Hoffy: As for the "main gist of this entire thread" being to smear Ed and Cory, truly laughable. Scroll up to the top, B-D. The "main gist" of this thread was to be a "smear job" on me. I won't apologize for defending myself.

Yes and no Hoffy. You've gotten yourself twisted around the axle. In this case, you may be right, it could be worse than I thought. In my experience, IT shops are very careful about running old and new systems in parallel. You've claimed otherwise and several super-doomers support your perspective, Rob and DD both cited situations where IT disasters could have been prevented.

You have made an excellent case for a disaster in 78 days. This isn't a "smear"; perhaps that's not what you intended; good or bad, if shops are cavalier about running parallel, they will have problems.

I'll still advise my clients to run parallel. An old system that swamped a 3084 multi-million dollar mainframe will run fine on a twenty thousand dollar deskside micro-mainframe. I've got one right here, it runs MVS.

Maria: data processing. No functionality changes. You don't need to process twice when all you've changed is from a YY to a CCYY (and with windowing not even a CC). Parallel processing doesn't prove that remediated code works any better. You can't partition your mainframe or midrange to operate with two separate clocks. Can't be done. If remediated code goes back into production (a cold cut over), you'll know right away if things aren't processing correctly. Most companies take baselines to prove the output data

Yes and no, you can partition a mainframe into LPARs, this is a technology that is widely used for Time Machine testing. I don't know about middies but those things are so cheap and small that you might as well buy an extra one for parallel operation if the system is mission critical.

We're not talking about just the case of expanding a few fields. Some firms fell for the siren song of "new, improved, more functionality" and are attempting to implement more complex systems.

In the last couple days, we've heard about two failures, the Nevada DMV and the Rob's Netherland's Tax system. Even though we still have 78 days, it's already happening.

It doesn't matter any more who thinks they're right or who argues best. The failures are happening, they're happening in the open, and they're not fixing them in, oh, 2 or 3 hours.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net), October 14, 1999

Answers

We changed over, New computers, new software, all Y2K compliant.

We are down. Email, Mails to the wrong client.

We reboot WIN98 at least 3 times a day on each machine.

No parallel processing here, just bugs bugs bugs.....HELP!

-- It (Is@failing.now), October 14, 1999.

It doesn't matter any more who thinks they're right or who argues best. The failures are happening, they're happening in the open, and they're not fixing them in, oh, 2 or 3 hours.

Thanks Cory. Your patience is amazing...but they'll never get it until it's too late and by then it just wont matter anymore.

The time for debate has long since past...the time to act is now.

Mike

==================================================================

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), October 15, 1999.

Phoole says Cory and BigDog are modern shop wannabes!!!!!!

http://stand77.com/wwwboard/messages/1623.html

-- you (wont@believe.this), October 15, 1999.

77 days.

Y2K CANNOT BE FIXED!

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.~net), October 15, 1999.

"The time for debate has long since past...the time to act is now.

Mike"

Ergo the heightened Doomer media frenzy, and the continued debate.

All of the predicted Doom dates have come and gone with maybe half a hiccup; all seasoned observers agree that 70+% of Y2k events have already occurred (and what a big woop they've been, huh).

Cory Hamasaki's predictions have been perhaps the biggest flops of all. Anyone supporting anything he says just shows their inability to grasp present reality as it is.

The world doesn't run solely on mainframes any more. And there is such a thing as a 'workaround'. If Mr. Know-It-All Hamasaki doesn't think so, I would invite him to come and talk to some utilities engineers in eastern North Carolina, who just went through one of the most Herculean electrical engineering efforts ever known to man, and who came through mainly with flying colors, given the odds.

It's easy to sit on the sidelines and theorize. We've got the real-life proof, right here, about how people can deal with a disaster. Cory, you don't know crap, son.

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), October 15, 1999.

"We've got the real-life proof"

You're pretty funny Chicken Little. You've got proof that Joe Sixpack can string wires from a cherry-picker, and John Q. can run a post-hole digger. What does this have to do with computers?

Proof? Of what?

Come on genius, tell me!

Tick... Tock... <:00=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), October 15, 1999.

didn't realize you were that ignorant, Sys...

but you just dug your own hole, now didn't ya

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), October 15, 1999.

(spelling it out for Sysman, who seems to have been whupped in the head with a dummy stick)

One of the paramount claims of Doomers from Day One has been that the delivery of electricity is at risk due to the fact that the delivery of electricity is so dependent on COMPUTERS, which are at risk due to Y2k.

