LINK

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0025TL

Let me guess, this is another iteration of "Pascal's Wager". Let's see now, who would make the best parents for this kid, the older couple (not sure what this means, when Mom is 15) who have a grip on reality, or do we go with who knows who over the Internet in 8 days - the main criterion being gullibility to millennial hysteria?

Thankfully, even some of the GIs on this thread have a modicum of common sense, correctly pointing out that the baby can manage with Mom just fine for the time being, and making the point that this is a decision that should not be made with undue haste.

In a couple of months the doomers will be gnashing their teeth, bitterly hissing "We have nothing to apologize for! We only took sensible precautions! Nobody knew! Nobody could be sure!". This sad situation puts the lie to their mantra that they are not hurting anyone with their delusion. "If Y2K is just a BITR, nobody will be worse off for having preped". If only it were that simple. Unfortunately, it is only when all of the GIs finally realize that they have been had, will the full cost of this foolishness be tallied.

-- Computer Pro (first_minister@hotmail.com), December 24, 1999.

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 05, 2000

Answers

Is it y2k yet?

-- (nemesis@awol.com), July 05, 2000.

Actually, even Milne says that the party is over. Will some of you ever be GI's?

-- Bob Brock (bbrock@i-america.net), July 05, 2000.

Guess you fools have unlimited money for gasoline, milk and bacon.

-- Blue Collar (inyour@city.com), July 05, 2000.

the spirit of y2k-PAST, is haunting cpr!!

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), July 05, 2000.

3-POST,S TO-DAY BY CPR. wuz-up!c-crazy*p-person*r-retaliating!!! now yu happy cee-pee!i,m playing your -game!!nyuk-nyuk!

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), July 05, 2000.

Looks like the CPR idiot is the one gnashing his teeth, spending every waking moment on his computer trying to get revenge. I'm a happy camper, plenty of food, no need to go shopping, laughing my ass of at the pissed off moron pollys! LOL!!! :)

-- (cpr = @ frustrated. dipshit!), July 05, 2000.

Yeah, but you won't be laughing when I cacth up to you, Gomer!

-- Bill Collector (you need to pay for all your preps) (didn't@think.IwasComing), July 05, 2000.

Not knowing just what the result of y2k would be I purchesed food, water.items for lights,medical supplys,ammo,and something to use it in.It's comforting to me to know I have a garage half full of stuff I might need.I don't care what tag some people might label me with.I know thats it's better to have it and not need it,then to need it and not have it.

-- Dan Newsome (BOONSTAR1@webtv.net), July 06, 2000.

No lives were ruined due to preping~~~No, not the two parents who didn't get to adopt the baby they were promised because they weren't "preped" enough for the birth family, the young mother who ended up spending more time with the baby than is healthy if you are going to adopt the child out, it just causes more pain to wait to give up a child, and the poor baby, who's entiire future rested on the decisions of people who were so scared about an event that would not happen. Y2K "doomers" did not just buy some extra supplies. A lot of them made life decisions, some of which can never be reversed all because of their fear. How many abortions happened because the parent(s) feared the world the child would be born into would be like berut? How many women or men decided on perminate measures of birth control because of their fears for the future?

What about the fear that caused so many to buy extra's just in case? It was like having a loved one with an incourable illness and waiting for their death, just to have them wake up one day totally well. All of the emotional and psychological stress and the toll it takes emotionally and physically to go through something like that?

No, pretending that extras in your pantry are the only results of all of the hype and fear people generated and propagated is telling yourself another lie. Relationships with spouses, children and parents have changed in a way that can never be repaired, friendships where you lost respect for people for not preparing, where you felt less of them for not getting it, that they were aware of the changes in your friendships, can you bridge the chasm that was built during the last few years?

How many friendships have been lost, how many marriages have been broken, how many children have lost trust in what their parents tell them?

The fear caused by the perpitrators of hype has done a lot more damage than is realized.

Those who acknowledge they were taken in and are gfoing on with their lives are the lucky ones. But what about those who we don't hear from who have suffered damage in non financial ways? Who now have self doebts about their ability to understand what is really going on in the world around them The ones who don't know who, if any , to trust any more?

So if your ok, thats great. BUt don't asssume everyone came out as unscathed as you. It is those who have been damaged in small or large ways that deserve to have the guilty pay for what they did to them. There are people who should be held responsible for the damage they caused others.

