I thought I owed all of you (or at least, all of you who have remained civil during the debate) an essay about what happened (or rather, didn't happen) as a result of the Y2K rollover. It's available here. Please note that I don't think it's "all over" yet, but I've certainly been wrong about the impact so far.

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), January 16, 2000

Answers

Thank You Mr. Heller, I have followed the WRP's and find it all useful. Thank You for swimming up stream against the popular opinions of those who are totally unaware of the realities of the worl

-- steve vaughn (billw86@aol.com), January 16, 2000.

Hi Steve...thanks for posting on this angle of the Y2K story. While I was a never a hard core doomer, I did have extremely serious concerns that seemed rational and justifiable at the time. Obviously, it was cause for a major sigh of relief when the big day came and went without the catastrophe so many feared.

Will there be some difficulties somewhere? I'm no computer expert, but common sense says the answer would be "yes". Will some sort of cyber Armageddon befall us? I think that answer is so obvious that it is no longer is worthy of stating. Given the massive utilization of computer technology, stuff will happen (so to speak) and we need to understand that.

Perhaps the worst aspect in my experience has been the hate and venom spewed upon those of us who had legitimate fears and concerns. I have consistently answered my many critics that we should be glad that the bad stuff we worried about did not happen. Sadly, the mean spirited among us continue to fire blindly.

I cannot and will not speak for any other person, but I am pleased that this event took the course it did. I always hoped for the best and said countless times I would love to be wrong. In the meantime, I am preparing a considerable donation to my local food bank.

As we see on the board, there are numerous peripheral issues to discuss, so, on with the debate!

-- Irving (irvingf@myremarq.com), January 16, 2000.

Steve:

That essay is a pretty good piece of work, sir.

In one way, I was indeed surprised. I think we had all wound ourselves up concerning "rollover". THE deadline..... Easy to do, humans like fixed points in time, either/or's, etc.

On the other hand, I'm not a geek. I'm a recruiter, currently, have done a lot of things in the past, and may again in the future. I DO study history.

I did not expect to hear or to be told of "Y2K" glitches post rollover. I'm on record (as "mushroom") over and over as saying we would probably never know what really happened.

I prepped as best I could for an 8.5++++ Having now the interesting privelege of sitting on a stockpile of 125 people months of food, mostly long term grains and such, plus tools and small livestock (chickens, rabbits, potbellied pigs, and pygmy goats), I have no reason not to wait and see how things transpire.

In other words, except for a slight downgrade, as you did ( I went from an 8.5++++ to an 8.5 ), WHY should I get frantic over whether or not I am correct?

Either way, I have goodly preps and will stay this way in the future. It feels good and right.

So, don't worry about any mis prophesying. It is at best a chancy art. Relax and watch the world unfold.

Illegitimi non carborundum Take care. Jon Williamson Never before have so few wished so hard to be so wrong.....

-- mushroom (mushroom_at_bs_too_long@yahoo.com), January 16, 2000.

Steve, coming out like this just shows the quality and caliber of individual that you are. Congratulations.

Even Flint would be proud of you! Too bad Flint quit this forum (for how long though?)

Now, down to business again, I have a couple of questions for you:

(1) Although embeddeds is not your field of expertise, what is your take on the possibility of "delayed" or " artificially postponed" failure of embedded systems?

(2) Taking for granted that the worldwide "massive myocardial infarction" to be supposedly produced by embedded systems is out of the question, why aren't you still overly concerned about the "AIDS" syndrome that cross-contamination and failure of un-remediated IT systems would cause both here in the US and in many countries on which we depend that have done little or nothing to solve the IT side of Y2K? Has the importance of IT-Y2K problems decreased all of a sudden too? Do you know believe that they can be solved as the crop up? Did you use to think this before rollover?

Thanks Steve. Take care

-- George (jvilches@sminter.com.ar), January 16, 2000.

