What if the organizations and countries which got a very late start and/or spent little money were not relying so much on fix-on-failure, but instead pulled off some kind of encapsution strategy?

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), January 05, 2000

Answers

What does that mean? "encapsution strategy?"

-- Pam (jpjgood@penn.com), January 05, 2000.

Sorry: encapsulation strategy

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), January 05, 2000.

You'll have to explain Peter.

Feeling delighted that we didn't have a global heart attack. Not sure the system doesn't have cancer, though.

Observe... over time. Or not.

Still expecting the unexpected.

;-D

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), January 05, 2000.

It's hard to escape the basic premise that a lot of the people spouting persuasive certainties (especially about embeddeds) were either wrong or lying. Deal with that first. There's plenty of issues left, they're just more subtle, i.e. boring.

-- Servant (public_service@yahoo.com), January 05, 2000.

I don't care what anyone says, something is very fishey. No, no, I wasn't expecting, nor wanting the end of the world. Prepared yes, but hoping no.

The point is that from roughly the middle of December until the 31st, State, Local and Federal officials were fluffing up nests (bunkers/control rooms) with food, water, back up systems, and the word "terrorist" was being repeated over and over and over. Millions upon millions of dollars spent to prepare for the worst.

Suddenly, everything that wasn't fixed, wasn't ready, functioned without a problem. Terrorists disappeared, almost in a puff of smoke (no pun intended)

Now, here we are, the first week of January, and everything is just fine.

Yes, there are glitches popping up all over the globe, but nothing to cause any immediate concern, even though it's being reported that a glitch is not a glitch, even when it's a glitch.

Did someone "change their mind" and call the whole thing off? Is there a bigger and better plan afoot? No matter what, something is fishy here.

-- Richard (Astral-Acres@webtv.net), January 05, 2000.

It's hard to escape the basic premise that a lot of the people spouting persuasive certainties (especially about embeddeds) were either wrong or lying. Deal with that first.

As I recall, Ed referred to embeddeds as "the great unknown". Micheal Hyatt painted a number of possible scenarios in his book, the worse scenarios presuming a range of problems with embeddeds. Apparently he considered this to be an unknown, otherwise he wouldn't have painted a scenario that didn't include problems with embeddeds.

So that leaves us with "my friend's hairdresser cuts the hair for the wife of the CEO of a large electric utility in the Northeast and he is terrified. Don't tell anyone but he said everyone should buy a generator."

The question of embeddeds was raised with the incident in 96 where some embeddeds didn't know 96 was a leap year and caused some sort of equipment malfunction. This spurred Peter DeJagar to start "Project Damocles", where he encouraged programmers of embedded systems (I was going to say embedded programmers but that sounds funny) to write him with equipment they knew was going to fail. He has since taken down the Project Damocles website and replaced it with his happy face website. Meanwhile, some other authority came up with a web page of all the hospital equipment that would fail in the Year 2000. I have not been able to access that web page lately either. So there you have the seeds that fueled the fire.

-- Amy Leone (leoneamy@aol.com), January 05, 2000.

Look, Servant, not that I really disagree with you, but there are scores of people on this forum raising that issue and they don't need me. I want to raise a new issue. I'll deal with first what I want to deal with first, you got that?

Diane, the best short definition of encapsulation that I know of is in a book by Capers Jones that I am having a hard time finding. I hope I didn't loan the book out. I'll get back at some point with a half-way good definition of encapsulation.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), January 05, 2000.