Those who believed abd prepared are not the guilty ones I am discussing, they are guilty of nothing more than trusting people who we were told should know, that we were supposed to trust. Those who betrayed that trust should be held accountable of what they did.

Take Dave Hall for instance. He testified before the government that there were 40 billion chips out there with the possibility of 10% of them failing.

He did this with the full knowledge that he did not have the ability, experience, training, or knowledge to make that statement. He knew that he did not know what he was talking about. He lied. He knowingly lied and always used the disclaimer that it was his opinion only. When he was called an embedded chip expert, he did not correct this falsehood. When ever someone with actual knowledge publicly tried to show him the error in his "assumption", he would publicly belittle them and what they said. He went into the medical Y2K forums and threatened the possibilities of lawsuits and possibilities of deaths occuring if his set of proceedures for checking the embedded chips in the biomedical equipment was not followed. He made a set of proceedure that were to be followed as standard for embedded chips/systems and passed them off as gospel. He claimed if those proceedures were nt followed than the devices would not be Y2K ready.

How many companies, how many businesses spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars following his set of proceedures. Totally unnecessary proceedures.

It may come as a surprise to a lot of you that he is now, IN THE LAST YEAR, learning how embedded chips/systems work. He finally bothered to learn, from the basics, years after testifying about them.

Do you think he should be held responsible for propagating the embedded chip threat? If embedded chips/systems had not been brought up at all, if it was only software that you worried about failing, do you believe you would have thought things could have had the possibility of going as badly as some thought? If embedded had not been a factor, would you have worried about power failing? If you did not hear about embeddeds, would you have worried about chemical plants blowing up or sewer oe water systems breaking down?

How many would ever have worried at all if the "embedded" card not been played?

Should he just walk away after causeing so many people concern about something they should not have worried about, from those who stocked flashlights to the companies who spent millions to unnecessarily check out things that never had the possibility of failing?

I'm angry, pissed over the way he just made one excuse after another as it became known that his "predictions" were exagerated. I am angry that he did not publicly admit his mistake and contact all f the forms of media to let the word out, the same way he did when he first made his assumption. It would have calmed a lot of people down if he, who they believed about the millions of failing chips, told them that he had been wrong. He knew in the spring od 1999 that he had been wrong, why not let the world know? If he had come to TB2000 in March of 1999 and explained how he had "guessed" wrong, and knew there were few, if any possibilities of embedded failures, would those of you who believed until the end have changed your minds about how bad you were afraid it would be?

Do you think he should asnwer for knowingly spreading falsehoods? Or as he calls them "guesses" as facts. Yes, he admits that his testimony about 10% of billions of chips was only a guess. I have an email in which he stated this fact.

I realise that this is not the place were anything will be done about those who are guilty of irresponsibly spreading misinformation. But it is imperitive that those who did, answer for their actions. If only one person was harmed because of what they did, then they should be held responsible for their actions.

If these sort of actions are condoned, what is to prevent others from saying anything they choose about anything or anyone. Your own personal life could be put on line, anyone could make up anything they wanted and slander you to the point where you loose your job, family everything and it would be perfectly acceptable. if people can do whatever they want without any limitations, then this country will go to hell real fast. The next thing you know people will have the right to walk into your home and do whatever thay want there. If these people are made to answer for their actions, others will understand that they, too, will be held responsible for their actions.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), July 06, 2000.

Should he just walk away after causeing so many people concern about something they should not have worried about, from those who stocked flashlights to the companies who spent millions to unnecessarily check out things that never had the possibility of failing?

There's something I'm still not clear on. Was the possibility of failure zero, or was it a lot smaller than 10%--maybe 0.25%? Even if the risk of failures was less than 1%, the fact that embedded systems are used in infrastructure made checking important. But if there's a document somewhere that shows the risk of embedded systems failures was zero, I'd be more than happy to read it.

-- (Ple@se.elaborate), July 06, 2000.

So how many lawsuits have been filed against this guy who "knew that he did not know what he was talking about," who "knowingly lied," who caused an unknown number of companies to follow "Totally unnecessary proceedures" and spend "millions to unnecessarily check out things that never had the possibility of failing," because this guy was "knowingly spreading falsehoods"? These are very serious charges and, if true, could result in all those companies recovering millions, if not billions, of dollars in damages. The law provides that people who knowingly mislead others, who lie, who cause them damage, are held responsible for their actions and are made to pay a penalty. How many lawsuits are in the pipeline or have been successfully pursued against or settled by this person?

