I certainly can't say any of this better than Cory, so here are his words. I agree with all of them.

". . .seems to be a lot of frightened people out there. . .

. . .I don't do statistics or math. My undergraduate degree is in chemistry which is more facts and concepts than math. My masters is in computer science but I only took two courses with formal methods. . . So unless it's graph or set theory, I'm kinda out of it.

In any case, I don't believe that understanding comes from squiggly lines and chalk-talks.

This mess comes from the code. It was a business failure in the mid-1980's, the hands-on experts were given the heave-ho by bean counters newly empowered by Visi-Calc and Lotus 123.

Without the old hands, remember that IBM, ATT, DEC, and the others dumped hundreds of thousands of mid and late career people, the corporations lobotomized themselves.

Without knowledgeable people, bad decisions were made and we're about to pay a terrible price.

The bad decision was not to start remediation in 1990 or slightly earlier.

Today, Bill announced that SS had made it. Well no, they haven't. They're working under the assumption that they've tested the pathological cases and they haven't. Even with a Time Machine, they didn't get it all.

I've seen systems go production, run unstable for a (sic) 6 months, then settle down but at the first year, leap year, decade roll over, or new anything, they're unstable again. Even remediated and tested systems will go unstable. SS will fail, count on it.

What SS *may* have accomplished is they may have brought their system to the point that they can now fix-on-failure.

This is the level of stability that you *earn* after running for a year or more. This is the source of the saying, "done by December 1998, leaving all of 1999 for testing."

Windows 3.0? Wait a year for W3.1. W95? We'll wait for W98 and a year of maintenance. Let *them* run for a year, then it's good enough for prime time.

This has nothing to do with math, computer science, or physics. This is about having seen systems fail and knowing what it takes to keep production running.

The reason I like to mention my M.S. in Computer Science is that everyone who went to college is an expert. It doesn't matter what *they* took, I've had Art History majors from the University of Hawaii try to pull academia on me.

Having this degree keeps others from raising academics as an issue... as CPR tried to do. Math? Physics? Info wasn't offering a formal proof, he was presenting an analogy. It's "like entropy". It "resembles a probability chain". Don't get too caught up in your provincial discipline.

Consider the relationship between Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. Notice how less precise things become as you move from Physics toward Biology. Biological systems are more complex than Chemical systems and Chemical systems are more complex than Physics systems.

We're talking about failures of complex large systems. What happens as a consequence of the failure.

10 years of software work wasn't done. We need to refurb 30 years of software. The work wasn't started on time. It can't be done. Face your fears. Reach acceptance.

We are out of time.

cory hamasaki 368 Days, 8,834 Hours

(bolding, color & italics mine-Hardliner)

-- Hardliner (searcher@internet.com), January 06, 1999

Answers

Yeah, yeah. And some day the sun will explode and collaspe onto itself. That's not a prediction; that's a fact. You however are making predictions based on probabilities of some software discrepancies. Somehow you translate these into failures. A DR in my mind is not the same as a failure.

Troll Maria

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), January 06, 1999.

Maria, I don't think that it takes much to see that "discrepancies" are exactly what will cause a loss of confidence in our financial institutions. I mean, honestly, if you thought that by a certain date that there was a high (or even low) probability that your savings account would be wiped or misrepresented, would you want to leave your money there? Right now, we don't think twice about the reliability of electronic transactions (even though now and then there may be an isolated hiccup), because our confidence level is high. But Y2K has the potential to change that, big time.

And then, there are those other things, like all those pesky embedded chips. "Discrepancies" there might make life as we know it rival that under a collapsing sun, if you live in a city....

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), January 06, 1999.

Where is everyone getting the current Hamasaki stuff? I keep going to his site, but the Dec 31 Weather Report is still not available.

-- Pearlie Sweetcake (storestuff@home.now), January 06, 1999.

Pearlie,

Here's a link that will list Cory's CSY2K postings: (Cory's Posts)

-- Hardliner (searcher@internet.com), January 06, 1999.

Troll Maria, you're starting to look like a fly with an ameoba brain on this forum. Jimmy Bagga Donuts is way above you, and at least he has some style. You're a bore, I can't bring myself to have compation for you like I do for JBD.

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), January 06, 1999.

I'm slapping my fingers. I slipped up with a flame again. *sigh* don't bother to answer I'll send myself to my room.

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), January 06, 1999.

Hey Chris,

Its the 7th, you went to your room on the 6th, you can come out now dear....we still love ya.

-- consumer (private@aol.com), January 07, 1999.