we were in serious deep shit. And who should be believed? When I spoke with this guy the other day, I asked how things had improved so much in only six months or so. He explained that they really hadn't accomplished all that much in 6 months, but he had WAY overestimated the bug impacts. There are just as many y2k bugs in the code today as he'd feared (he tells me), but in testing they turn out not to be nearly so devastating as he'd feared. Most of them don't seem to get hit often, and those that do are quite easy to identify and quick and easy to fix properly.

I'm sure that in some organizations, testing is not going very well at all. In others, it might be touch and go. Conditions and situations vary within fairly wide extremes. I don't have any problem understanding this.

The anonymous reports are not "dismissed out of hand" as you say. You are attempting to force any given report into either the nonsense or the gospel pigeonhole. Yet you ought to see that every source needs to be weighted, assigned some reliability factor. And the question becomes, how should this factor be derived?

From reading your allegations, and your pressing the policy of "inferential analysis", it seems you are often faced with two types of statements:

(1) Statements you agree with, although you don't know where they came from or what they're based on;

(2) Statements you disagree with, attributed to real, identifiable people and organizations, often backed with hard numbers and multiple witnesses.

So your "inferential analysis", while not a useless tool if properly handled, runs the risk of becoming no more than a pseudosophisticated way of saying "anything that agrees with me is valid BECAUSE it agrees with me." And this is an easy trap to fall into, as you have demonstrated so well on several topics.

To me, inferential analysis indicates very clearly that a lot of organizations will experience a lot of bugs. It also indicates that a lot of organizations are *already* experiencing big problems, mostly with implementation pains or major upgrades. Even some testing has caused problems here and there for various reasons, and can be expected to continue to cause problems.

What Hoffmeister and I are trying to do is get you to resist the temptation to discount thousands of 'official' statements in favor of a single rumor (or a few rumors), however much that rumor agrees with your own limited experience or general expectations. We are trying to get you to understand that if you choose to discount or ignore (for whatever reason) everything you disagree with, then *what's left* becomes your "inference environment", however unrealistic this may be. This is like determining the public attitude about gun control by talking only to members of Gun Owners of America. Hoff and I are trying (very unsuccessfully) to get you to see that this is not a good random sample of the general public with respect to this issue.

Fortunately, your position amounts to a prediction. In a year or less, you might be big enough to look around and try to figure out just how you could have gone so terribly wrong about what y2k would bring. And I believe you can do this, whereas of your heroes, Hamasaki will simply say, "well, I always said I was clueless", and Milne will claim he was right, or more likely just vanish.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 02, 1999.

Flint: You and Hoff may very well be right. I have noticed that as we get closer to y2k, I am having "pangs" where I feel I may have overreacted. But I really think that its because the temporal "buffer zone" is washing away, and emotionally I do not want to contemplate what I felt was so inevitable just several months ago (keep in mind I'm talking about a depression here, not Armageddon). That and the SPIN, which I feel vastly overwhelmed the HYPE a long time ago.

The same problems lie ahead of us, it just seems that the timeline that unfold under will be longer than expected (which will probably be a good thing). But I think we are all desensitized, like the frog in the boiling water (notice Andy didn't even post a thread about the 200+ point DOW drop today?) And that's the only way I can explain folks like Charles Ruben going from a 8.5 to a 0.9 in less than a year: the evidence just does not support such a waver.

Speaking of "pangs" how's the nicotine detoxification program going?

-- a (a@a.a), September 02, 1999.

Hmmm... I have used my real name and email address from Day One. I ventured to the Y2K gathering in Virginia and met several folks in person. In addition, I've invited anyone to email me if they feel inclined to visit. (Ask Flint for an assessment of my willingness to host guests). Up until this point, I have declined to give my specific job title and employer (though both changed recently). Nor have I chosen to divulge what I consider personal information (although I continue correct the misconception that I live in the greater DC area.) So, "a," care to stop by?

Regards,

-- Mr. Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), September 02, 1999.

'a':

I think that although there's no question a LOT of spin, that hiding behind that spin is a combination of a lot of remediators making a lot of progress, and an overestimation of the overall impact of software date mishandling in the first place. But also I think CPR has polarized himself, and now sees himself as the fearless leader of the Reformed Church of Y2K Sanity.

As for the Dow, I forget who it was (DD, maybe?) who collected Milne's rants on every market drop ("Here it is. This is the Big One. You're All Gonna Die Now"). Then after about a year or more, posted them all at once (about 6 of them), pointing out that Milne had *never once* uttered a peep when the market went back up, and that the market was 2,000 points! above where it was when Milne started announding TEOTW on every drop. Milne never did it again [grin].