-- not a lawyer and (don't play one@on.tv), July 06, 2000.

There was never anything showing that there was a problem with embedded chips-he figured out how many chips had be made in the past 5 years and made a guess off of the top of his head, with nological reason whatsoever that 10% would fail. He had no experience in the field at all. I knew from my own experience and knowledge that the possibility of failure due to dates because of Y2K was next to zero. I knew back then and know now that the only minute possibility of a problem would be on an individual basis where someone had to have gone out of their way to cause it to happen out of shear stupidity. Most chips are hardware, he called every chip "embedded" when actual embedded chips are a minute % of all chips in existance, and the large amount of "space" needed to put a calender into an embedded chip was reason enough to know that it would not have been done if it could have been prevented. Since all chips need to be "stepped" which is done with a RTC, there was no reason to create a clock/calender embedded in the embedded chip.

Once he started the embedded scare, others ran with it and built it up into the legend that some people still believe today. There is no paper anywhere stating that every lightbulb will not fail due to Y2K, the same is with chips-there was never a reason for it in the first place. It was a farce he propagated to sell lectures on Y2K.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), July 06, 2000.

"Bill Collector (you need to pay for all your preps)"

Paid for with cash last year upon purchase dimwit. That's the difference between a doomer and a polly, doomers are always prepared, so we have cash available, while pollys buy everything on credit, always thinking that they will be better off in the future than they are now. Fools.

-- (i.pay@with.cash), July 06, 2000.

Actually, the difference between a doomer and a polly is that doomers were wrong about Y2K, while pollys were right.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), July 06, 2000.

hindsight is a marvellous smug point of view, no one can predict the future

OK there wasn't a world conflict when Clinton bombed Serbia but there easily could have been, so you think someone warning of such a possible outcome (as I did) should be vilified

I expect there were pollys who didn't believe there could have been a world war in 1914, yet they were probably the first to enlist

-- riichard (richard.dale@onion.com), July 06, 2000.

OK there wasn't a world conflict when Clinton bombed Serbia but there easily could have been, so you think someone warning of such a possible outcome (as I did) should be vilified

I believe that there is a great deal of difference between being told you were wrong and being "vilified." If, in fact, you find very little difference between the two, then I would suggest that perhaps "being wrong" is more important to you than you realize.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), July 06, 2000.

I pay for everything with cash. Did I just lose my polly status?

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), July 06, 2000.

I'm debt free too, Anita. Typical "black and white" doomer thinking...LOL!

Cherri:

Don't forget things like "dear Karen" abusing her kids by having there wisdom teeth pulled even though there was NO REASON to have that proceedure done....other than she *believed* there would be no dentist services after CDC. What a moron. *THAT* kind of thing should be looked into, along with the baby "give-away" sponsored by Olsen.

-- Super Polly (FU_Q_Y2kfreaks@hotmail.com), July 06, 2000.

i don't rise to your bait

I'm saying that there was a likelihood of dangerous escalation just as a logical exposition of cause and effect

doesn't mean that Clinton isn't a complete fascist bastard in taking the action against Serbia (as are the people who supported him, it doesn't matter whether they call themselves democrats))

I'm glad there wasn't WWIII, no-one can ever say with certainty until after the event what will happen, you can only look at trends and indications, these can be interpreted differently

its the same old story just trying to wind people up as they happened to come to the wrong conclusion, wanting them to eat humble pie and grovel to your arrogance and bad temper

hmmm perhaps you never look at the consequences of what you do or what others do with your approval

-- richard (richard.dale@onion.com), July 06, 2000.

Actually, the difference between a doomer and a polly is that doomers were wrong about Y2K, while pollys were right.

Yes and you like to rub it in i.e. "I'm OK you're not OK", stick your tongue out and say nah nah nah nah nah

really you're still doing it after 6 months

my own position was that I felt there was a % likelihood of an unpleasant scenario in financial services (having worked in the industry), I have worked on some systems with much date dependency but most have very little

I think being pessimistic actually goaded companies into action by painting a disaster scenario, otherwise they would have done nothing and there would have been one

I did not think for one minute there would be physical power failures (but I have no technical background in power delivery whatsoever so did not have the knowledge to make a judgement)

-- richard (richard.dale@onion.com), July 06, 2000.

its the same old story just trying to wind people up as they happened to come to the wrong conclusion, wanting them to eat humble pie and grovel to your arrogance and bad temper

-- richard (richard.dale@onion.com), July 06, 2000.

