Ed,

In light of the enormous respect I have for your analysis and logical reasoning, could you share your thoughts about the progress of the rollover as of this moment?

Thank You

-- Jenny (HomeFor@Good.Now), December 31, 1999

Answers

Jenny,

I'm just watching the news on CNN, ABC, etc the way everyone else is. Obviously, I'm delighted that nothing significant seems to have gone wrong thus far ... but the thought did occur to me: I wonder how many of the gala celebrations are being powered by generators? There was certainly a lot of visual evidence that the lights in Sydney are on, but I wonder how many of the Y2K party-planners were willing to take the risk of embarrassing their top gov't leaders by depending entirely on their local power grid?

Anyway, about the only REAL thing that we can say, so far, is that there have not been any major terrorist attacks. I don't think that anyone seriously expected planes to fall from the sky, or entire cities to be blacked out at the stroke of midnight.

Like everyone else, I'll keep watching ... the next hour or two should be interested, as the rollover crosses Indonesia, China, and other parts of Asia.

Ed

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), December 31, 1999.

"I don't think that anyone seriously expected ... entire cities to be blacked out at the stroke of midnight."

I take it you have not read many posts here at TB2000. Many here expected that to happen.

-- Butt Nugget (catsbutt@umailme.com), December 31, 1999.

I have to agree with that -- threads from yesterday talk about how Georgia Power is supposed to go down tonight for 3 hours to 3 weeks.

The power might go out here tonight, but it'll likely be caused by drunk drivers clobbering power poles.

Fasten your seatbelt; don't buy a freekin' tank.

-- Dirt Road (lkollar@my-deja.com), December 31, 1999.

Hmmm. Does:

"The most likely scenario, in our opinion, is the blackout that lasts for a couple days; a less likely scenario, but one we feel should not be ignored, is the one-month blackout. Why? Because it could take that long to fix whatever Y2000 problems are discovered in the hours after midnight on December 31, 1999; and it could take that long to restart the system."

Sound Familiar?

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), December 31, 1999.

...but the thought did occur to me: I wonder how many of the gala celebrations are being powered by generators? There was certainly a lot of visual evidence that the lights in Sydney are on, but I wonder how many of the Y2K party-planners were willing to take the risk of embarrassing their top gov't leaders by depending entirely on their local power grid? -ED

"No problems" reports are pouring in on mailing lists and websites all over the net from civilians living in Australia. Open your eyes.

-- CD (not@here.com), December 31, 1999.

CD:

Right on. Ed bad response. I *never* expected you to resort to such a feeble explaination. I expected something solid or an admission. Guess you can't just take the heat when it finally comes. The impression you leave in your book is that cities will black out. Otherwise why did you devote a chapter for the utilities and electrical grid system. If they are a problem they produce a very simple result when they fail - no power. As far as I know that produces an immediate observable effect - the lights go out immediately, not a little later.

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), December 31, 1999.

I'm not sure why people are bashing Ed. He pointed out what could be a serious problem, and has worked hard to bring it to the world's attention. Billions of dollars have been spent thus far in an attempt to correct the problem-if catastrophe is avoided- the billions of dollars and massive programmer effort will have paid off. Would you only be pleased if all hell broke loose at this point?

-- farmer (hillsidefarm@drbs.com), December 31, 1999.

It's like blaming Paul Revere for "bringing the British to Lexington/Concord". After all, they HAD come into town right behind him -- he "should have covered his tracks better", etc etc, the blamemongers might have said.

Actually, he warned them; they got ready, and they won. Ed's book was written before most of the remediation and "testing" effort was made. There was no way, short of distinguishing PR announcements from factual reporting, of knowing its rate of success, until beginning today.

Maybe what Ed could tell us if he thought the IT industry was taking the Y2k urgency seriously enough when he started the book, and if he thought his NYTimes bestseller helped make a difference in meeting that urgency.

After all, the capitalist economy made the collective rational business decision with their OWN money to spend at least a hundred billion following Ed's advice.

Fools all, our captains of industry?

Think they're gonna give him one word of a Thank You? Na-a-a-a-h-h-h!

-- jor-el (jor-el@krypton.uni), December 31, 1999.

What? Today Yourdon writes that "nobody really expected" what he previously wrote was "the most likely scenario"? And now he's saying they're faking it with generators? Come on!

Hey, it's OK to have feet of clay, we all do. But a *head* of clay?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 31, 1999.

I'm with jor-el on this completely. It is in part due to Ed sticking his neck out that IT professionals and corporate managers BEGAN to shift their thinking to take a look at the problem.

A risky and thankless act -- but thanks, Ed. You made a difference.

-- Sara Nealy (keithn@aloha.net), December 31, 1999.

Well, at least Flint recognized the quote...

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), December 31, 1999.

On one of the many TV reports a response to the embedded timing question was that most chips are set at GMT.....prudence suggests we wait for the whole show.

The odds of no problems the world over are rather slim.

Ed was among the first to wake people up. The fact that no specific confirmed reports came from the establishment left most of ther last few months to speculation. But just wait a few days and tally the score as facts surface and spin melts down.

