Do You Understand Y2K?

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

My apologies for how well my perfectly formatted MS-Word document cut-and-pasted into TB2K . . .

Judging by the crap posted lately on TB2K, I don't think very many of you understand Y2K. All sorts of "Doomers" saying 'Sayranarahah" (sp.) on or before January 22, 2000. All sorts of Pollies saying, "I told you so!" on or before January 22, 2000. All sorts of "undecides" becoming Pollies on or before January 22, 2000.

There are 2 aspects to Y2K, and there always have been. The embeddeds were always the wild card. They always were. NOBODY knew for sure what would happen during the rollover. Approx. 2-5% of the US$600Billion global Y2K remediation expenditure was spent on embeddeds. This amount was so low because the vast majority of embeddeds were impossible to test (buried in concrete, one part of an extensive chain, hardly have money for a coffee machine let alone Y2K testing, etc.) coupled with the fact that they mainly reside in industries that called Y2K a hoax until they had to scramble to make up for lost time. The entire planet (discounting the 95% that either moronically joked about Y2K or never heard about Y2K at all) crossed its fingers in the last week of December, 1999 and hoped for the best. WE GOT LUCKY!

The US State Department issued travel advisories for dozens of countries and evacuated Americans (mostly embassy workers) out of scores of countries. US President Clinton had 50 state emergency declarations ready for his signature. A football (soccer) stadium in Scotland was prepared to be a mass morgue. Multi-million US$ bunkers were readied in Washington DC, Los Angelas, New York, Toronto, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc. The Chief of Police in Chicago recomened that all Chi cops have enough food, water & cash to last for 30 days for each member of their family. (a friend of mine from Chicago responded, "They're all Irish Catholics, 17,000 familes means more than 100,00 peoople!), etc. I could go on and on and on and on and on and on and on (with verifiable links)expalining how TPTB were either scared shitless or were trying to quietly mislead the few that were paying attention. They hadn't a clue what was going to happen with embeddeds during the roll- over (seems like ancient history now, doesn't it?). The fact of the matter is, WE GOT LUCKY!

It turns out that embeddeds weren't too bad. It's a shame that Gary North convinced the Doomers that that's all we gotta watch out for. It fit his paradigm - the only way the world can completely fall apart instantaneously and leave the spoils for the "Remenant" is if the wild card play (embeddeds) is catasrophic. Never happenned (thank God!).

On the other hand, business systems that weren't repaired or replaced will, without a doubt, fail when trying to calculate elapsed using 2-digit-year- representation with the earlier of the two in the 1900's and the later in the 2000's (i.e your birthday subtracted from today). That's a given. Seen it, fought it, hope I've beaten it into the ground (but it's kinda like Jason from Hallowe'en- he never seems to be dead for long). Here's another fact: the vast majority of these business systems (globally) were not replaced or remidiated. NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM (AMERICAN OR OTHERWISE) HAS FACED A MONTH-END BATCH PROCESSING CYCLE SINCE THE CDC.

I'm not saying TEOTWAWKI (the lights had to go out all over the planet for TEOTWAWKI). I'm ecstatic that I'm no longer have to be concerned about TEOTWAWKI (despite all the "I told you so's" I've recently received from people who were genuinely scared, paralyzed like a doe in the headlights and never told me nothin'!). Regardless, just because the worst-case scenario didn't come to pass doesn't mean that we are not going to see degrading business systems throughout the first half of '00. My point: Doomers saying, "All's fine" now (before the first month end and Feb. 29) never really understood Y2K in the first place.

-- Paranoia Will (Destroy_Y@BlackCopters.com), January 23, 2000

Answers

Thankyou. I am here to learn and you have done a fine job of explaining it.

-- David Whitelaw (dande53484@aol.com), January 23, 2000.

Agreed. But really, what did you expect from a generation raised on simple solutions to complex problems in an hour (less commercial time)? MacGyver lives!

-- MacGyver (M@c.Gyver), January 23, 2000.