Steve......Only a suggestion, bu if I were you, I'd hold onto those preps for awhile.....there are signs that this country could have a very dry summer, which would cause price increases in food. Maybe even shortages. Hope I'm wrong, but I am thankful I prepared, and I plan to stay that way for quite awhile.

-- Jo Ann (MaJo@Michiana.com), January 16, 2000.

Sorry, my next to last question should have read "Do you NOW believe...? (instead of: 'Do you know believe..?)

Take care

-- George (jvilches@sminter.com.ar), January 16, 2000.

Hello Mr. Heller. I believe you did an on-line debate with Hoffmeister, and if so, I enjoyed those discussions.

A few comments on the six explanations for why the embedded systems thing is much less than you expected (from a utility engineer who y2k tested many different kinds of devices):

Your leaning was toward items 4,5, and 6 with a little of 3. As I see it, the closest to reality is none of the 6 you had. Item 3 mentioned that embeddeds are out there, but that they don't perform essential functions, or can be worked around. Actually, a better way of stating it would be this: There are many embedded systems in utilities, and many of them perform essential functions, but very few of them are date-sensitive, and the few that are don't fail catastrophically. This is the reason why utilities sailed through Y2k, even if they did little remediation.

Number 4, that utilities are having problems but are not admitting it, is kind of a red herring. I was one of the people monitoring and reporting data (for my company)during the rollover for the power companies in the US and Canada. There were several nuisance type problems reported, but NOTHING that was electric service-affecting. There just aren't any catastrophic failures to report, Steve (at least in the power area). Further, you would definitely know it if catastrophic problems were occurring, simply because power outages can't be hidden from customers.

Regarding item 5, that problems have not yet surfaced--time will tell for sure, but I estimate that 95% of the nuisance problems found in testing occurred during the rollover to 1/1/2000. Therefore the embedded issue is essentially dead. There were a few Leap day and rollover to 2001 issues found, but they are very, very small in number, and again, were all nuisance-type problems.

Regarding item 6 (clocks were rolled back)--this is true for a small percentage of systems, and the dates folks set back to (1972, 1996, etc.) are different and will therefore experience problems at a later future date. Of the systems I've seen, all the roll-back systems will be replaced very soon, before their virtual rollover is to occur.

-- Dan the Power Man (dgman19938@aol.com), January 16, 2000.

Nicely stated.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 16, 2000.

Dan -- If you are correct, then Rick Cowles was seriously in error about the basic exposure to utilities all along and, I would have thought, should have known that what you are saying was true. Or was what you are saying not obvious even in the industry until very late in the remediation game?

I note this because I generally relied on Rick's insights (btw, I'm not a blamer, whatever happens with Y2K, just noting it, FYI).

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 16, 2000.

Steve, You have produced a very interesting and well thought out essay. I agree with you that Y2K is not dead, or I wouldn't still be here, however I am still a complete Polly in that, IMHO, there will not be any serious problems that can't be worked around relative easily.

With your list of reasons for why the embedded issue isn't as bad as you had imagined, there is another reason which is possibly more significant than all of those you have listed. Try:

7. There were some unremediated emebedded systems that did fail, but the failure was purely cosmetic, and didn't affect the function of the device.

The explanation of this hypothesis is that many embedded systems carry out specific functions, and use any date/time function purely as a tag to an event. ie a change in a digital state or an analogue value is tagged with date and time. However it is only the change in state, or the actual analogue value that is used in any further display or calculation. The date/time tag is superficial to the main purpose of the embedded. I would say that in our power company the majority of embedded systems that used dates came into this category, and therefore any failure in one of theses systems would be purely cosmetic and would not affect the normal operation of the system.

This is something I have tried to get across many times on this forum. An embedded system can be mission critical, and if it fails to perform its base function it could have quite a significant impact further downstream. However it may be possible for part of it to fail, (eg the date) without causing a complete failure of the entire system. For some reason many people only see the issue in black or white.... it either works perfectly or it doesn't work at all.

