At what point in time do we know anything

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Electric Utilities and Y2K : One Thread

December 31,1998 seems to be a key date in everyone's world today. On this date it seems every one including the energy industry will be all done with there assesment, inverntory, and code repairs. I am not sure about the energy industry but there is a lot of other industry's including the government starting to say they now are looking at first quarter 99 to finish this part of Y2K. My question is how will we know by looking at these dates or time frames when the repair can not be done.This game of trying to read industry reports and other PR flack and determine what they are saying in them is a joke.If it could be figured that at a certain time it can not be done then that would end it and every one could go on from there.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 1998

Answers

Dave, you've hit on the reason why many computer programmers and systems integrators were trying to raise the alarm years ago, and the reason why many of them have already moved out of large cities or made a lot of personal preparations to ride out the coming Y2K storm. Anyone who is actually involved in replacing large business systems or in remediating main frames with millions of lines of code, already knows that the time is past for anything that was not begun in earnest as of a couple of years ago - minimum. It's no coincidence that last year you could read about the government agencies and big businesses talking about "getting compliant", then that changed to "getting critical systems compliant", then that changed to being Y2K "ready", which means hopefully getting critical systems compliant but having contingency plans in case of failure. Some businesses and government agencies have been working for ten years and are still not done with the job.

A member of my family has installed and integrated computer systems for many years. He warned his employers (now former) years ago about Y2K. You can believe or not, but from a technical standpoint it's already too late for a great many businesses, utilities, and governments. They just didn't start soon enough, and no amount of money, frenzied activity and wishful thinking will get the job done in time. If you wait to read a PR report in which a company or government agency admits "we're not going to make it - ya'll had better batten down the hatches," you'll wait until 1/1/2000, and then it will be too late for you, too. As for expecting someone in authority to tell the public, "Get ready", you might want to remember that the captain of the Titanic didn't tell his passengers the ship was sinking even when they crew was lowering the lifeboats. Until the last possible minute they were told, "this is just a precaution". Well, there are some Representatives and Senators already warning it would be wise to prepare, "just as a precaution". I'd listen to them.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 1998


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