Reported serious y2k issues seems to be eerily low

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I don't know what you all were expectecing, but its New Years eve in New Zealand, Australia etc. and for me it just seems that the number of reported y2k crashes, etc. seems much lower than I would have expected. I would have figured a lot more systems would now be into 1 day lookahead calculations with a corresponding rise in system crashes being reported.

May be the calm before the storm?

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), December 30, 1999

Answers

Good Day I.S.!

Maybe not. I remember reading an article today saying that New Zealand would be careful about what it reported in the news--so as not to accidentally label a failure as "y2k related" when it could be something else...

Or perhaps the opposite maybe?

I expect heavy censorship of the news--it's all part of consequence management for panic!

-- (Kurt.Borzel@gems8.gov.bc.ca), December 30, 1999.


Why is this 'eerie'? It would appear to be in accord with the vast majority of expectations.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 30, 1999.

You're probably right, Kurt but I just have an odd feeling you just can't contain news leaking out on some crashes. On the rest they may be able to keep quite, but anything like the London card readers is going to get out.

Do we have anybody from that part of the world on this forum?

Is there the "panic" buying going on down there?

I notice you're from BC. What's happening in your neck of the woods? Stores packed or quite? We saw one report about the east coast.

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), December 30, 1999.


Flint:

The expectations predicted things happening at several other key dates (although in my opinion very minorly key in terms of potential problems) which turned out to be less than eventfull. However 31.12.99 is a different story in my mind. There must be hundreads, if not thousands (granted may be only 1%-5% of all systems over there), of systems in the eastern hemisphere that will be working with 00 dates in one way or another by now and one would expect something of this.

I've just got a bad feeling about what is happening. I'm not sure bad because the storm is brewing or bad because the storm is going not be a lightning strike followed by rain, but a much more gradual build up over time than one might have other wise expected. This would result in that most are going to drop their guard to soon as the y2k effect will continue silently building pressure on the companies trying to keep a lid on it all.

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), December 30, 1999.


Other than that credit card snafu in England, things do indeed seem quiet out there. Of course, they don't call it "Y2K" for nothing.

Not much longer until we find out....

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), December 30, 1999.


I.S.:

Malcolm Taylor is from NZ.

Tammy works for The Hudson's Bay Co. and she phoned me at work today to say that the bank card readers and credit card readers weren't functioning today.

I overheard 3 cops at Tim Horton's coffee shop in town talking about y2k and panic control. They're worried.

Do you remember that post I did on Northwood Pulp Mill almost blowing themselves up on a y2k drill? Well I saw the latest company mgmt memo to employees saying that they'll shut down one digester, cutting productivity in half, to ease shutting down the mill in an emergency and they're going to run on generators to keep the mill warm. They expect peripheral damage, but no core mill damage if they lose BC Hydro power. The failure was a software replacement the first time around...

-- (Kurt.Borzel@gems8.gov.bc.ca), December 30, 1999.


Only those glitches that are glaringly obvious will be reported, and downplayed. Any admissions of failures will first be screened by attorney's... read article today where a lot of the big law firms are keeping attorneys available 24 hours a day through the rollover to advise their clients what to say or not to say in the event of a failure...

All the regulars here remember the post on the Marine Corp directive re: no reporting, unless the failure is undeniable... makes sense... I could just see some dumbass general standing up and saying "hey everybody, we're so screwed up if you launched now, there wouldn't be a damn thing we could do about it!"

So unless it's a public, obvious glitch, like printing 1900 due dates, or screwing up payroll for thousands of people, we won't hear about it right away, if ever...

-- C (c@c.com), December 30, 1999.


Kurt

Good to see you are still online here!

Flint

One would think we are well within the failure window for Embeddeds eh? One has to consider this a good omen.

Interested

Watching the FEMA reps on Cspan yesterday they said that all Y2K news is going to be cleared through Koskie, if there is an emergency then they will be releasing details. But only about the emergency and not about if it is Y2K related or not

-- Brian (imager@home.com), December 30, 1999.


I'm in New Zealand. Our power was out for an hour 2 days ago. Considering virtually no one is working here except in the pubs, I'm not surprised that there isn't much happening...yet. We've been surprised by the lack of people at gas stations and very little evidence in the stores of people stocking up. I'll post (if I can) if anything significant happens.

-- pilotrn (pilotrn@hotmail.com), December 30, 1999.

C:

I have been wondering about interesting point on the legal front. If I understand correctly the laws past limit liability if they problem is y2k related. Well it would seem to me that companies would then be in the position of admiting y2k failures to avoid liability but then face the music about having mislead those dependent on the firms because of the false compliancy statements.

Now then if the choose to not say it y2k related and let the insurance companies pick up the tab, my guess is that those Insurance folks are no dummies and are going to go into overdrive to prove the problem was y2k related (should be a relative no brainer) so they don't have to pay anything out.

I see a lot of court battles being fought just to decide what was and was not a y2k related issue and that will clog up the courts despite the liability protection laws.

Just my rambling thoughts.

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), December 30, 1999.



A problem that can be kept covered up, however it's done or for whatever reason, doesn't seem that serious by definition. Let's hope they can keep them all covered up, so that nobody is affected at all. I certainly wouldn't mind a catastrophe that nobody noticed because it was all kept hidden.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 30, 1999.

Interested Spectator -

Very little panic buying, though the shops are really busy with the end of season sales. JoeQ Public is swallowing the govt. line, but I think a few more debacles like the building society pulling mortgage payments early may change this ...

