My thanks to most everyone heregreenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread |
While I tend to agree that we may not have experienced the full economic impact of Y2K computer problems, I believe (like many here) that what has happened so far has exceeded the expectations of even the most optimistic among us. For that, I'm extremely thankful.So I would just like to extend my personal appreciation to the following:
- To those who functioned as our early warning system . . . Ed Yourdon, Ed Yardeni and company. The world owes you a debt of gratitude. Whether or not things played out as you expected, more than anyone else you deserve the Paul Reverve award for alerting the world to the problem.
- To the many technicians, analysts, programmers, project managers and engineers who jumped on the problem and made this such a non-event. Many of you are still working under contingency conditions scrambling to fix things and keep utilities and businesses functioning as close to normal as possible. You did such a fantastic job that we now have the luxury of sitting at our computers arguing over why things happened the way they did. You got the job done beyond anyone's expectations and deserve the Unsung Hero award.
- To those who provided the oft-reviled view that embedded chips were not as vulnerable as originally feared . . . Paul Davis, Flint, Dan the Power Man and company. You caught alot of grief on this forum and you hung in there . . . and you were right! At least more right than most. Personally, you really helped me to adjust my preps to a much more realistic level. With apologies to the Cassandra Project, I bestow upon you the true Cassandra award. You waded into the lake of doomers and persisted in speaking the truth despite the personal cost to you.
- To those who had the wisdom and courage to do an about-face as they tracked Y2K progress . . . Peter DeJager, Declan McCollough, Drew Parkhill and company. Some of you faced a barrage of accusations and insults for being a "turn-coat", but you helped many of us behind the scenes to follow suit. From various off-line communications, I know that some of the old faces around here stopped visiting very often because they stopped believing in BIG problems and believed that whatever prep they had done already was sufficient. I think I was just realizing that things may not be as bad as we initially thought just when DeJager came out with his reversal. It really helped to solidify my personal opinions. In borrowing from the Wizard of Oz, I bestow upon you the Courage Award.
- To Ed Yourdon for establishing the forum in the forum in the first place and for working with Phil Greenspun to preserve it on the eve of Y2K.
- To the Sysops who took on a thankless and time-consuming job. You guys kept some sanity here.
- And finally, to those who in the last few days have had the strength of character to admit that they were wrong . . . Ed Yardeni, "a" and the others. To you I bestow the Honor Award, for it takes a person of honor to publically apologize to those who told you that you were wrong. Bravo!
I'm sure there are other awards worth bestowing as well (there will probably be some pretty scarcastic ones heading this way) and individuals worth recognizing . . . please feel free to add yours.
David (aka BankPacman)
-- David Bowerman (dbowerman@blazenet.net), January 09, 2000
I freely admit that I greatly over-prepared. When one regards the RISK as the point of preparation as opposed to the ODDS of the problem occuring, there is no such thing as being 'right or wrong', only being less or more prepared.Yes, I do appreciate the input of the optomists on this forum such as Flint and K Decker. However, I do not think they deserve any award for their input anymore than a@aa or any of the hard core doomers. It, after all, was just their opinion. They had no more facts to back them up than the extreme doomers.
Go down a couple of posts and you will find a quote from a retiring newsman/journalist that is very appropriate to people's input here.
I DO have to say 'hats off' to Greenspun and Yourdon for their work here. Regardless of the end result, they have made a significant contribution to my life.
-- Lobo (atthelair@yahoo.com), January 09, 2000.
Lobo:[They had no more facts to back them up than the extreme doomers.]
This is technically true. The difference is, "they" based their opinions on ALL the information out there, whereas the extreme doomers chose to base their opinions on a carefully selected subset of that information and reject/ignore the rest.
During the night, everyone knows it's dark. But there are more facts than mere darkness, and the extreme doomers chose not to credit them when they predicted the sun would never rise. This wasn't purely a matter of luck and guesswork.
-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 09, 2000.
Lobo,Thanks for the response. The reason I chose to recognize the contributions of those such as Flint and Decker is because without their persistent voice I surely would have spent far greater resources and burned many more credibility bridges in my life. I needed to hear them as my "voice of reason" to balance my preparations. Without them, we'd all be in Beach's bunker right about now.
With regard to the "risks", it one thing to evaluate the "odds" when one has a proper understanding of the "risks". It is entirely another when the "risks" are incorrectly identified. That is clearly the case with regard to embedded systems. I don't know how the embedded chip problem was first identified or how the scope of it was evaluated, but it was red herring.
Many of us started out preparing under the mistaken notion that chips everywhere would fail bringing the infrastructure that our culture depends upon to a crashing halt. When folks started showing up here challenging the embedded chip theory based on their real world experience, they didn't have to stay here trying to speak the truth to those of us listening in the wings all the while being vilified by those who've never touched a chip in their life. But they did. For that I applaud them.
-- David Bowerman (dbowerman@blazenet.net), January 09, 2000.