Finally, I would also like to agree with a comment made by an earlier poster. I also enjoyed the debate you had with Hoffmeister. It showed that reasonable discussion between the two camps was possible without some of the insults and poor assumptions that we are now seeing daily on this forum.

I will look forward to any further thoughts you may have on Y2K.

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), January 16, 2000.

"but I've certainly been wrong about the impact so far."

It takes a big man to admit when he is wrong. I am glad to see you are able to admit being off base in your predictions, too bad there aren't more like you out there.

-- Butt Nugget (catsbutt@umailme.com), January 16, 2000.

Excellent essay. I didn't start prepping because of you or Gary North or anyone else, but because I saw a potential threat. I already live in the country and have lots of skills. No, the main reason I began to prepare was that I was caught completely flat-footed by Hurricane Fran and it sucked mightily. Even the +potential+ of disruptions due to y2k was enough to get me moving, after that experience.

One thing you did, though, was give me an intro into ham radio, which I have gotten into in a big way, because I have found the Inner Nerd within me. If I had know how downright +cool+ Ham is, I would have done it a long time ago.....my father was a ham and I used to watch him build his own vacuum tube rigs when I was a kid, but never bothered to get into it before the Y2K scare ( I call it a scare rather than a hoax, because it was a legitimate threat, it just missed us like a hurricane turning north.) Scanners are also cool. Heard these two gems tonight:

A police call concerning "accidental public defecation".....???? A story there, I'm sure.

A drunk Englishman is being busted for punching out his girlfriend.

Officer: Uhh, UK national. What do we do, call the consulate?

Central: How do you know he's English?

Officer: Well, the way he talks up, he ain't from around here.

Thanks for being here, Steve, and stick around. The show isn't over yet. It's like coming out after a storm, thank God wer'e alive.... but is our house OK? We'll see.

-- Forrest Covington (theforrest@mindspring.com), January 16, 2000.

Forrest -- Yeah, I just passed my tech (no code) and am working on Morse to do that next. Cool stuff. Now, if I can only afford what I need for the Yagi. Maybe my Pings will have to wait ....

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 16, 2000.

"have claimed that my career as a programmer and/or author will be severely impacted if not terminated..."

Anyone who makes this claim is undereducated. This forum is proof that in modern times notoriety is much more important than being correct. Indeed many posters here can't thank warmly enough those who warned them of what turned out to be a nonexistent danger. Y2K always has been a bunch of computer glitches with little chance of bringing doom, but people LOVE being warned, apparently.

HEY!! IS THAT SOMEONE BREAKING INTO YOUR HOUSE??!!

You're welcome.

-- I'mSo (happy@prepped.com), January 16, 2000.

Hi Big dog...in my opinion, the power industry knew in January, 1999 that the impact of embeddeds would be minor...by then, many tests had been performed on commonly used devices, and all were coming up with no catastrophic failures. I don't feel comfortable speculating about Rick Cowles' views on the subject, since I am not him--I suggest that you ask him directly.

Hey Malcolm, you just referred to me as "another poster". Dude, I'm sure you've seen me around the forums, we are both power insiders...you can call me by my name...

-- Dan the Power Man (dgman19938@aol.com), January 16, 2000.

Big DOg......

http://3-cities.com/~tbrosius/antenna.htm

-- Forrest Covington (theforrest@mindspring.com), January 16, 2000.

Dan the Power Man and Malcom:

I can only echo your statements. I was a project manager for our utility working on generation and transmission embedded systems. The vast (95%+) majority of the embedded systems had no date function at all. Of those that had a date function, most only counted elapsed time or days. Most of the one that did know the year were fed the data from SCADA or some other external source. Most that had real time clocks were already compliant. We replaced about 3% of our systems because of date concerns and some of those had other operational issues that made it cheaper to replace than repair.

Big Dog - Rick Cowles was wrong for the same reason a lot of other folks were wrong - he had zero embedded systems experience but somehow became an expert. The lesson is to listen to the people who are actually doing the work.

