More and more good news: or am I missing something?

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Reading this article leads me to believe that maybe, just maybe we won't have as many problems as I first thought. Does anyone else share this opinion or is my GI status being slowly eroded by constant good news spins.

Link or http://www.globetechnology.com/gam/Y2K/19990323/RERIC.html if the hot link doesn't work.

-- Jim P.E. (
outstrip@hotmail.com), March 23, 1999

Answers

Jim,

Some of the reports are optimistic. However, most are shallow reflections unsubstantiated by an in depth consideration of the facts.

Best wishes,

-- Watchful (seethesea@msn.com), March 23, 1999.


link off

I sent Mr. Eric Reguly an email stating:
You should have included a link, if there is one, to Ontario Hydro web site and official disclosure statements, if there are any.

Yes, it is good to have good reports. Let's see what Ontario Hydro has to say for themselves.

Mr. K
***look for the source***

-- Mr. Kennedy (looking@verification.now), March 23, 1999.

Jim:

Know how you feel. Was at barber shop and barber told some waiting customers that I was the local computer doomsday fellow that thought that the year 2000 was going to kill all the computers. One man said he thought maybe it might be like the goverment is saying and he was not goung to do anything extra.

The fellow satting next to me said I live in an all electric home and he was not sure, but his brother had bought generators, food and a trailer to camp out. Silence you could cut with a knife. So I just said I said my motto is I like to be warm,eat,and take baths and if there was a possibality that computers was going tro stop me from getting those things, I was the doomsday fellow.

Its getting harder to be GI. But thats the reason I'm a GI. Nobody much is believing it can happen. If the average citizen that don't know a thing about computers or chips, or embedded chips and have never had any reason th stop and think about these things? That makes me think that the higher ups are not too different from them.

Thats why I'm a 10 because CEO-CIO, AEO. PEO, DD, waited to late to start thinkng about it.

Lon

-- Lon (lon1937@aol.com), March 23, 1999.


Comments to Watcher and Mr. K:

That's pretty funny! "Shallow reflections unsubstantiated by an in depth consideration of the facts" could be the sub-title of EY's book or most of the threads on this board. You know very well if the article had said the Ontario Hydro was lying about their compliance status, you would have cross posted it a dozen times without ever thinking about seeing what Ontario Hydro had to say for themselves.

ANP

-- Another NORMal Person (ANP@BettyFord.com), March 23, 1999.


ANP,
You obviously aren't familiar with months of previous posts or the way we look at articles.

I feel it is always best to go to the source, after it has been "reported" in articles to try to get substantiation.

Have a good day now.

Mr. K***forever searching***

-- Mr. Kennedy (not@home.now), March 23, 1999.


I thought forum participants would like to read my response to the "Y2k? No Problemo!" article being discussed.

The argument that the sky WILL not fall because it IS not falling now is as convincing as the infamous presidential "is" is. If things are so rosy than I'm sure you could easily explain to your readers why the US Federal Government continues to chip away at the number of "mission critical" systems it intends to have Y2k compliant by the end of this month (March 18, 1998, the number was 8000, yet today, it has been reduced to 6399). Accepting this self reporting as valid (a dangerous game, at best) and using Congressman Horn's estimate for "non-mission critical" systems, I calculate that the Fed intends to declare victory with under 10% of ALL their computer systems Y2k compliant. Does anyone really believe the Fed can avoid horrendous problems with such a paltry percentage of their systems ready for the next century? And what about the rest of us? Do we get off any easier? Surely if things are just rosy, I must have it all wrong, so please straighten me out.

-- Dr. Roger Altman (rogaltman@aol.com), March 23, 1999.


Thanks Dr. Altman.

Look, the statistics on software remediation don't say that 0% of the work won't get done. Just a significant percentage.

Of course there's going to be a lot of [genuinely] good news in the next months.

But there's plenty of evidence out there that it isn't going to be enough. And that is right in line with the statistics that told us all along that it wasn't going to be enough for companies that started in 1998.

