Ed Yourdon has written a piece about where we are six days into Y2K. It is in the form of an open letter to Rodney Dangerfield, a letter that is at once humorous, informative, illuminating, and wise. He provides valuable insights into the difference between the story that so many have been so readily inclined to believe and what is actually the case.

Ed Yourdon is a rare man possessed of great honesty and humanity and self deprecating humor. What extraordinarily good fortune that he has devoted so much of his time and efforts to bringing Y2K to the attention of the public and the world. Thank you, Ed, for not only raising awareness and understanding, but for giving me a rare glimpse of a truly honorable individual, as well as a gifted writer and communicator who is honest and caring and has a rare sense of public responsibility. Thank you for all you have done and are doing. Thank you as well for providing your role in launching and helping keep this forum alive. The forum has served a very important role in my life during these past many months. I think that this forum will be serving an even more important role as the Y2K story unfolds. More and more people will be using it to get the latest news concerning developments and to gain understanding of what on earth is happening. Thank you for what you have done and are doing to shed light on where we are and the problems that we still face. Your efforts have resulted in getting people to act on behalf of themselves, their families, their communities, and their nation. All one can do is do their best and it seems to me that is exactly what you have done

-- Thanks so very much (Thanks so very much@for all you have.done), January 08, 2000

Answers

Move Over, Rodney Dangerfield -- You've Got Company

http://www.yourdon.com/index2.html

-- (Typing@t.home), January 08, 2000.

Ed might want to add Peter Lewis to his list of involved CEO's.

Night train

(Progressive, Inc. to those uninitiated)

-- jes an ol footballer (nkighttr@in.lane), January 08, 2000.

Other than be spectacularly wrong in a gentlemanly way with great honesty, humanity and self-deprecating humor, what exactly has Ed done? If only we had a gifted writer and communicator who was honest and caring, had a rare sense of responsibility, and was...

right.

Now that would be something to sing praises for.

-- skeptical (mind@preppedtothehilt.com), January 08, 2000.

"If only we had a gifted writer and communicator who was honest and caring, had a rare sense of responsibility, and was... right."

In case anyone's keeping score, a case can be made that that describes Koski, no?

-- Scarecrow (Somewhere@Over.Rainbow), January 08, 2000.

If I was Ed, I would be penning lots of missives like the above, and I wouldn't be all surprised if Ed wrote it.

-- sigh (ItsYouEd@isnt.it), January 08, 2000.

Sigh, I disagree with you. I personally know a lot of people who support Ed. I also know some who have withdrawn their support. Both camps are entitled to a voice. =)

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), January 08, 2000.

dear mr. yourdon, i have great respect for you and the education you gave to all on the interconnectedness of our technological society. although i have, since hurricane gloria,tried to keep us 1 month prepared at all times, there was so much i wasn't prepared for. your insightful information forced me to look at things i had never thought of before. i'm grateful for your reports and honesty. just because things didn't go down the tube, doesn't mean that you were wrong to warn people of the possible consequences y2k could bring. hopefully more people are prepared to take responcibility for themselves and their family's well being. we live in a volatile world, anything could go wrong at any time. because of you and people like you putting out the information that you did, my family is prepared to face the future with more understanding of what it takes to take care of ones self, instead of waitng for the government to ride in on a white horse. thankyou and very respectfully yours, laura cavallari

-- laura cavallari (ladygoat13@aol.com), January 08, 2000.

From Ed's essay:

"I thank you once again for your efforts on warning us, and I am more than grateful for the wake-up call on the way we live our lives. People should be thankful, not angry to have learned how to arrange their lives for the better."

Seems to me a good idea.

-- more better (more@better.sense), January 08, 2000.

Ed would be an excellent writer if he was a little more succinct.

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), January 08, 2000.

God, what a pile of whining claptrap. "Nobody respects me. Waaaaahh!! Look at all the nasty emails I got! Somebody must still like me out there. Do you like me?? Please say you like me!!"

Ed would probably get a lot more respect if he simply admitted that his predictions were in error and stopped whining about the nasty emails he gets.

I'd love to know what Rodney Dangerfield would REALLY think of someone like this. Maybe he can include it in his next comedy bit

-- (stop@crying.ed), January 08, 2000.

Ed, I was thinking this morning how I told a woman running for NYC council, "Why ar you borthering? This city is going down." LOL.

People don't get what a close call it was...is?...

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), January 08, 2000.

Ed:

Johathan Swift wrote:

"When a true genius in appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

Given this, it appears you can be considered a true genius and it is my pleasure to respect you as one. I am (was) a doomer and prepped to handle almost anything that would get thrown at me at my location in a big city for 6 months. I have you to thank for that and I don't regret having done it (I'm now finally ready for earthquakes). I have learned a lot, and are now seriouly considering a move to a small town (I'm an amateur astronomer and have always dreamed of being in the country where you can actually see the stars).

However, in keeping with your sentiments about postmortems, I have requested the same of others here and submitted my own hypothesis about why we were wrong in our original assessments.

I think here is where I find your responses very thin and lacking substance. You seem bent on still trying to convince people you were correct and did nothing wrong. I think this approach is going to get you into more trouble over time.

A new approach is needed, one that questions everything we did to get to our original assesments to begin with, if we wish to truly learn from the experiance so as not to repeat it again.

I think you do not help your case by reiterating the arguments from the pre y2k era, now. Doing so is to assume they were correct, but the problem is that the very strong perception is that they are wrong because of the "evidence". So I believe you will never convince anyone that they are correct now, even if you are. We need to examine all the assumptions that went into the original assessments more closely and see if they were indeed correct to begin with.

For example, I submit the facts about the number of small/mid size businesses that prepared was correct, but the interpretation of the facts is incorrect. And similary with respect to emebeds, I think the whole issue was fundementally misjudged from top to bottom, and that is truely amazing. I am not so presumptious to assume that only I can determine this and I am sure many have said this before y2k and after y2k, but I find the lack of serious rebuttle by the "doomers" to this actually rather revealing.

Is that something to complain about now? Obviously not, we would not and could not know this until now. But in keeping with your concept of postmoterms, it would be very valuable to first see if my hyphothesies are correct, and if so why was this missed before y2k. Somebody was obviously not paying attention. A lot of somebodies I would say. But why? Where did the pre-y2k assessments of the situation break down?

With resepect to just thesse 2 examples, the Emeds and the the small businesses, I have explained my thoughts about why I now think they were a non issue at length in the following two threads and refer you to them for your comments.

Why nothing was ever going to happen with the embeds

Serious Question on Embeddeds

WRT to the small businesses and their ripple effects, Here is my take on the small and mid size business situation:

Hyatt: Y2K will not be a one time event...

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), January 08, 2000.