And remember that poll in csy2k in fall 1998 about how far the market would drop by (I think) somewhere in January 1999? Only Don Scott predicted the market would rise, and he was conservative -- the market rose more than he expected.

And for this, Don Scott got ridiculed, spat on, laughed at, and called every name everyone could think of. When Don Scott turned out to be right and everyone else was hilariously wrong, there was NOT ONE word about that poll, much less any apology to Don Scott.

Oh yes, what was that about spin?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 02, 1999.

'a':

Also, since you ask, it's been one month today since my last cigarette. I think the needles are slowly being withdrawn from my joints, though some days are still very painful. And of course the craving is still there, and sometimes I think it's just wearing me down. At first I was a full of determination, but determination fades a whole lot faster than the withdrawal happens, so now it's like having a full bladder all the time, and you must use sheer will power not to relieve yourself, assuming that maybe it'll go away after a while. And your body never for a moment lets you forget about it!

There are days when I actually hope to come down with some other fatal and incurable disease so that at least I can smoke while I'm waiting to die, and it'll be worth it!

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 02, 1999.

Flint: LOL - good description of your cold turkey.

As for the DOW, it defies all known logic. I don't recall Milne every painting himself into a corner on the DOW predictions; he always seems to leave weasel room. However, he has put himself behind the prediction eightball lately and has flat out said that when DOW hits 10250, the top will have been cut out and its over. He says if yen/dollar goes below 109, same thing. We'll see.

Now. The problem I have with your type of optimism is the same as always, you're assuming that because things will be manageable here (which is an big unknown IMO), when all shit breaks loose overseas it will be contained there. I see a very real possibility, in fact a good probability, that we will see an ever widening unwinding of the economy, society, and the infrastructure as next year progresses. People will be fooled, thinking the worst is over, and "things" will have just begun (as an example, look at how the pollies think that because its Sept and there is no rioting in the streets, the worst is over). Yourdon described this effect in his letter to Paula Gordon, citing how the failure of the USG to accept what was happening in the 30's exacerbated the situation.

30% chance of recession. 50% chance of depression. 20% "something worse". Get over it.

-- a (a@a.a), September 02, 1999.

'a':

Yes, I think we've nailed it here. From a purely technical viewpoint, y2k really isn't that threatening. Yes, things will go wrong. But if the managerial and political classes can just sit on their hands while the nerds and the engineers fix the damn problems (or at least find viable workarounds), we'll make it through OK.

The political response is the real imponderable. I agree with Yourdon that the USG adopted the worst possible policies during the Depression. While I grant that the Japanese response to their problems hasn't been any miracle cure, the living standards in Japan haven't nosedived like they did here in the Depression.

If politicians respond with terrible policies, prohibitive tariffs, attempts at price freezing, special-interest legislation etc. then they could kill the economy at any time, y2k or not. Whether y2k will inspire them to start pissing in the soup, I can't guess. I hope not, but my world is much brighter than yours seems to be, on the whole. I see politicians as acting in enlightened self-interest, and not simply stupid and venal. I see people as generally helpful and positive and patient, so the world is a pleasant place by and large. So I expect y2k to be more the source of jokes and cheerful fatalism, than desperatiion or anger. Provided it doesn't go on too long. But people didn't riot for a decade during the Depression, and I expect that kind of response again. Human nature doesn't change.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), September 02, 1999.

Ohmigosh! "a" has shown a little bit of a polly turn here. Maybe now you'll understand that pollies aren't really pollies in real life.

And for those of you who know my history of alleged "trolling" maybe now you'll understand that many times people behave that way out of a desire to remain anonymous and let their ideas stand on their own.

-- Buddy (buddydc@go.com), September 02, 1999.

It all depends on where you are in the food chain. You are or are not "at risk" when you post.

If you post reality-you-have-experienced-which-is-not-good, you likely are at risk (even if you are the CEO of a large company - think about the stock implications). In this case, if you think it is important to have the information "out there", and you are smart, you will post anonymously.

Therefore, I trust direct experience posted anonymously, much more than official spin. Although, there is a certain amount of false experience (lies) posted anonomously on this board, but usually it is clearly BS.

Conjecture and all this doomer polly stuff is only good for tracking how the "herd" is or is going to react IMHO, so it doesn't matter how that is posted.

-- ng (cantprovideemail@none.com), September 03, 1999.