We started a couple of polls on our web site. The current numbers are as follow:

How bad is Y2K going to be?

worldwide depression: 29.17% Major worldwide recession: 25% Mild worlwide recession: 18.75% Some countries will be affected: 6.25% Some areas will be affected: 12.5% Business as usual: 8.33%

Is your company Y2K ready?

We never had a Y2K problem: 0% We have everything fixed: 0% We are on our way: 55.56% We will not be ready on time: 22.22% Y2K? Whats That? 22.22%

These surveys will be running every month and will be used to understand where everybody stands. Next month these surveys will be splited by geographical areas. If you haven't take the survey yet, we urge you to do so at:

http://www.xpsoft.com

-- John Clark (clark@xpsoft.com), November 10, 1998

Answers

Craig, I've never seen you speechless!

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), November 10, 1998.

Craig's answer to How bad will it get?...Beware the line breaker...and it's Not for Netscape!

-- Jon (jonmiles@pacbell.net), November 10, 1998.

Craig's answer to How bad will it get? Fixed...Beware the line breaker...and it's Not for Netscape! This discussion can now be put to sleep.

-- Jon (jonmiles@pacbell.net), November 10, 1998.

Update:

Voting Results from http://www.xpsoft.co m/return.shtml?results on http://www.xpsoft.com at 1998-11-10:

How bad is Y2K going to be?
Worldwide depression	31	40.79 %
Major worldwide recession	16	21.05 %
Mild worldwide recession	13	17.11 %
Some countries will be affected	4	5.26 %
Some areas affected	7	9.21 %
Business as usual	5	6.58 %

-- Jon (jonmiles@pacbell.net), November 10, 1998.

Nice idea. Poor execution. I, living close to Chicago, was able to vote often. The results of this "poll" are meaningless. Sorry, John.

Work out some bugs, then perhaps the results may have some merit.

-- Steve Hartsman (hartsman@ticon.net), November 10, 1998.

The main problems are the vagueness of the question and the obvious selection bias in population sample being polled. The poll represents opinion of a very narrow sample, websurfers that are likely to be extremist.

-- Jon (jonmiles@pacbell.net), November 10, 1998.

Jon Miles, you make this forum a lot more entertaining! Every once in a while Craig livens things up, but right now he's speechless!

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), November 10, 1998.

The difference between the two sets of data must be the effect of the Youdonites racing over to punch the "Worldwide Depression" button...maybe a few times, for good effect!

-- Jon (jonmiles@pacbell.net), November 10, 1998.

Ok, cookies are now turned on and noone should be able to vote twice. Happy John? :-) By the way, cookies were turned off because some people (non techies) are affraid of them.

Thank you for your comments

-- xps (faked_email@hatespam.com), November 10, 1998.

Gayla,

I'm not usually speechless. It's even possible that from time to time I ramble on a bit ;-)

Nah.....The blank thread was just a piece of DHTML that apparently still needs a bit of work because it causes a scripting error. You couldn't see it because it's all done in HTML

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), November 10, 1998.

I,m doom and gloom all the way. I expect a worldwide cataclysm (did I spell that right?). I have already quit Sydney, NSW, Australia, and am now living in the boonies of Queensland, 1000 kms to the north. My best friend in Sydney is running a Y2k project for one of the "big four" Australian banks. He tells me they are already something like 700 percent overspent on their official allocated budget. He is getting scared. I am an experienced network engineer with 10 years in the game.

-- David Harvey (vk2dmh@hotmail.com), November 11, 1998.

David, have you had any luck with your family? Seems like Y2K is getting a lot more coverage there than it was.

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), November 11, 1998.

How bad is Y2K going to be?

What qualifies one to estimate the impact on economies? Who is being polled?

A real interesting poll otherwise.

-- WAYNE WITCHER (WWITCHER@MVTEL.NET), November 11, 1998.

This poll is not trying to be scientific at all. It tries to mesure, randomly, what web surfers think about Y2K. As of now 125 people or so have voted. If we bring it up into the thousands of votes the margin of error, given the y2k aware web population, should decrease into the +/- 5%. And thats a good margin of error. Consider that national polls you hear on TV, have a universe of 500, selected, people.

As a side note, what makes a recession is not the economy, but the perception of a recession. Consumer spending is the most important part of the economy. If consumers don't spend, we sure go inot a recession. This poll tries to duplicate the well known "consumer sentiment poll from the University of Chicago, and the effect that sentiment has on the US economy planning. Give this poll whatever margin of error you want, but don't ignore it because it appears that a substancial number of web surfers really believe we are heading into a depression.

Regards,

John

-- John Clark (clark@xpsoft.com), November 12, 1998.

You've probably heard this one before, but I think it's worth mentioning again. A recession is when your neighbor looses his job. A depression is when you loose yours.

-- Mary Doe (M.Doe@usa.net), November 16, 1998.