Y2K Doom has been best paraphrased as "Death by a thousand paper cuts". Folks, we haven't even got a hundred yet. It's not even four full days since rollover, and already nearly everyone is relegating Y2K to ancient history. For those familiar with progamming, you know what a bitch a buffer overflow is. When it happens EVERYTHING, and I mean everything stops. The program just locks right up tight as a drum - and more often than not, so does the job, and sometimes even the machine or network! But the insidious thing about buffer overflows is THAT YOU DON'T SEE THEM COMING. The buffer quietly and steadily fills up in the background with everything in the foreground looking normal - even "perfect" as usual. But then, suddenly, out of seemingly "nowhere" - BOOM, the sucker just locks and tanks as suddenly as shrapnel from a grenade. That's the danger we really face here folks. We KNOW the code is broken. Gary North said it as well as anyone can "If nothing happens, Y2K either was repaired on time - or it was inherently trivial" (paraphrased from memory) And he further asked, if it was trivial, then why was so much money spent remediating it??? Its NOT trivial boys and girls! Very few progamming errors are. I KNOW - I program for a living. I've written my own 8 thousand line make utility, and I can promise you, EVERY LINE OF CODE IS IMPORTANT!!!! New bugs are still being uncovered regularly by my users, after nearly a year of use. Why? Because the combinations of problems this utility solves is STAGGERING. And if my little utility of "only" 8 thousand lines can avoid showing an error after a year of heavy use, how much more so the SUM TOTAL OF BILLIONS - NO - TRILLIONS OF LINES OF CODE worldwide? Prior to 1/1/2000, this code effectively had "no" date logic errors. Now it had billions of them. But they all don't just leap out of their memory space 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day, week, month - even year after rollover and say HEY - LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!! No, they wait until you run a critical job due yesterday before they do their insidious work. The buffer is filling folks, and when it's full, you better had - as infomagic put it - SET RECOVERY ON!!! (i.e., get PREPARED! - and that even includes you polly's)

-- Why Me (Doom@gloom.com), January 04, 2000

Answers

I will say one word - amen.

-- merville (merville@globalnet.co.uk), January 04, 2000.

Excellent! Opposite posts, adjacent to my post saying the Lady has sung. How about we give one another permission to repost both of these in six months and again in twelve months? Up to the challenge, Why Me?

-- Jim Thompson (jimthompsonmd@attglobal.net), January 04, 2000.

Could not agree with you more. I have written a custom inventory control, mfg planning, order entry and purchase planning system which is being used by seven Mfg plants. Over the past ten years it seems everytime a failure occurred (usually because of hardware) it was always at the worst possible time. Before fixing this system to be y2k compliant the program refused to allow 00 as a year in any date fields and because of the nature of the program of the 500+ input screen probably on 10 do not require a date. Y2k was not a hoax.

-- VeryConcerned (VeryConcerned@westol.com), January 04, 2000.

Hey there "Why Me"...preach it!

I've had the same experience with all the programs I've ever made. (I'm an MIS Director for a mid-size manufacturer at the moment)

I am about to snap! Hearing all the people at work say that Y2k "was" a "hoax" and a "waste of money"! Some of them don't even realize that Y2k was the main reason I've spent the last 2.5 years implementing a new ERP system.

It's not that the "average Joe" _can't_ understand, he doesn't _want_ to understand. He is more than happy to believe the media's proclamation that "the bug's been defeated". I want to barf.

I think Hamasaki's assessment is pretty accurate. If so, the whole eceonomy is going to hell and taking society with it. People today do not have the "grit" that most people had back in the 30's.

-- B-17 (flying@fortress.com), January 05, 2000.

I have posted on this forum several times. I am a nobody, a failure in life viewed from my eyes. Yet I have learned a lot in my life, I have learned human nature, and it it rotten to say the least. If this is all a hoax then there are billions salted away in secret accounts all over the world, because evidence of third world nations being as compliant as we, without hardly any outlay. If it is not a hoax then this simple saying covers it perfectly,"HE WHO LAUGHS LAST, LAUGHS THE LOUDEST."

-- Notforlong (Fsur439@aol.com), January 05, 2000.

Guys,

Get a grip! The bottom line is if we are experiencing problems across the board they will be hidden, period! The only way IMO, we will hear about problems are 1) leaked information (probably not verifiable) 2) Major headline (any industry) 3) Inventory/JIT/manufacturing etc... delays any industry.

I would expect the media to continue on its current track, unless for whatever reason the public starts to really complain about why we spent 100's of billions and ended up with the same result as Italy, who did not realize their was a problem until recently.

It's kind of like studying very hard, for years, taking the exam and great you get an A+, but so did the rest of the class who studied much less or in some cases did not know much about the subject matter.

Either way, as the days pass by we are looking better and better. At this point I do think that some things could have been addressed better, like test results 2-3 years ago and what we could expect from those results. Everyone appears to have gotten very excited about this problem and "ran with the conclusion".

My biggest problem with all of this is that many were defined as experts and are experts in their fields, so how could they be so far off base on this? We have to wait 90-120 days IMO, but the worse appears to be over, again IMO. Good luck.

Also, has anyone heard from Mr. CEO or was that just a big joke that went right over my head?

Otherwise, we may very well have to wait until earnings season for most companies, mid to late April.

-- LALA (LaLALAND@aol.com), January 05, 2000.

Places the media is not able to hide results for Y2K, gas pump, courts and unemployment rolls. Those will be rock solid testimony one way or the other.

-- Notforlong (Fsur439@aol.com), January 05, 2000.

I agree it isn't close to over. And, there are things that will not stay hidden. Lots of folks seem to forget the role the Gov. plays in our economy. Entitlement checks crank out of various agencies at a speed that will not accomodate errors or breakdowns.

I'm waiting to see if folks begin posting that their disability, social sec., vet disability, checks are late or inaccurate. Any problems at all either in the checks that are direct deposit or arrive by U.S. Postal Service will show up with some very vocal "What's up?"'s

Once upon a time, the ancient systems employed by our behemoth government were cited as a major cause for concern. The amount of impact our gov. entitlement programs have on our economy is very large indeed.

The other place we will see problems further down the line will be in Medicare's ability to process claims. Clinics, hospitals, and insurance companies will not keep problems in this area hidden for long.

While there may be many difficulties that get ironed out behind the scenes, these gov. checks will be very visible and reported as soon as somebody doesn't receive one.

Watching, waiting and listening,

-- (He Who) Rolls with Punches (JoeZi@aol.com), January 05, 2000.

YOU THINK THEY CAN HIDE THIS FOREVER??????? guess where it will show up and you can't hide that. just look at hershey. even though they have gotten their products out the door, they have lost revenues and their STOCKS HAVE TAKEN A HIT. i think it will show up eventually in unemployment and the stock market.

-- tt (cuddluppy@nowhere.com), January 05, 2000.