But according to you, delivery of electricity in eastern North Carolina is dependent merely upon the fact that "Joe Sixpack can string wires from a cherry-picker, and John Q. can run a post-hole digger."

So which is it, genius?

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), October 15, 1999.

Just a minor question Chicken Little, I'm just a little curious.

I read somewhere that the entire state?/area? has been declared a disaster area for the next 6 months.

Is this indeed true or is absolutely everything running all back to normal like it was before the Hurricane hit? Also why would they declare it as a disaster area for 6 months if everything is fine now?

I'm just a little confused and if everything is back to normal then all I have to say is that I would agree with you that we will not have any problems with Y2K. Also well done to all those people in your state that have gotten everything running again in such a short period of time.

Regards, Simon Richards

-- Simon Richards (simon@wair.com.au), October 15, 1999.

Simon,

You've read true stuff. The nation at large has no clue how bad it is down here. People in the western part of the state have just a foggy idea. The environmental damage is monumental. I know 3rd-and-4th-generation farmers who say this thing has driven them slam out of business forever...they'll have to find other ways to make a living. Same with commercial fishermen. We're nowhere close to 'back to normal'. It will be months, for some people years.

Not whining. Just stating the facts.

And ANYbody who lives here can tell you that Y2k will be something we can deal with. ANYBODY. You people have seen it on TV. What you've seen on TV is, like, a tenth of what's really gone on. Some of my old high school buddies who live in the mountains, and up near D.C., when I e-mailed them about what was going on here, they were totally shocked. Had seen it on TV, but my first-hand accounts totally blew them away. (Won't go into details.)

Suffice it to say, this situation has separated the men from the boys. I'm a man. Those who continue to whine about Y2k are boys. Hate to have to put it that way, but those are the facts.

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), October 15, 1999.

but...Simon & Sys....

the electronic infrastructure is holding together just fine.

The problem here is mainly environmental, due to catastrophic flooding. A situation which a computer glitch can never cause, and never will cause, dontcha know.

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), October 15, 1999.

The pollies are still missing the point.

Yes, most of us in the forum are in North America. The climate in the U.S. is temperate. The East Coast isn't a desert. Lost children have survived overnights in the woods in the winter; that doesn't mean that the computer systems will survive the rollover.

The 1920's were a time of great promise, technological growth and innovation. The stock market crash marked the end of an era. After 1929, all the happy-talk, all the chicken-cluckin', all the bold, decisive Koski-esque government programs failed to relight the economy.

It didn't matter that the U.S. had lots of natural resources in 1930, 31, 32, 33. The depression still raged and some believe that the economic problems initiated World War II.

Something was fundamentally wrong then. Something is fundamentally wrong now. Chicken and the de-bunk-hard-heads miss the basic issue. Software is already failing in strange and wonderful ways. If they choose to ignore the reports in the press, good for them.

You gotta wonder though, how many pollies are left. You gotta love the pollies.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net), October 15, 1999.

Hey Chicken...

So let's say that a computerized sewage treatment plant fails to detect that a valve it opened really didn't open and the result is several million gallons of raw sewage dumped in the city's park (ala Van Nuys, CA)

Let's also conjecture that faulty monitoring equipment presents the operators of a nuclear power plant with conflicting information about an abnormal but relatively benign problem in the core. The inaccurate information causes those same operators to make some bone headed moves that result in a significant release of radiation into the environment (ala Three Mile Island)

Are these not environmental disasters for the people close enough to be adversely affected? How could you ever make the assertion that a computer problem has never and will never create an environmental disaster?

-- Chris Tisone (c_tisone@hotmail.com), October 15, 1999.

Software is already failing in strange and wonderful ways.

I believe that was the point of the "de-bunk-hard-heads." Good to see that you agree with them.

-- (blah@blah.blah), October 15, 1999.

who IS this guy chicken little? obviously not an IT person. if he's a comedian .. he better change professions.

lou

-- lou (lanny1@ix.netcom.com), October 15, 1999.

In the immortal words of Ricky Ricardo...

"Lucy, you got some 'splainin to do"

Cory, let's review here:

My original point was just what you now agree with: that failures are happening now, and have been happening, do to the massive number of system replacements in the past year. And that the rate of these errors is at least comparable to the expected error rate at rollover, while the severity is in many cases greater.

Your original response was that these past and current risks and failures were not comparable to Y2k, because "parallel" systems were always used. That these "parallel" systems were not an option for failures due to Y2k, since the old systems were not Y2k compliant.

You now claim Y2k will be worse because "parallel" systems aren't used?