PA Engineer -

Thanks - I used to work in Kingdom myself, worst and best 3 years of my life, if you know what I mean :o)

Couple of points...

1. Two i's in Shiite :o) ROTFLMAO!!!

2. This is the latest skinny from Dog Gone on another thread [PagingDog Gone...]

[snip]

The ports in Saudi Arabia are having severe technology problems. The one at Yanbu is basically toast. The one at Jeddah is "almost" fully operational. That's the good news. The bad news is that telephones are not working well at all. Maybe 30% efficiency on wireline and 50% on cellular. At this point the situation is deteriorating. Bin- Laden operatives are trying to cause trouble by stirring up passions. The foreign workers are staging a work slowdown to seek improved conditions (the Saudis don't like to do the manual work themselves). The phones are causing further complications in the whole export process.

Overall, things do NOT look good, and may deteriorate next month to the point where being a Westerner there might be a bad thing.

The local press is echoing the US line that there are no problems at all.

[end snip]

This tends to support Harry Schultze's inside information I posted yesterday...

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 23, 2000.


From where I sit, I STILL see the possibility of an 8+. Sheesh! Look at what is happening in oil. A rise to 40 or 50 per bbl can generate a 5-7 on it's OWN. We STILL haven't heard how well the Federal Transfer Payments went, (though the certified letter waiting at the post office suggests that the IRS is just fine thank you (oh darn)) and as you pointed out, we haven't seen Phone Bills, Credit Card Bills, Util bills, etc. Things are STILL out there n the knife edge.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), January 23, 2000.


Paranoia WILL destroy you, and you are propagating it.

Give it a rest. Nothing new is on the horizon. No doom coming. No collective deterioration. Eventually you will have to stop trying to save face, won't you? This forum is becoming a contest of which die-hard doomers can stand in the corner and get pummeled by ridicule without slinking away. On my side it's entertaining but for those of you who take it seriously, surely it is affecting your opportunity to enjoy life. You only get one, you know.

Get over Y2K, and try to find a better windmill than oil and copters to tilt at. Date sensitive stuff had its day in the Y2K court well before rollover--that's why so many doomers were hoping to cash in on embeddeds.

Interesting how hard it is to convince the paranoid...Interesting to try.

-- ImSo (lame@prepped.com), January 23, 2000.



ImSo,

You've made some interesting predictions. How is it that you seem to believe these things? And when did you start believeing these things?

Do you have access to information about the key global supply chains and foreign oil that many of the rest of us do not?

-- eve (123@4567.com), January 23, 2000.


(Dan 7:25 KJV) "And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time."

I keep wondering what this "think to change times" means.

-- Mark Hillyard (foster@inreach.com), January 23, 2000.


Imso, Perhaps you'll take your own advice and move on?

-- Shoo (flyonthewalls@yahoo.com), January 23, 2000.

ImSo, the only thing on this thread with NO value happens to be your post.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), January 23, 2000.


I only come here for the fun. Eventually I will get bored, but I am curious about the pathologically paranoid, so it's hard to stay away.

In particular, I wonder which tool--critical thinking, or ridicule-- is more effective in dissuading the nuts. I don't have a particular mission to dissuade anyone; more of a lab experiment. So far, a residual group appears not to be affected by either, but most interestingly some posters here are convinced they are being logical despite the comical reasoning. The true pathology of the paranoid, I guess.

-- ImSo (lame@prepped.com), January 23, 2000.



> I only come here for the fun. Eventually I will get bored, but I am curious about the pathologically paranoid, so it's hard to stay away.

What qualifications do you have for that diagnosis, Dr.?

> In particular, I wonder which tool--critical thinking, or ridicule-- is more effective in dissuading the nuts.

Critical thinking or ridicule? Do you pick the wings off of flys also? Kick dogs? Insult your wife and children on a regular basis or do you simply ridicule the nuts? You are a master of winning friends and influencing people. Why don't you write a book about SAP programming?