Richard, I think a lot of people who were worried and preped are taking personally the things that we are bringing up.

It isn't the people who made commonn sense for a problem they had little or no reason to disbelieve would happen, at least to some extent.

I don't mean to be rude, but don't flatter yourself believing that CPR, Andy, or I give a hoot one way or another about what you did to prepare. We don't believe you have to apologize or justify what you did.

If you paid attention you would see that it is the people who pushed the Y2K FUD for their ownagendas, be it money for Dave Hall and his conferences, f4i (or whomever) for a laugh, Paula Gordon for political reasons, or the many venders who had something to gain from convincing others that unless their products were used, people/businesses would suffer.

Two years ago if you took a look at the webpages on a Y2K venders webring you would find statements of dire predictions of things to come at the rollover. One of the most prominate was the list of things that could fail due to the 10% of embedded chips that were expected to break. On those hundrens of webpages, the "predictions" were never changed or updated as the different devices were proven to be Y2K immune.

Before I started gracing TB2000 with my presence, I was on DeJager mail-list as well as running a mail-list of my own. I took the list of areas/devices that were said to have the posibility of failures and got the facts about each one I evaluated.

I passed the information and sources on to the people on DeJaggers list and on my own, and a few others such as the medical mail-list and university mail-lists. From those the information was passed on to still other lists and forums. The reason that this information was not known on TB2000 is that it was not allowed to be known. Many people tried to impart information on the actual status of different areas on tb2k but were met with a variety of methods aimed to stop them. Unfortunatly for the tb2kers, most did stop trying.

You ask why there are no lawsuits or legal methods being brough to make people account for what they did knowingly?

Think about it, Y2K is over, people are tired of hearing about it, the media has nothing to gain by persuing it. If major companies didn't know enough to wade through the BS before the rollover, what makes you think they suddenly got brilliant and know how to do it now? There weren't any committees set up to monitor the spewers of misinformaqtion, the documentation was pulled off line as soon as the rollover was a bust, how would they get the information needed to bring these irresponsible people to justice for their actions? How could they know who was saying what and for what reason? After all, years were spent rilling the public up enough to get them to demand that the businesses and government make contingency plans for the problems that were expected, who was thinking about accountability for when nothing at all happened? Were are the thousands of webpages set up to demand accountability? Where are the maillists with thousands of subscribers demanding government do something about it?Where is Greenspuns NoBomb2000 where hundreds discuss and thousands lurk to find out the truth about why the facts were denied and the truth distorted at the cost of billions of dollars more than was needed, much of it taxdollors?

You ask why nothing is being done? For the simple reason that Y2K is over and YOU don't want to hear about it anymore.

For the simple reason that the discomfort you feel for falling for it is being felt by the powers that be that fell for it themselves. The the simple reason that ego's of those who spent all that money are just as bruised as yours are every time the subject is brought up. For the simple reason that they would have to admit that they were as gullable as anyone who buys into publisher's clearing house mailers. For the simple reason that their positions in thier companyor in government would be at risk if they had to admit they did not know what they were doing and believed "so called experts" who they are now being shown were only expert in manipulation. Because too many people in high places would have to admit that they aren't as smart as they think they are. Hell, they would have to admit that I am smarter than all of them. Do you think they want to do that?

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), July 06, 2000.

its the same old story just trying to wind people up as they happened to come to the wrong conclusion, wanting them to eat humble pie and grovel to your arrogance and bad temper

Please point out an example of my "wanting them to eat humble pie and grovel to my arrogance and bad temper." It would appear that you are reading far more into the statement that you were wrong than was intended.

Actually, the difference between a doomer and a polly is that doomers were wrong about Y2K, while pollys were right.

Yes and you like to rub it in i.e. "I'm OK you're not OK", stick your tongue out and say nah nah nah nah nah

really you're still doing it after 6 months

Interesting that you've conveniently forgotten what I was replying to when I made that statement. To refresh your memory, it was this:

That's the difference between a doomer and a polly, doomers are always prepared, so we have cash available, while pollys buy everything on credit, always thinking that they will be better off in the future than they are now. Fools.

Now, here's someone who still, after 6 months, makes inaccurate and exaggerated statements about the differences between doomers and pollys and finishes up with a typical personal attack. I simply pointed out a more accurate difference, since the subject was already brought up.

If you have a complaint about people continuing to "rub it in" after 6 months, perhaps you should address it to the people who are still calling the pollys "fools" even though they were correct about the consequences of Y2K.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), July 06, 2000.