How can that be, Cory? Parallel systems were never an option for Y2k errors. Whether or not they are used is immaterial for Y2k.

The point is, Cory, failures have been happening. No, not all errors are fixed in oh, 2 or 3 hours. These errors haven't been fixed by reverting to "parallel" systems, because in the vast majority of cases "parallel" systems didn't exist. But they're dealt with, all the same. Civilization hasn't collapsed. Some people have been inconvenienced, to a greater or lesser degree. But there's been absolutely no evidence of "systemic, cross-cascading" failures.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), October 15, 1999.

Chicken-

As a WNC resident who took a truckload of food down to Tarboro a week ago, I can attest to the stamina and strength of our Eastern NC brethren in digging out of the aftermath of Floyd. I can, however, also speak to the level of exhaustion shown by those volunteers in the Disaster Relief Center in the old Food Lion in Tarsboro, to their fears (last week) of the first night open without National Guard providing security, and to their frustration of dealing with slow moving FEMA warehouses in Rocky Mount(I got in with a 3/4 ton truck load of meat and fruit from Asheville FASTER than FEMA responded to an order for the warehouse 20 miles away).

My point in this is that the ENC folks are making out OK, WITH alot of outside help (as it should be). My concern for them and everyone else, is that if Y2K represents significant disruptions to multiple areas (if not everywhere simultaneously), from whence, other than Our Lord, will help be coming?

-- Paul Urquhart (paulurquhart@worldnet.att.net), October 15, 1999.

Hoff -- How did cascading failures become the "bar" for bad Y2K impacts? Did I miss Cory asserting this?

He seems to be saying that if his assumption that parallel operating strategies is common is wrong, it leads HIM to believe that things will be worse than he otherwise feared. THAT statement may be right, wrong or sideways, but it sure seems like a simple opinion that can be checked for accuracy within the next six months.

As for cascading failures, the Herstatt supposition, while just that, is certainly unsettling and argues for rethinking of the arguments that you, Andy and myself had. The people suggesting this have enough credibility of some sort that the U.S. government is paying attention. My reading of their white paper did not indicate people with a negative biased bent towards fractional banking or derivatives. Quite the opposite.

It's been entertaining to discover here that Chicken Little is a man and not .... a .... chicken. As usual, the canard seems to be that people here literally expect some world to end. What's going to happen? Is the earth going to spin out of orbit or something? I missed that one. Of course, we'll make it through Y2K. Of course, people will adapt and help one another in unexpected ways. But to consider the NC result a positive analogy to Y2K? Now, THERE is weird thinking. Yeah, let's have a 100 NC's! We'll prove how right we were about Y2K having minimal impact! And about how no one needed to prepare for it!

I'll make one final (irenic?) comment. The world of IT is huge. Our various worlds (mainframe thru PC; MVS through MacOS; custom through packaged apps through spreadsheet jockeying) intersect only partially. Then throw embeddeds in. No one "GI's" the whole thing -- not Yourdon, Capers Jones, Hoff, Cory, me, etc. And I'm excluding the management dimension, the cultural-political-PR dimension, etc. And this is just IT!

Our understanding of computation is still very raw after 40 years. We won't know until 2001 at the earliest what REALLY happened computationally with Y2K. Hoffy's function point analysis will be an interesting back referent. So will Cory's (and my) hypothesis that the world is STILL run fundamentally by big iron that demanded a specific kind of Y2K feeding that it didn't receive. I've never believed Hoffy IS saying that "mainframes don't matter", for example. Nor do I believe Cory is ignorant of the positive as well as the negative dimension of 90s changes to computing. Heck, he refers to the benefits of those changes FOR running things in parallel (low cost) in this very thread.

We all agree that things are failing in wondrous ways. We disagree about how much WILL still fail over the next six months and how long it will take to fix those failures.

Plus ca change ......

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), October 15, 1999.

He seems to be saying that if his assumption that parallel operating strategies is common is wrong, it leads HIM to believe that things will be worse than he otherwise feared. THAT statement may be right, wrong or sideways, but it sure seems like a simple opinion that can be checked for accuracy within the next six months.

Exactly the source of at least my confusion, BigDog.

Cory originally stated Y2k would be worse than errors today because parallel systems were used today, but wouldn't be available at rollover.

He now states Y2k will be worse because parallel systems are not used today, even though they still won't be an option at rollover, and never were.

It appears to me at least that no matter what information is presented, Cory uses it to claim Y2k will be worse. Even when the assumption or information is changed by 180 degrees.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), October 15, 1999.

