It is now being charged that the evidence shows that countries like the U.S.A. and U.K. were victimized by hype and hoax into spending far too much on Y2K. People point to countries like Italy which supposedly got away with a late start and small expenditure.

It's actually way too early to determine who got away with what, but I have a feeling that there is probably a lot of truth in the above assertion. And my theory has to do with dumb CEOs and CIOs falling for technoblab.

I am not second guessing here. I have been complaining about these people falling for technoblab for a long time.

My understanding of the pattern of remediation is that up to this last year, nearly all the efforts involved the terribly laborious process of year field expansion. Then in 1999 there seemed to be a big rush to windowing.

Consider this somewhat cynical theory of the average remediation firm. It has two goals: (1) get every last dollar out of the client that it can, and (2) still finish the project.

So prior to '99, while there seems to be time to meet both goals, the client is subjected to blab where the underlying theme is that it would be sooooo unprofessional and unwise to do anything except year field expansion. After all, we don't want to repeat the sort of mistake that got us into the Y2K mess to begin with, do we.

But in '99 there wasn't time for both goals to be met, so there was the big switch to windowing.

Sounds plausible to me.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), January 08, 2000

Answers

Having a hard time with the "Its too early to tell yet".

What is too early?

If 1+1=2, wouldn't an error show up as soon as someone input data if 1+1 =3?

What? Will it takes months for this to show up?

I've seen the "Wait and See" posted numerous times and I still don't understand.

Why will bad data take time to show up? What is the difference between bad data today and bad data 3 months from now if the Y2k bug is already in place? cork

-- cork (corcorab@hotmail.com), January 08, 2000.

The difference, cork, is that erroneous calculations may not become apparent for a while. You are assuming that some checks each and every calculation as it is made, or that making an error will result in computer crash. Not so.

Your computer calculates 1+1=3 and stores it.

At the end of the month it pulls that field out and use it in another calculation. Now, both fields are in error.

But, even then, these errors may not be caught. Sometimes they will only be caught when the result gets really large. It's easy to spot an error when you get billed $98,762.49 for last month's phone bill. Some are not caught as quickly.

-- (4@5.6), January 08, 2000.

The shift to windowing rather than 4 digit expansion happened in about 1996 or 1997. Any sizable organization that awakened to it's Y2K risks later than 1997 would have discarded the expansion option in about 30 seconds... simply too complex & risky.

Remember in an organization with a few thousand employees, a mainframe or two, several mini computers, some UNIX boxes & a few thousand PCs, there are quickly at least 1,000,000+ software components. Suddenly expanding file/database formats with those sorts of numbers is non- trivial work.

It would be equivalent to say GM deciding to replace all 10mm nuts with 12mm. Very difficult in a short period of time.

-- David Eddy (deddy@davideddy.com), January 08, 2000.

Sorry Cork, but there is one remaining issue that needs to be put to bed before it we can say that the worst is behind us. As far as I know, there is not a single, major entitlement program that has cut checks in this new year. In fact, these programs purposely cut January checks in late December. The credibility of modern government rests on its ability to collect and redistribute income. Turn off the welfare spigot for a few months, and New York WILL look like Beirut.

-- Chris Tisone (c_tisone@hotmail.com), January 08, 2000.

I Knew all along, (although I did not go on record, so you will have to take my word for it) that the whole Y2k bug was a nonsence, having run several test on old PC's and Databases several years ago and not one problem, no BIOS problems nothing.

I agree that the problem seems to be OLD MANAGEMENT meets YOUNG TECNO, OLD MANAGEMENT does'nt know his arse from his elbow when it comes to Computers.

The whole dame thing was an exercise in money making by the IT sector nothing will convince me otherwise.

The only people running to the hills after JAN 1 are the EXPERTS with their sacks of cash, who pays in the long run for this hoax, that's right me and you!

As an IT pro it has saddened me that so many people where ripped off!

-- Bob Wood (bobwood@bigfoot.com), January 08, 2000.

You got that right ,Chris . Think of the millions of dollars it cost the government to print a few days early . IF their systems were O.K. why do it early instead of toughing it out to show the peons who's in charge , as the TPTB usually do ? Only reason is they DON'T have it fixed and think the extra 30 days will make a difference . It WON'T ! Eagle

-- Hal Walker (e999eagle@freewwweb.com), January 08, 2000.

To David Eddy:

I found your answer extraordinarily interesting. You describe very well what should have been. From my own experience, I wonder if it really happened that way.

At the start of 1998, I spent considerable effort trying to determine which remediation strategy was being adopted by most organizations. I was getting some e-mail from people in DoD, in connection with an article of mine which had come out in CrossTalk, the Defense Dept. Journal of Software Engineering. In response to my question, all of them said that year field expansion had been decided on as their shop's method. Looking at ads for remediation firms in the Wall Street Journal about that time, I got the impression that only about a tenth of the firms indicated something like "we can do windowing also if you want it." The saddest case I heard about was a young woman, friend of a friend, working in a bank with its programs in assembler. She was doing year field expansion, and there was another programmer off somewhere duplicating her work, just to make sure nothing was missed.

So although I knew windowing was indeed being used, it did not seem to be all that popular at that time.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), January 08, 2000.

Wait, I thought like 2/3rds of the cost went to PR firms and the like trying to convince us that everything would be fine. Who then took advantage of CEO's?

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 08, 2000.

>>.. But in '99 there wasn't time for both goals to be met, so there was the big switch to windowing. <<

Actually, the technobabble I heard helped perpetuate the myth of Y2K remediation efforts being too little too late and work-arounds being required. I am in contact with collegues in other shops and am not aware of any widespread use of windowing or any other technique. It was not needed.

LAST MINUTE "expanding field remediation" is a MYTH. Companies had to address this issue *way* before the last minute. Examples of this are loans, insurance policies, retirements, and investments. Any company dealing with long range finances had to address the 'expanding fields' problem long ago. So, this was not a problem many companies had to address as part of their Y2K remediation. It had already been addressed years ago in many companies.

I saw no big rush to windowing in 1999. Some places may have employed this as a temporary measure. However, it was the exception and not the rule. I make this statement based on what I saw and experienced.

Y2K 'meltdown/end of world' was a mythical event created by a lot of people. There was a real problem that needed to be remediated, it was just never the end of the world.

There were probably some IT consultants that used Y2K fear to their advantage. The IT profession, like any other, has its share of unscrupulous people. I don't know of any profession that doesn't.

-- Chris Josephson (chrisj62954@aol.com), January 09, 2000.

I don't know much about programming, but I know that one organization I do some work with is having problems with expanding date fields right now. I don't know if they chose to go with windowing first, but whatever they did it didn't work, and they were still not compliant after the rollover. This is a medium-sized very professional type organization, not some little Ma and Pa shop. I overheard them this week discussing the need to make the larger date fields fit in with their existing processes. I really don't think there is a heck of a lot of opportunity for overcharging "hoaxes" as most IT managers would recognize a con job.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 09, 2000.