1)-An unending barrage of opinions like this---

A "Weather Report"

2)-No knowledge of the existence of clear, reasoned, dispassionate debunking analyses. No doubt they were there but I didn't see them. I was not even aware of the Debunker board until Spring 1999 and then, whenever I looked at it, it was filled with venomous rhetoric from you-know-who. I felt I couldn't wast time reading that stuff.

3)-personal isolation. I am sure that if I had still been employed at GM I would have picked up on positive information. But I was not, so the only people I knew were my friends and neighbors who seemed to give y2k no thought. Yes, they were right, but not because they had rigorously thought it through.

4)-personal ignorance. Although I am an engineer, I have no experience in computer architecture, mainframe programming, international banking, networked computer systems, etc. But I had programmed microprcessor systems and I knew how wonderfully buggy complex S/W can be.

5)-time frame. I didn't take notice of y2k until Dec 1998. Suddenly, I felt that if there was a problem, I was behind the curve. There was no time to research the issue. It was all I could do to complete some modest preparations in the time that remained.

So, obviously I wasted time, energy and money. I am not bitter at the alarmists that influenced me. If I am bitter at anyone, it is at the pollies that did NOT influence me. At least they did not influence me enough. I read Poole--he was the most influential for me. Also deJaeger's "Doomsday Avoided" in March 1999 was reassurring.

It's not clear to me yet if Yourdon was simply wrong or whether he knew all along that there would be no problem and cynically milked the concern of nervous nellies like myself. CPR, I am not sure if you have a consistent view of "the Youdon" yourself. I have seen you criticize him as a fudster and I have seen you criticize him as ignorant. C'mon, you can't have it both ways.

BTW, I have yet to see where anyone has shown that Yourdon got rich off y2k. Maybe he did, I just haven't seen that documented.

I would not have posted this personal rehash except that the stupid y2k issue will not go away so I acknowledge it by this one post. We have a good forum here; I think it has evolved well beyond the y2k aberration and I have modest hopes that even CPR will drop the subject once the year 2000 has passed.

-- Lars (lars@indt.net), September 28, 2000

Answers

Lars, Regarding your item 2, did you ever see this post?

Oil & Gas Revisited - IT and Embedded Systems - Part 1

If you scroll down a bit, you will see more links of posts I made to TB2000, including the well received (I'm joking of course) Embedded Systems Revisited

If you did not see these posts, you might find the responses interesting, post apocalyptic y2k ;) Basically, any attempts to share facts were met with great disdain and knashing of teeth. Rumors and myths however were worshipped there. Cherri battled to present factual technical information, and received the same treatment. To be fair, I did receive a dozen or so emails thanking me for posting stuff to counter the hype. Toward the end of Novemember and December, I did detect a mellowing of the crowd at TB2000, although a few diehards still held out hope for a societal meltdown....

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.com), September 28, 2000.

Many, such as myself, took the simple position that:

1) The experts disagree: Some (like Yourdon) believe there could be catastrophic problems, others think there will be minimal problems (at least in the U.S.).

2) It is better to err on the side of caution. For example, if everything turned out rosey, then I would simply eat my stored food in 2000 and have a small weekly grocery bill -- which is EXACTLY what I am doing.

The reality is that, especially for those without a technical background, it was just EASIER to fork over the bucks and reach a comfort level of preparation, rather than try to gain an education on the innards of embedded chips and then decide which experts who had been doing the stuff for 20 years were right and which were wrong.

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), September 28, 2000.

YOU are FULL OF SHIT. KO-SPIN. YOU REJECTED OUTRIGHT and tried to humiliate anyone who disagreed with the Y2k KULT YOU FELL FOR.

OVER AND OVER,,,,People like Cherri and Flint told every single one of you that "embedded" was overdone. There was NO EVIDENCE OF ONE SINGLE LARGE ENTERPRISE THAT WAS "in trouble". THE THE BS STARTED ABOUT "small companies" and IV&V. When that "didn't sell", the "supply Chains" and the "3rd World Failures" were PUSHED.

ALL ALONG EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU ***FELL FOR IT** AND NOW, YOU DARE SUGGEST YOU WERE "BEING PRUDENT"???