As a last point, no one who didn't put their family in financial jeopardy should have any regrets about preparing for problems. There are all kinds of bad things that happen every year - storms, floods, earthquakes, fires, etc. The more people we have that are prepared to be self sustaining the more other agencies can assist those who, for whatever reason, aren't prepared.

Jim

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), January 16, 2000.

Good essay, Steve. I did spend a lot more than I would have because I undertook a large rent and spent a lot on extra furnishings, but that's the way the cookie crumbs. I agree that having to admit that others I don't respect were more correct than I is painful. There were right with no information and I, with so many hours of research to my credit, was wrong. Zizzlefritz!

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), January 16, 2000.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California

...having to admit that others I don't respect were more correct than I is painful.

Actually, though, most of us were acting on the possibility of disruptions. No matter what happens, there will always have been that possibility. Those who haven't prepared, and even moreso, those who criticize others for preparing, state that there was no possibility of disruptions. No matter what happens, that wasn't correct.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), January 16, 2000.

Steve, at least you are making a bit of sense now. Reading your original article, I can't see how anyone could have thought that way. Moving location like that, for what? I imagine you must have felt pretty stupid when nothing happened. How's the amateur radio going?

-- Mr. Sane (hhh@home.com), January 17, 2000.

his date calculation routine is very convoluted - IBM has a real simple one for calculating the days between two dates (in COBOL), which is real cheap. But he's using it to make a point, and most people wouldn't realize that it's really a poor example.

Then I followed his link to the home page. He claims he's a C++ and Java expert, but his home page has 2 Java script errors (undefined variables). Hmmmmm. Can happen to anyone (I do it often enough in Clists) but should have been corrected within a couple of days.

I read through some of his other stuff as well (If asked to do research, which this is, I don't just skim). He claims the Y2K remedial work is boring and impossible to do by the average programmer. Wrong - with a TSO terminal (Time Sharing Option - IBM's online access to a mainframe) it's really quite easy to do a find on all dates to look at them. As well, there are at least 5 companies which will compare every line of COBOL or C code in your shop and mark everything that MAY need correcting, Before we started in Feb/98 we put all of our code through a company called Infomission. We used their findings as a base. And when we finished we sent our code to a second company to make SURE we caught everything, (This assumes your programs are online. If they're still on Hollereth cards, Rots a ruck! But no modern shop can operate without keeping their programs online in some way, whether it's with Panvalet, Endevor, or any one of the other 4 systems).

Do all programmers write their own date routines as Heller claims? Yes, in shops that don't follow the rules of shared modules or Object Orientated Programming. But it's dumb - why reinvent the wheel for every program when you can copy working code? (and programmers are lazy).

In any case, all programs must CALL the system date, SYSDATE (or in COBOL 3, CURRENT DATE) to get the current date and pass it to a working storage field called WS-DATE or something similar. Once you find the call, you can track back every time that WS-DATE is copied or moved to another date field, and you've got all uses of current date in the program. To find uses in input or output files, find DATE or DTE, DAY or DD, MONTH or MTH or MM, YR or YEAR or YY. Those are allowable COBOL fields, and virtually every programmer uses at least one of them.

Lastly, he sends you to other experts to prove his warnings of catastrophe are correct. Interestingly enough, he refers you to Gary North and Ed Yardini. Nowhere is there a link to someone who ISN'T predicting disaster, except to a couple of columnists whom he claims to have destroyed. No reference at all to Peter deJager, who started the whole Y2K warning back in 93 ( http://www.year2000.com ), and who now believes the problem is pretty near fixed.

In other words, he's predicting disaster, and marshals many half-truths, semi-truths, and out-of-date stuff to prove it, while ignoring or poo-pooing any claims to the contrary.

-- (anon@this.time), January 17, 2000.

Dan, I do apologise for refereing to you as another poster. What happened there was that when I was typing my reply and came to the point of referring to your post, I just couldn't get out of my mind that it was Flint and I knew he hadn't said it. I just couldn't remember who had made the comment, so I just had to resort to saying "another poster".