That will not dissuade the DGIs from claiming that news that, say, 80% of systems will be remediated is evidence that we'll escape unscathed. But we've been saying all along, it's not the 80% that're going to get us. It's that pesky 20% (although, in the case of the federal government, it seems that it's that pesky 2% mission-critical + 90% non-mission-critical = 92% that don't get done).

-- David Palm (djpalm64@yahoo.com), March 23, 1999.


Jim,

If the Y2K situation was improving as well as they say it is, we should be seeing less and less Y2K news as time goes on. Yet we keep hearing it when most companies are supposedly about to finish their Y2K remediation. The news has gotten a lot more blunt since December as well.

Remember last year's mantra? "We'll finish our remediation by the end of 1998 and spend 1999 testing."

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), March 23, 1999.


Anybody on earth can and will guarantee to be 100% ready. There are not enough honest, gutsy people alive to do otherwise. Because of our interconnectedness any failure can be blamed on anybody and everything else. Therefore it's futile to try to second-guess what anybody's statements mean regarding Y2K.

-- fly .:. (.@...), March 23, 1999.

Welcome to the final stage of Y2K awareness - skeptic. You are now skeptical of wild claims that 100% remediation is needed to keep anything running, of wild claims that the power grid 'must' go down and so forth. You will now begin to demand EVIDENCE instead of rumour, fact instead of fiction. You will find yourself examining the credentials of those who cry doom. Congratulations. Of course, you won't be very welcome around here any more - but you can live with that.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), March 23, 1999.


We were reporting and summarizing here the generally good news represented by Ontario Hydro's progress - but NOT only based on the single test of the single substation that was originally presented as conclusive proof that "nothing will happen."

My concern, ANP, and the others above, is that there are millions of processes out there that are remaining "invisible" and unreported, and only a literal hanfull worldwide of success stories. If true progress were being made, we should be hearing hundred, if thousands per day, of "good" stories from yourself, the media and an administration desperately eager to spread the good news.

We are not. Oh 'tis true, there is time yet. Just not as much time as there was last week, last month, last year. No responsible users - and frankly not even the "most pessimistic of the gloomy" have ever said "nothing will get fixed." At best, the worry was, and still is, "not enough" will get fixed.

The critical unknown remains: what will break, where, and for how long. How quickly can it be recovered, and what is the impact of its failure on other systems and processes? What will the response of people be to the failure(s)?

What will the response be of people who have prepared, and of thoese who have failed to prepare? What can the government do to support the people who trusted it (and you), who believed you and who failed to prepare? Who will they blame for their probable discomfort, perhaps their misery?

Jim, you implied in the original posting that the media's - the government's - "constant good news spins" were eroding your confidence in your original GI status. In that, you have declared yourself a PE, and are therefore, assumed conpetent to decide, based on the evidence at hand and your professional judgement, to make design decisions affected hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives.

In Year 2000 issues, you are expected to exercise the same judgement. This time, it is your budget and your family affected, and the government's "claims" are no more valid than anyone else's. (Perhaps even less credible than other accumulated evidence.) Because, unfortunately, this government has proved itself capable of, and willing to, lie on many issues, to falisify evidence, conceal evidence, to abuse the bureacracy and their power, and leverage its psotion with the media to discredit its opponents.

Your judgement, sir, is what they seek to sway this time. Be ready to live with the results of your judgement.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), March 23, 1999.


Yes Paul, you were right. We were all wrong about y2k. Turns out y2k is going to be a positive thing. The "evidence", as you call it, is at www.y2kisok.com. You sure are a smart fellow. My what a big brain you have. Now go back to loping your mule.

-- a (a@a.a), March 23, 1999.

No, Paulyanna, the "final stage of Y2K awareness" is DEAD skeptic.

-- Nabi Davidson (nabi7@yahoo.com), March 23, 1999.

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