As for the original post. Yes. Prepping had a cost. This was sensibly discussed in some detail on TB2000 by people such as Ken Decker and Flint. For a great many people like myself, the cost of prepping was very moderate, consisting mostly of cost-shifting some purchases from 2000 to 1999.

For many others, who made life-altering decisions based on false Y2K assumptions -- such as leaving jobs, moving location, and changing or postponing important activities -- the cost of prepping was much higher.

Hmm@hmm.hmm did well to make his snappy comeback to Richard's answer.

Cherri, I read your long responses with some attention and I have to say they sound a lot like the kind of anecdotes Ronald Reagan used to hand out, such as the infamous welfare queen in the Cadillac who paid for her fifth of vodka with food stamps. There could conceivably be some substance to your stories, but it is just impossible to tell.

You invite us to imagine the horrors. In my opinion, this is no more useful than the arguments of those who were deluded about Y2K, who used similar tactics to get people to believe their version of what might be true.

In the case of Y2K, some embedded chips were vulnerable. Some programs did fail. Some problems did occur. But these instances were so scattered as to make no cumulative impact. The whole scenario fell apart when those impacts did not merge into a cumulative signifigance.

So, while I can believe that some lives were greatly disrupted, some marriages failed, some damage was done, you seem to suggest a cumulative cost that is higher than a few isolated failures. As Y2K proved, numbers do count. Your argument isn't groundless without numbers, but it is considerably weakened.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), July 06, 2000.

Cherri posted this on TB I last year. I'll take it that she considered the information in it to be fairly accurate.

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001PeC

**********************************************************************

I have been asked by some for links to "embeddeds".

http://webserv.vnunet.com/www_user/plsql/pkg_vnu_news.right_frame?p_st ory=65920

15 October 1998

Gartner Symposium: Embedded systems will not fall prey to Y2K bug

by Jonathan Lambeth in Orlando, Florida

The risk of embedded systems crashing because of Y2K is based on ill informed and over hyped information, analyst company Gartner Group warned this week, encouraging users into unnecessary remediation work.

New research by Gartner shows that many embedded systems need not be fixed  they will not have a problem. Large scale systems are at serious risk, but your fridge, fax and other everyday devices are safe.

Gartner research director and leading Y2K expert Andy Kyte said companies should focus time on embedded systems that are safety critical.

Embedded systems cannot pose Year 2000 risks unless they have access to a source of persistent date information, he said.

Kyte relates discussions with users who have replaced all their faxes because they were told they were non compliant. The sum total of non compliance Kyte noted dryly was the clock that prints the time of sending.

If any of the audience can find me a fax that wont transmit because of the tick over from December 31st to January 1st 2000, then I will eat it, he promised.

There are an estimated 50 billion embedded chips in the world. The research breaks down embedded systems into three categories.

Microcontrollers are small devices, common in almost all electronics, that have their instructions burnt in at time of manufacture and cannot be reprogrammed like software. They may have some spare addressable memory that can have a date field added but a mere one in 10,000 of these will fail and these will be impossible to identify.

Most of these devices dont even know what planet they are on, let alone the date, said Kyte.

The second category is microprocessors, programmable devices that execute code. These can be at risk if they have a real time clock mounted or communicate with a clock. Less than one quarter of a per cent without clocks are at risk, but around seven per cent with some time dependency will have problems as the clock ticks over into the next century. Only two per cent will continue to have problems once reset.

Finally, large scale embedded systems are most at risk, with more than 35 per cent expected to be non compliant. Typically found in manufacturing, oil and healthcare environments, but can even encompass things like traffic light controllers or aircraft systems. They typically include common PC components although often run proprietary or even site specific applications.

On the embedded systems side, a capital expenditure, Kyte advises users of one get around.

Talk to your chief financial officer. If it costs $1,000 to replace a device, how much should be spent on investigation? Replacement may be more tax efficient, he said.

James Duggan, research director at Gartner said he believed the three areas likely to be worst affected by problems in embedded systems are the oil industry, telecommunications and power grids. He said things such as aircraft were well used to protecting against a single point of failure and were in good shape, though that did not apply equally to the systems that maintained aircraft fleets.

There is one final alternative  unless the embedded system does predictive or retrospective calculations, simply leaving a device or system turned off through the tick over into 2000 may well mean it carries on regardless, blissfully unaware of the starting of a new age.