This memory lapse is the sort of thing that happens when I respond to posts after working a night shift, but I assure you that it is not meant as any sort of slight towards you.

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), January 17, 2000.

Steve,

After reading "anon" I believe they are correct.

Why didn't you listen to him/her and report that information here?

-- (I'm @believer.net), January 17, 2000.

While I felt Malcolm passed the smell test along with Rick (sorry, Dan, you weren't around enough or persistently), saying "trust the people who did the work" doesn't cut it.

NERC had their PR program in place before 1999 - the die was cast in terms of what they would communicate, no matter WHAT they found or didn't. Even personal friends within the industry on both sides (and, btw, there were insiders on both sides) said that the public talk was completely untrustworthy.

Not quite as simple as the Monday-morning quarterbacks suggest.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 17, 2000.

(1) Although embeddeds is not your field of expertise, what is your take on the possibility of "delayed" or " artificially postponed" failure of embedded systems?

I think it is a possibility, but is unlikely to occur all at once, and therefore is not as threatening as a simultaneous collapse would have been.

(2) Taking for granted that the worldwide "massive myocardial infarction" to be supposedly produced by embedded systems is out of the question, why aren't you still overly concerned about the "AIDS" syndrome that cross-contamination and failure of un-remediated IT systems would cause both here in the US and in many countries on which we depend that have done little or nothing to solve the IT side of Y2K? Has the importance of IT-Y2K problems decreased all of a sudden too? Do you know believe that they can be solved as the crop up? Did you use to think this before rollover?

I am still concerned about that. It may still lead to a disaster. However, as with the embedded systems, it would be gradual if it occurred at all, rather than simultaneous. This would allow the development of contingency plans to deal with a lack of services.

-- George (jvilches@sminter.com.ar), January 16, 2000.

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), January 17, 2000.

Steve......Only a suggestion, bu if I were you, I'd hold onto those preps for awhile.....there are signs that this country could have a very dry summer, which would cause price increases in food. Maybe even shortages. Hope I'm wrong, but I am thankful I prepared, and I plan to stay that way for quite awhile.

-- Jo Ann (MaJo@Michiana.com), January 16, 2000.

I'm not planning to get rid of my preps anytime soon. I don't recommend that others do so either. Even if Y2K turned out to be a complete bust, there are plenty of other disasters that would make being prepared a good idea. For example, look at the situation in the Pacific Northwest right now.

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), January 17, 2000.

There are many embedded systems in utilities, and many of them perform essential functions, but very few of them are date-sensitive, and the few that are don't fail catastrophically.

That is pretty much covered under my #2 and 3. If no remediation needed to be done, that's No. 2. On the other hand, if it was necessary to fix the systems to operate automatically, but manual operation was possible, that's No. 3.

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), January 17, 2000.

Steve, at least you are making a bit of sense now. Reading your original article, I can't see how anyone could have thought that way. Moving location like that, for what? I imagine you must have felt pretty stupid when nothing happened. How's the amateur radio going?

The answers to your questions are in my essay. I suggest that you read it.

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), January 17, 2000.

After reading "anon" I believe they are correct.

Why didn't you listen to him/her and report that information here?

Because I don't believe he is correct. Let me analyze the comments he made:

his date calculation routine is very convoluted - IBM has a real simple one for calculating the days between two dates (in COBOL), which is real cheap. But he's using it to make a point, and most people wouldn't realize that it's really a poor example.

Irrelevant to the discussion of Y2K problems. Also, is he aware that my book isn't about COBOL?

Then I followed his link to the home page. He claims he's a C++ and Java expert, but his home page has 2 Java script errors (undefined variables). Hmmmmm. Can happen to anyone (I do it often enough in Clists) but should have been corrected within a couple of days.

Those errors were not in Javascript I wrote, but in Javascript provided by an advertiser on my page. I have removed it.