> I don't have a particular mission to dissuade anyone; more of a lab experiment.

I repeat the question, who do you think you are and what qualifications do you feel justify your 'experimenting' on people who neither asked to be part of your experiment nor take any enjoyment from your misbehavior? You are an arrogant one aren't you? A person of such obvious pride must have difficulty not identifying himself and stating his brilliant qualifications before such a motley group as ourselves... come on... impress us.

> So far, a residual group appears not to be affected by either, but most interestingly some posters here are convinced they are being logical despite the comical reasoning. The true pathology of the paranoid, I guess.

Unless you have some impressive qualifications, you damn right you guess.

-- Michael Erskine (Osiris@urbanna.net), January 23, 2000.


Mr Erskine:

I pretty much just ridicule the nuts, and I'm pretty sure most of them ridicule me. You may not like the way I express myself, and I apologize for that; in my family we pretty much argue full-out and no- one takes offense, and I would not say anything here I would not say in person. The thing you cannot see is the smile when I say it, and the thing you cannot know is that I ridicule myself with equal alacrity.

Everything I say is strictly opinion; you are free to discard it as rubbish. As to my qualifications--what difference does that make? Either I'm right or I'm wrong; same as the rest here. My "expertise" can be judged when/if Y2K takes its place in history, and chemtrails take their place in the Goof's Book of Things to Worry About.

We'd do well as a society, and as a forum, to pay more attention to the strength of reason, and less to degrees (I have 11 years of post- high school formal education if you care, which you should not) or self-acclaimed expertise; it is the notion of the "expert" that got us into the Y2K paranoia in the first place, although I notice post Y2K a great many spokespersons (Yourdon and North, to name two) argued they were not presenting themselves as experts; only quoting OTHER experts. (Not that they let this fact dissuade themselves from testifying before congress or congregations, both of which certainly assumed they were listening to experts with qualifications.) In any case, publishing credentials on a forum such as this seems bombastic since they are not typically verifiable.

Cheers, and lighten up. Life is short.

-- I'mSo (lame@prepped.com), January 23, 2000.


I'm So Happy,

You made some good points in your post. Thank you. =)

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), January 23, 2000.


Very well said, ImSo...

It would seem to me that someone with eleven years post high school education would have learned by now persuasion along with critical-thinking will win many more converts than insult and critical-thinking.

It would also seem to me that someone with all that education would have learned something about offering others the hand of fellowship and a bit of dignity but I have never been a big fan of the educational system.

You are not merely arguing 'as your family would', you are being deliberatly insulting. That speaks poorly for your family. If we are nuts and pathologically paranoid, you are a bombastic, pompass ass.

I suppose I should have taken my own advice but then I am smiling.

-- Michael Erskine (Osiris@urbanna.net), January 23, 2000.


Thank you for the coaching, Mr E; I'll try to be less insulting. I assure we really do talk like this in my clan, and we really do love each other, and yes, I probably am a pompous ass, but I do not take myself seriously, and I am not impressed with myself, I assure you.

Off to work, I'm afraid. I should have spent less time in school and more time climbing the corporate ladder so I could be retired now.

-- ImSo (happy@prepped.com), January 23, 2000.



ImSo, you certainly have given yourself a tremendous degree of importance here. Is it well deserved??? I doubt it!!

Eleven years of post high school education, my, my, maybe you would have learned much more at some productive trade.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), January 23, 2000.


ImSo;

I will revise my opinion... you show grace under fire. Well done.

-m-

-- Michael Erskine (Osiris@urbanna.net), January 23, 2000.


Ray--

You have managed to make me feel defensive.

I posted my schooling in response to a specific question, and I tried to make it clear it DIDN'T carry any weight. I'd much rather be attacked for my ideas rather than assorted pieces of paper, and in an open forum like this the weight of the argument, and not the weight of degrees or position should carry the day, IMHO.

-- Jim Thompson (jimthompsonmd@attglobal.net), January 23, 2000.


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