Lots of people taking extra money out the ATM's, but this is probably 'party season' money.

The fact that 15 hospitals are not compliant has not reached the news yet, but there are daily reports on the shortage of NHS intensive care beds. It is hard to tell if this is just a cover story ...

So to sum up, barely a release of methane here never mind the loud moo'ing and sniffing you guys are experiencing.

-- merville (merville@globalnet.co.uk), December 30, 1999.


Flint... Not saying they will be covered indefinately... just till the shysters have a chance to review the story....

Shysters

Dec 30, 1999 - 07:10 PM Some Lawyers Will Be Up All Night for Y2K to Scuttle Liabilities By Brigitte Greenberg Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - While others toast the new millennium with champagne and kisses, many lawyers are staying by the phone to advise worried corporate clients about what to say and not to say to avoid lawsuits over Y2K problems. The companies "want to be prudent about what they say. They don't want to say something like, 'Gee, we made a big mistake,'" said attorney Tim Biddle, a partner at the Washington law firm Crowell & Moring LLP and coordinator of the firm's Y2K "swat team." The firm, which represents Bell Atlantic, electric utilities and computer industry companies, will have 24 lawyers available around the clock to pass judgment on company statements and render advice. Clients can reach attorneys at the office, at home or by pager. "We're obviously hoping there won't be any problems, but it's conceivable that something could happen. And there could be a legal implications," Biddle said. Lawyers will try to parse words, said John Koskinen, President Clinton's top Y2K expert, but it's in companies' best interests, if they have "any serious issue at all," to share information with the government and the public. "No matter what your lawyer tells you, if your system's not running and you can't service your clients, they're going to know that," Koskinen said. T. Earl LeVere, a senior associate with Bricker & Eckler LLP in Columbus, Ohio, which represents OhioHealth Corp., the Ohio Manufacturers Association and other clients, said his advice to clients is to be forthcoming about any problems. "I think they're probably in a better position legally if they warn people about a problem than if they knew about the risk and didn't do anything to inform people," LeVere said. In Needham, Mass., attorney Steven Goldberg of Y2K Risk Management LLC has been preparing his clients for months. "We've talked about scenarios in advance of how they should respond," said Goldberg, who represents hospitals, universities, insurance companies and others. "We've talked about do's and don'ts, ... but this is a time when it's important to provide information rather than hide information," Goldberg said. "I advise people, 'Don't say no comment.'" Not all lawyers are shunning New Year's Eve festivities. Los Angeles attorney Barry Smith of the firm Buchalter, Nemer, Fields & Younger, plans to celebrate with his wife and friends in a night of dinner and dancing, but he'll forgo the champagne. That's because a client, such as a commercial landlord or an insurance company, may ring on his cellular phone at any moment. "We owe an obligation to our clients if they call at the stroke of midnight," he said. "I'm going to have to make my decisions on the spot, on-the-spot legal advice." For example, if someone goes into a hospital emergency room and the person's insurance card doesn't work, decisions must to be made, Smith said. "Do we treat? Do we not treat? Do we authorize the emergency surgery? The health insurers are concerned about that," he said. Christa Carone, spokeswoman for Stamford, Conn.-based Xerox Corp., said her company expects no problems. But if she must issue a sensitive press release, she said, she'll call a senior in-house attorney first. "We do have a general counsel who is assigned to Y2K. We know how to reach him if we need to," she said. Cisco Systems in San Jose, Calif., which produces much of the equipment that keeps a large part of the world's business computer networks running, also will have an attorney standing by. "We're going to have people working from every group, including legal," said company spokesman John Earnhardt. "Our attorney has been in on the Y2K planning from the get-go."

-- Carl (clilly@goentre.com), December 30, 1999.


Oops... sorry about the formating, looked fine in the window...

-- Carl (clilly@goentre.com), December 30, 1999.

It is 3.00am, New Years eve, here in Copenhagen, Denmark. Everything is normal, as it was throughout yesterday. There was no Y2K 'news' and barely any reference to the subject in any of the national newspapers. I don't expect things to be any different today. But who knows?

-- flkj (flkj@flkj.com), December 30, 1999.


Things are a bit too quiet here in Perth, Western Australia. There is less traffic on the roads this year than all other New Years.

Currently it is 10am in the morning here on the 31st, when I knock off from work about 2 in the afternoon I will be passing several shopping centres and service stations along the way. I will be on the Net from home tonight so I will try to keep people apprised of the situation not only here but the rest of Australia if I can.

Over the last two weeks however there has been a huge increase of Y2K articles in our paper, usually spanning 2 to 4 pages. Some of the articles are about the bug and others are about the parties. The Credit Card problem in the UK got a half page article this morning.

There is an increase of people GI'ing about the problem, I expect for the shops to start being hit this afternoon once the workers start knocking off.

More news later on today.

Regards, Simon

-- Simon Richards (simon@wair.com.au), December 30, 1999.


Gartner Group "says" only 8% of bugs hit on jan 1... the rest will be spread out over the following months... the only bugs that scare me are the "nuclear" bugs... ...and any airplane/traffic related bugs as my hubby will be flying next week. i want him to come home safe and sound. -k-

-- KatInSeattle (YouC@ntSpamMe.com), December 30, 1999.

Tales of Y2K woes in SE Asia:

Y2K problems start small

Svereal reports.

-- meme (not@here.com), December 30, 1999.


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