NO SALE...KO-SPIN. BAD THINKING AS USUAL. TRY TO "WHIP UP" ANOTHER SET OF "THOUGHTS".

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), September 28, 2000.

Lars:

Methinks it better to be beFUDDLED than beHEADED. It's over. You learned something about yourself. I LOVE learning new things.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), September 28, 2000.

Lars,

First sentence from the "Weather Report" that you linked to:

"With one year to go, the pressure is on. This is what we know. The work did not start in time. The remediation has failed. Most of the Fortune 5,000 and government agencies will not complete repairs on even their most important systems. "

I saw nothing in the entire report that said how Cory knew these things. I saw nothing in the report that gave any type of substantiation to these sweeping generalizations. Given that these were statements that were made with absolutely no proof, the real question is - why did you choose to believe them? If the same unsubstantiated statements were made about airplanes, would you quit flying?

If you read Poole, how could you continue to believe anything that Cory said? How can you be bitter because someone didn't influence you enough to the optimistic side of the argument? Apparently, you were able to be more influenced by those that didn't present one scrap of evidence for doom. This is not about Y2K - it's about how you make decisions. You're obviously an intelligent guy but there's something about your personality that leads you toward this pessimistic view of the future. My guess is that Y2K is not the only area of your life that this pessimism has influenced. This seems to me to be a more important issue than how much you spent for groceries.

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), September 29, 2000.

Lars:

I probably shouldn't say this on a public forum, but I'd encountered Cory on Csy2k and didn't trust him at all. SOMETIMES he'd respond to a post and SOMETIMES he'd simply sneak his response into another thread [hoping the response wouldn't be seen by the person to whom the response should have been sent.]

Anyway, I was using my full name at the time, and I didn't want to be associated in any way with Cory's Weather Report. He'd already used my full name in responses on csy2k to another thread, and he'd already included a Hoffmeister post from there in his weather report without permission.

On several occasions on TB I, someone would start a thread asking for opinions from I.T. people. Cory would then chime in that the responses could be combined for inclusion in a Weather Report. I refrained from engaging in those threads, for the reasons mentioned.

It was extremely difficult for some of us to draw the line on what to post and what NOT to post. I remember engaging E. Lane Core in debate on TB I, and his first response to me was, "Polly want a cracker?" Now THAT's a professional response from someone who is presumably an "esteemed" expert on Westergaard's then "professional" site. I simply said, "Yes. Please include a sardine", and continued to discuss why his post was totally false.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), September 29, 2000.

"People like Cherri and Flint told every single one of you that 'embedded' was overdone" -- CPR

"Overdone" does not mean the same as "innocuous". Flint, for example, saw ISOLATED instances of power failures due to embeddeds. As for Cherri ... she never, to my knowledge, presented a single scrap of actual evidence to support anything she said. Her stance was always, "I'm an expert, trust me, I know what I'm talking about, there are no Y2K embedded problems, honest injun." (Actually, from Cherri, it would be more like, "I'm an expart, trest me, I no whut I'm taking about, their are no Y2K embeded problms, honest engine.") I don't think a whole lot of people were impressed with Cherri's in- depth analyses (nor her spelling).

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), September 29, 2000.

Lars, as I see it, we all were dealing with an unknown. I've seen lots of posts here suggesting that the rest of the world (people not on the Y2K forums) knew nothing of Y2K and didn't care. I find that false. Everyone I spoke with knew about Y2K, research it to a degree, and had definite opinions on the subject. All of them also thought that it wouldn't be more than a minor disruption.

When I came to this forum in sept 98, I came looking for answers and meet only vicious attacks. (Background, I was working on contingency planning at the time, since completing remediation on all our systems). I thought that Eddie was an idiot but milked his professional background as some kind of expert. He called the rest of us "brainless zombies" in one of his newsletters. He had no clue about the "interconnectedness" as no one did. (Of course, we now have proof on this topic)

You reach your conclusions about Y2K based on your experiences and knowledge. I knew that no matter what happened (even Eddie's 10 year depression prediction), my family and I would survive and I would be able to help out neighbors also. If you don't have the skills no amount of preps will allow you survival in an apocalyptic world.

Unfortunately, many of the doomers were thinking irrationally and shouted it on all the internet sites. The pollies tried (by shouting back) but couldn't get through. You saw the results. Live and learn.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), September 29, 2000.