Hoff, Cory is just a bullshit artist (or maybey artiste').

-- Jon (Jon@home.now), October 15, 1999.

I'm not sure if this is exactly what I said but for the sake of discussion, let's go with Hoffy's A. "Cory originally stated Y2k would be worse than errors today because parallel systems were used today, but wouldn't be available at rollover."

Or B. "He now states Y2k will be worse because parallel systems are not used today, even though they still won't be an option at rollover, and never were."

The point is, put very simply, if there is a way to do the work, we're in better shape than if there isn't. Either A or B. There's no way to do the work.

A was my original point. B. was Hoffy's. For some odd reason, Hoffy is mad because after he made his case for B., I agreed with him.

I don't get it. Hoffy, you're right, it's worse than I thought.

In any case, I have the transcripts from the last WDC Y2K meetings. It's interesting how mainstream the GI perspective is. I'll format them this weekend. Sorry for the delay.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net), October 15, 1999.

I don't get it. Hoffy, you're right, it's worse than I thought.

How is it "worse" than you thought?

Are you saying you "thought" running the old systems in "parallel" over the rollover was a viable work-around?

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), October 15, 1999.

Cory:

Let's see if I've got this now. The question is, Have we already suffered through the worst of the y2k problems, everything considered.

Cory: No. The worst is still to come.

Hoffmeister: Yes. The worst is behind us.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), October 15, 1999.

My original point was just what you now agree with: that failures are happening now, and have been happening, do to the massive number of system replacements in the past year. And that the rate of these errors is at least comparable to the expected error rate at rollover, while the severity is in many cases greater.

Ah, yes. An error is an error is an error. A problem is a problem is a problem. A failure is a failure is a failure. They're all the same!!!!! So, the effects are all the same!!!!! No matter when, no matter how, no matter what, no matter why.

Right? :-)

-- Lane Core Jr. (elcore@sgi.net), October 15, 1999.

No, Lane. "Greater" is different from "the same". Please read before mocking, so that people can connect your distortions with what you are distorting. Otherwise, your effect is lost.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), October 15, 1999.

Just noticed Cory quoted me. Oh Im so honored. But somehow his answer was a little off base, Yes and no, you can partition a mainframe into LPARs, this is a technology that is widely used for Time Machine testing.

No shit Cory partitioning widely used for testing. You said it Cory testing, not parallel processing. There is a difference. Now let me be clear, Time Machine testing is not the same as using two different clocks. Cory, system clock can not be partitioned, one clock for one partition and another system clock for another partition. It doesnt happen that way. The time machine is a tool which doesnt change the system clock. So are we talking testing or parallel processing? Which is it, Cory? Make up your mind.

I don't know about middies but those things are so cheap and small that you might as well buy an extra one for parallel operation if the system is mission critical.

What good does that do? Split the incoming messages to one midrange running on a current system clock and one midrange running on a Y2K system clock. If the data are time sensitive, the future system will blow. What does that prove? Cory do you know what parallel processing is?

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), October 15, 1999.

While I'm at it...

Lane the effects from an error are different from the effects of a problem are different from the effects of a failure. An eoorro (oops I just made one) have minimal effects. The effects of a problem could have various workarounds and solutions. Failure effect have more dire consequences. Please have an understanding of the English language if you intend to use it.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), October 15, 1999.

Heh heh...be careful, Flint.

Lane's probably setting once of his infamous "Core"-traps, where-in everything you say turns out to be making exactly his point...all without explanation, of course.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), October 15, 1999.

Try again, Maria.

This part needs some work: " Now let me be clear, Time Machine testing is not the same as using two different clocks. Cory, system clock can not be partitioned, one clock for one partition and another system clock for another partition. It doesnt happen that way. The time machine is a tool which doesnt change the system clock. So are we talking testing or parallel processing?"

You might want to start a new thread in which you explain this.

What exactly are you saying about the system clock? What doesn't happen what way?

Take your time.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net), October 15, 1999.

As a non-tech, the things I appreciate the most on this forum are the jousting matches between the techs, (at least until the thread deterioration is unbearable). I'm waiting with baited breath for Maria's answer on this one. Paging Maria...

-- Patrick (pmchenry@gradall.com), October 15, 1999.

Patrick, two questions:

1) What do you use for bait?

2) Caught any?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), October 15, 1999.

Oh...................why, Flintstone, I forgot you were there... you are dismissed.

-- Patrick (pmchenry@gradall.com), October 15, 1999.