To comment on this story email newswire@vnu.co.uk

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), September 15, 1999

-- (Embedded@systems.risk), July 06, 2000.

The key quote from that article was...

Finally, large scale embedded systems are most at risk, with more than 35 per cent expected to be non compliant. Typically found in manufacturing, oil and healthcare environments, but can even encompass things like traffic light controllers or aircraft systems. They typically include common PC components although often run proprietary or even site specific applications.

-- (Embedded@systems.risk), July 06, 2000.

pathetic "neener-neener"meme

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), July 06, 2000.

Oh POOH. More of the LinkMeister dated info to justify what was de- bunked in 1999 by Cherri, The Engineer, Poole, myself and others. TYPICAL of the fluff out of Rouge Valley Alarm Squad.

The post you use is an antique but what Cherri and I knew was this: the "large embedded systems" referred to were a TINY FRACTION of the overall". That was a part that Gartner nicely left out. How Tiny? Try 1-5% depending on definitions. MOST of their "35% defects" were NOT "mission critical" or you could be sure that Gartner would have trumpeted their "examples" to the world in 1999 (which they did not). In addition, the CONFESSION of DALE WAY should end the discussion. As the leading voice of Gloom, Way's statement that Y2k embedded problems were "greatly exaggerated" should end this conversation.

< LARGE meant the "SCADA" systems or the jerry built in house systems patched together by Engineers not IT people. And the same Engineers that put those systems together were more than capable of repairing them. (ITS PART OF THEIR JOB DESCRIPTIONS). We kept telling you DOOMERS and LAY PEOPLE THAT but were castigated because after all, "what did we know, we "Didn't Get It".

USAA did have to replace one computer that was a dedicated PDP-11 that logged people into and out of one facility. BIG DEAL. They yelled about that and the $125,000 cost but not about the fact they had run the box for 20 years. The Engineer who did the campus surveys for them charged more than ALL THE REPAIRS they had to do and that was for a survey of 10 Million sq. ft. of buildings of all ages and descriptions. Similar stories about "embedded" were reported to the DFW DAMA Y2k groups monthly. By Spring of 1999, few believed the press or Trade source stories that were invariably VENDOR PR Plants.

AND...it turned out that Gartner's numbers about them was incorrect also. Their "35%" turned out to be more like POINT 35 percent and the "problems found" invariable were either in VERY old systems or NON-Mission Critical peripherals like the Logging function Report Procedures.

In fact, it gots worse for the Doomzes as we moved PAST 1/1/2000 because even now, few of the "problems" have surfaced and if there were any "increase" over the normal rate of computer problems you can be sure that Gartner, Giga and people like Yourdon would be the first to announce it if ONLY TO TRY TO RESTORE THEIR REPUTATIONS.

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 06, 2000.

OK, Cheri,if you are so gung=ho, and you know all the answers about a period in time. I lay this quest upon you: Why does the American Tax Payer continue to pay for housing for Cuban Exiles in Guantanamo? Where is the right for those exiles to live at the expense of tax payer dollar? Janet Reno once said, there are no Cubans left in Gitmo, she was wrong. There are Cubans left, who milk our dollars. The Cubans left, are given housing, giving American Medical and Dental Assistance. This is not right. Your mission, is to seek the truth. Why should your Grandmother go haggle-toothed, while we give American Dollars to give provide free healthcare to aliens? Your Call.

-- Wake up (toyour@call.com), July 07, 2000.

cpr, I've given this matter a lot of thought, and I can tell you that, after a careful examination of all the pertinent details in all the available reports and other material I was able to gather, that the following appears to be true:

- the Gartner Group was wrong about Y2K

- Ed Yourdon was wrong about Y2K

- Steve Heller was wrong about Y2K

- Gary North was wrong about Y2K

- John Koskinen was wrong about Y2K

- the State Department of the USA was wrong about Y2K

- various US Senators were wrong about Y2K

- I was wrong about Y2K

- many other people on TB2000 were wrong about Y2K

- people I've never heard of were wrong about Y2K

- you (cpr) were substantially right about Y2K

If you demand a detailed listing of everyone who was wrong and what they said and when, it will take a fairly longish amount of time to compile and collate the details. I estimate it may take (assuming this task must be completed in the interstices of a normal working life at other jobs and responsibilities) until I am 87 years old in November of the year 2041.

If you are willing to wait that long for a comeplete report, I would be more than willing to submit a full accounting to you at that time.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), July 07, 2000.