"Unfortunately, many of the doomers were thinking irrationally and shouted it on all the internet sites. The pollies tried (by shouting back) but couldn't get through. You saw the results. Live and learn."

That's a good conclusion, but I would add that many of the pollies shouted back AS IRRATIONALLY.

My opinion is that all of us who worried about y2k, pollies and doomers and those who couldn't make up their minds but were concerned enough to follow it closely on the internet, were all pray to irrational fears. The pollies' fears were that the doomers would "convert" enough people to cause bank runs, and influence people to waste money on extensive preps. In the end, the results were that the same people who worried about y2k, pollies-used-to-be-doomers, doomers and in-betweens, are still irrationally yelling at each other.

We're all nuts. Only the "ignorant" masses come out rational in all this.

-- (smarty@wannabe.one), September 29, 2000.

To a certain extent both KOS and Anita have hit the nail on the head.

A lot of the so called experts were expert only in their own minds. There is a famous remark (supposedly) about the late Timothy Leary that goes: He was a legend in his own mind. I think that was true about Corey and Lane and yes, Yourdon too. One problem was that while they may (and I stress may) have had some knowledge or expertise in one particular area they see thought nothing of trying to extrapolate it out to areas of technology that they really knew little or nothing about.

To a large degree CPRs chief tenet; that the net failed its first big test, is correct because of all these pseudo experts who gained some odd type of quasi legitimacy because of their frequent or highly visible postings. Of course I sometimes get the same feeling when I read the columnists in the New York Times or watch a TV talk show. 

-- The Engineer (spcengineer@yahoo.com), September 29, 2000.

Anita,

"It was extremely difficult for some of us to draw the line on what to post and what NOT to post. I remember engaging E. Lane Core in debate on TB I, and his first response to me was, "Polly want a cracker?" Now THAT's a professional response from someone who is presumably an "esteemed" expert on Westergaard's then "professional" site. I simply said, "Yes. Please include a sardine", and continued to discuss why his post was totally false."

Funny! Oddly enough, it was Mr. Core who ticked me off enough to post here for the first time... he was going on about the IEEE letter to Congress. I think I called him a "boob". Fitting, still.

"My opinion is that all of us who worried about y2k, pollies and doomers and those who couldn't make up their minds but were concerned enough to follow it closely on the internet, were all pray to rational fears. The pollies' fears were that the doomers would "convert" enough people to cause bank runs, and influence people to waste money on extensive preps. In the end, the results were that the same people who worried about y2k, pollies-used-to-be-doomers, doomers and in-betweens, are still irrationally yelling at each other."

smarty, I'd be hard pressed to disagree with you on this. In fact, I think I said much the same thing in one of Dr. Schenker's post-mortem threads several months ago.

That's probably why we can't stay away from this place...

-- RC (randyxpher@aol.com), September 29, 2000.

Smarty,

Speak for yourself. I never thought the doomsayers or debunkers would carry the day. The debate was fascinating. Large groups of people who ususally stay in the shadows (like the survivalists) came out in full force. There was some extraordinary dialogue about Y2K, but you had to endure mountains of Milne and Reuben to find it. The Y2K issue was a graduate exam in critical thinking that most failed.

-- Ken Decker (kcdecker@att.net), September 29, 2000.

Pardon me for being so blunt with you Ken *twitch*, but you're as nutty as me for continuing rehashing your same old same old, in the same old arrogant way *twitch twitch*

The nuttier ones around here are the most intent on rationalizing their nutty behavior. But who am I for saying so *twitch*, I'm just a nut. Call in the white coats, they'll settle this arguement.

-- (smarty@wannabe.one), September 29, 2000.

To a large degree CPRs chief tenet; that the net failed its first big test, is correct because of all these pseudo experts who gained some odd type of quasi legitimacy because of their frequent or highly visible postings. Of course I sometimes get the same feeling when I read the columnists in the New York Times or watch a TV talk show.

An astute observation, The Engineer (I of course know who you are!). Having watched the news regarding the presidential campaign, I am inclined to revise my opinion to say that the Internet is only slightly more unreliable than the Intertect when it comes to accurate information...;)

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.com), September 29, 2000.