-- Aldo Vidali (uneco@uneco.org), December 31, 1999.

Ed wrote the following in Chapter 1 of HumptyDumptyY2K.

It's November 7, 2000 and the country has been reeling from 10 solid months of Y2K disasters. Unemployment has reached 30%, and people stopped watching the Dow Jones Industrial average when it dropped below 5,000. A third of the nation's banks are closed, not because their computers failed, but because their loan portfolios turned out to be uncollectible when borrowers suffered their own Y2K problems. Power is still out in three northern U.S. cities, all of which were abandoned after the first two months of winter cold and darkness; meanwhile, rolling blackouts and power fluctuations frustrate any attempt to lead a normal life. Telephones work, and the Internet is up, but it is of little solace; nobody is in a mood to surf the Web or chat on their cell phones when they don't have jobs. Dusk-to-dawn curfews persist in a dozen other large cities, though officials continue to promise they'll be lifted in time for the Christmas shopping season.

He wrote the above passage in September 1999. Now, this doesn't mean he believed this was a probable scenario, but he thought that it was sufficiently possible that it was worth discussing.

This was scare mongering at its finest. To believe that there was even a remote chance that the situation would be so bad that three major cities would have to be abandoned for 11 months because they couldn't get the power back on indicates Ed was either scare mongering or GROSSLY ignorant about embedded systems and the utilities industry. So which is it Ed? Were you fear mongering or just ignorant? And if you were ignorant, why were you so negligent? There were many experts who were willing to tell you that what you were writing was nonsense. Why did you think you knew more about the state of readiness of the utility industry than the experts who were actually working in the industry?

-- Robin S. Messing (rsm7@cornell.edu), December 31, 1999.

Robin wrote: "And if you were ignorant, why were you so negligent? "

The word "negligent", when applied to a writer, has a different meaning than the same word applied to a public official, or public utility supervisor, entrusted with the public's safety and well-being.

A critic from the outside of a particular system, who DOES NOT HOLD THE KEYS to that system, is not in danger of turning off anybody's kidney dialysis machine.

A writer, who is not invited into the confidences of those officials, cannot help but remain as unconvinced as before. Ed spoke mainly from the viewpoint of large enterprise systems, most of which have not awakened yet on January 1 or 3.

Your argument, Robin, boils down to three words: "Trust the experts." That's just real boffo advice to pass along from the 20th century into the 21st!

-- jor-el (jor-el@krypton.uni), December 31, 1999.

Excuse me. SIX words:

"SHUT UP, and trust the experts."

(With the emphasis on the "Shut Up.")

Listen to yourself.

-- jor-el (jor-el@krypton.uni), December 31, 1999.

Ed obviously reealizes that it is premature to get into this cat fight. I, on the otherhand, have always been the village idiot, so... Hof, Flint, et. al. It is not gracious to gather as a pack of vultures or hyenas until the prey is dead. In this case it looks like the prey is still alive, kicking and dangerous :). Don't trade your advantage for a moment of self indulgence. You may very well find yourself eating crow and standing in a gas line two weeks from today. What will you say then. Just wait and see. Nobody has enough information at this point to be sure of the future. I don't want to get into an argument. Things look better than I expected they would at this point. However, we are still well within the forest.

-- Michael Erskine (Osiris@urbanna.net), December 31, 1999.

Jor-el and Michael,

I'm not saying that there will be no power outages in the U.S. And I agree that it is premature to start crowing. Power demand is very low on Saturday night. The real test will occur on Monday when demand is considerably higher. However, to even speculate that power could be out for 11 months because the experts are too incompetant to bring it back on???? Get real. And it is not just a matter of trusting the experts. Dick Mills wrote a series of collumns at Westergaard's site on the Power Industry explaining exactly why this was a ridiculous scenario. He exhaustively explained why, at worst, power would not be out for more than 72 hours. The information of WHY this scenario was ridiculous is out there, and no one had to trust the experts. One only had to take the time to follow the reasoning. And as a very public figure, one who portrays himself as an expert in these sorts of things, Ed Yourdon had an obligation to become familiar with such information.

-- Robin S. Messing (rsm7@cornell.edu), December 31, 1999.

If anyone is still following this thread, Ed replied:

>but the thought did occur to me: I wonder how many of the gala >celebrations are being powered by generators? There was certainly a >lot of visual evidence that the lights in Sydney are on, but I wonder >how many of the Y2K party-planners were willing to take the risk of >embarrassing their top gov't leaders by depending entirely on their >local power grid?

I thought this was a cop-out answer. But tonight I met with some friends who live in NYC (yes, they purposely left for the roll-over) and their step cousin is involved in the Times Square Celebration (he wrote the winning bid for some of the work).

Anyway, generators are definitely involved. The way my friend put it, the event requires that electricity be available, so Con Ed is providing generators. In makes sense to me now. You don't just plug laser lights into the nearest outlet.

-- Ron Southwick (southwick@a-znet.com), December 31, 1999.