I read through some of his other stuff as well (If asked to do research, which this is, I don't just skim). He claims the Y2K remedial work is boring and impossible to do by the average programmer.

I never claimed it was impossible to do. As for being boring, that has been the common experience I have seen reported.

Wrong - with a TSO terminal (Time Sharing Option - IBM's online access to a mainframe) it's really quite easy to do a find on all dates to look at them. As well, there are at least 5 companies which will compare every line of COBOL or C code in your shop and mark everything that MAY need correcting, Before we started in Feb/98 we put all of our code through a company called Infomission. We used their findings as a base. And when we finished we sent our code to a second company to make SURE we caught everything, (This assumes your programs are online. If they're still on Hollereth cards, Rots a ruck! But no modern shop can operate without keeping their programs online in some way, whether it's with Panvalet, Endevor, or any one of the other 4 systems).

If it's so easy, we shouldn't be seeing any reports of failures, and yet clearly this is not the case. Also, why did Citibank spend almost a billion dollars on such an easy problem? Why did the federal and a number of state governments build "command bunkers"? Why did FEMA put all of its offices on alert at the same time, which it had never done before?

Do all programmers write their own date routines as Heller claims? Yes, in shops that don't follow the rules of shared modules or Object Orientated Programming. But it's dumb - why reinvent the wheel for every program when you can copy working code? (and programmers are lazy).

He doesn't seem to know the difference between shared modules and object oriented (not "object orientated") programming. Of course, as a COBOL programmer, I suppose that's understandable. Unfortunately, copying code means that you have that much more code to maintain; avoiding the copying of code was one of the primary goals of the object-oriented programming revolution.

In any case, all programs must CALL the system date, SYSDATE (or in COBOL 3, CURRENT DATE) to get the current date and pass it to a working storage field called WS-DATE or something similar. Once you find the call, you can track back every time that WS-DATE is copied or moved to another date field, and you've got all uses of current date in the program. To find uses in input or output files, find DATE or DTE, DAY or DD, MONTH or MTH or MM, YR or YEAR or YY. Those are allowable COBOL fields, and virtually every programmer uses at least one of them.

They may use at least one of those field names, but they may also use a lot of other field names. Again, if it's that easy, why was all the money spent on fixing it?

Lastly, he sends you to other experts to prove his warnings of catastrophe are correct. Interestingly enough, he refers you to Gary North and Ed Yardini. Nowhere is there a link to someone who ISN'T predicting disaster, except to a couple of columnists whom he claims to have destroyed. No reference at all to Peter deJager, who started the whole Y2K warning back in 93 ( http://www.year2000.com ), and who now believes the problem is pretty near fixed.

Actually, deJager is now warning that we should not become complacent. The reason I didn't quote him is that his opinion changes from day-to-day, apparently based on whatever is most marketable at the moment. As for the columnists, they're certainly Pollys. Whether or not I demolished them, they present an opposing point of view, and I provided links to them from my site.

In other words, he's predicting disaster, and marshals many half-truths, semi-truths, and out-of-date stuff to prove it, while ignoring or poo-pooing any claims to the contrary.

In other words, this person's arguments make no sense. That's why I didn't listen to him. I hope this helps ... Lady Logic.

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), January 17, 2000.

By the way, I don't want to slight those who have provided moral support for my position. Thank you, one and all.

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), January 17, 2000.

My observation on at least one Polly is that he prepared for a year and then acted like nothing was going to happen. What do you call a man whose actions don't match his words? I call him someone lacks integrity between his words and his actions. There is another word for that.

There was no way to know if the failures we saw before rollover were red herrings or the tip of the iceberg. Hearing that embeddeds never were a problem does not give me great faith that the things that were problems got fixed. All it tells me is that we looked under the bed and the boogie man wasn't there. Like Steve says, I know business systems too and like Ed says, it will be a good year before it all shakes out.

-- Amy Leone (leoneamy@aol.com), January 17, 2000.

Steve, thanks for answering my two previous questions so fast. I insist in that your outward acknowledgement of what you have considered as "being wrong about Y2K" certainly deserves praise from everyone, pollies and doomies alike.

Stretching your willingness to answer us Steve, I have a couple of additional questions concerning (1) spreadsheets and (2) lack of national and/or international remediation standards/norms, assuming that testing has not been widespread enough nor thorough enough worldwide, thus leaving Y2K remediation badly exposed.

(1) Spreadsheets: For different reasons, both in the US and abroad spreadsheets are quite prevalent everywhere. Question: How much awareness and remediation have spreadsheets received and how bad an impact could they have ?

(2) Lack of remediation norms/standards: Field expansion, encapsulation, turning the clocks back somewhat, windowing (fixed/sliding)... When the 50,000 mainframes and the 150 million interconnected PCs of this world really climb up to cruising speed, how bad an impact could these different Y2K remediation techniques have ? How well will they interact with each other? Could everything work out pretty smoothly despite? Is this even remotely possible?

Take care

-- George (jvilches@sminter.com.ar), January 17, 2000.

Pompous pinheads with puffed up ideas on their own self worth......

Watch what you say, Y2K Pro. You've stuck your foot in your mouth before, too. . Filled with humility you are not.

-- Reflections (in@the.mirror), January 17, 2000.

Pompous Pinhead Pro,

While you're spitting on people, maybe you could have this saliva test done:

Saliva test finds boys with taste for violence

BOYS likely to grow up violent and disruptive can be identified by analysing their saliva, researchers say.

The early onset and persistence of such behaviour is associated with low saliva levels of the stress hormone cortisol, they found. Compared with those having higher or fluctuating cortisol levels, boys aged seven to 12 in this category began anti-social acts at a younger age, exhibited three times more aggressive symptoms, and were three times more likely to be labelled "mean or combative" by their classmates.

The results of the four-year study may help psychiatrists better understand the differences between normal adolescent problems and lasting conduct disorder. Children with persistent conduct disorder remain disruptive for decades and account for a high percentage of crimes. The findings indicate that conduct disorder is not merely a fault of upbringing.

-- (TrollPatrol@sheesh.now), January 17, 2000.

"Peter deJager has tons of proof that things are ok in North America, it's just that Heller probably isn't interested."

That's not what I've read.

Y2K bug prophet warns next few weeks crucial

-- (keep@it.honest), January 17, 2000.

You use Peter de Jager as an authoritative source and now you're calling him a "crazy prophet." Please get your story straight.

I didn't say anything about an economic collapse, by the way--you did. De Jager also says.....

"When we come through mid-Febuary we can all start putting (the Y2K problem) behind us and leave the rest of the clean-up to the computer people," he predicted.

-- (keep@it.honest), January 17, 2000.

hey steve! y2k has hurt! my shipping cost were $350 to send a donkey system to oregon via yellow freight, now it is $650. also, we had to re-enter all the company info into their computer. after a lengthy discussion, the girl on the phone said that they had to replace their computer system due to y2k. Bingo. friend in jonesboro, arkansas said they had everyone their with lots of overtime and are still on manual. i am sure there are similar stories all over the place, but it translates into one thing...higher prices very soon. it all seems a mirror of the '70's oil crisis. like my friend said.."on wall street if you have a problem that can be solved with money, you dont have a problem-you have an expense.

ok, so y2k got fixed. this nation owes all the 'fear mongers' a congressional medal of honor. if we had not made a serious stink about y2k, you can be damn sure there would be a mess at this moment. this crisis has shown us that people dont really deserve our precious intelligence, opinion, or even time.

-- Skip (146942@msn.com), January 18, 2000.

now if heller could just settle his ego down long enough to apologize for making his statements (aluding to the fact) that he was gleeful (happy, glad, etc) that the pollies were going to "stop consuming valuable resorces like air" (die, quit living, etc)

THAT would be saying something, wouldn't it?

-- Half-way there (stevo-roony@steva.loony), January 18, 2000.