A new essay: "Y2k And The Year of Living Dangerously"greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread |
You may wish to read the lastest essay I've posted on my web siteY2 and the Year of Living Dangerously: Refuting the Three Day Snowstorm Metaphor
Ed
-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), March 24, 1999
Blue Himalayan,Thanks for spotting the typos. I've fixed them, and have also incorporated a couple of URL links, including a link to the web site of the gas/electric utility whose travails I was using as an example.
Ed
-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), March 24, 1999.
Big Dog,You indicated in an earlier message on this thread that Mr. Koskinen has (publicly, I presume) stated that the supply chain can't handle national preparation. Do you have a reference or link for this? I recall reading some comments from Mr. Koskinen to the effect that while it might be okay for one person to fill up his gas tank and withdraw $1,000 from the bank, it would be impossible for 250 million citizens to do so at the same time. But as you remarked in a later message on this thread, that doesn't address the issue of spreading the preparations over nine months -- or, if they had started last summer, a full 18 months.
I find all of this very confusing ... for example, if the nation decided to collectively stockpile one month of food, that would represent 1/12, or approximately 8%, of a year's production of food. Given the fluctuations that occur already -- because of weather, etc -- I have a hard time believing that the agriculture industry couldn't be encouraged (or subsidized) to increase its production by 10%, in anticipation of, or as part of a conscious plan for, national stockpiling.
Seems to me that this is the sort of stuff that economists should be able to answer. It's not rocket science, it just requires a few numbers ...
Ed
-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), March 24, 1999.
Kevin,Thanks for posting the Koskinen transcript. If I understand his example correctly, he seems to be saying that there is no way that the bean "industry" (if there is such a thing) could manage to grow and deliver 255 million pounds of beans between now and the end of the year...
Well, yeah, that's a lot of beans -- though it doesn't sound quite so enormous when you express it as 127,000 tons of beans; and I wonder how many bushels it represents.
But in any case, it would be very interesting to find out what the annual per-capita consumption of beans is today, and what the annual production of beans is. How much do we export, and why can't we just sell those exported beans to local citizens rather than shipping them off to the other side of the world? How much of it is sitting in grain elevators? How much of it is fed to dogs and cats? How much additional production would be required to provide every American with the proverbial pound of beans? How much of a percentage increase does this represent?
Big Dog added another obvious point when he suggested that some people would be just as happy to have a pound of corn instead of the pound of beans ... or maybe a pound of wheat, or a pound of apples. I keep coming back to my argument about food-production at the "macro" level: a one-month food supply (which includes a lot of stuff besides just beans!) represents an 8% increase over the current production of food. Again, if we had a competent economist helping us with this discussion, we ought to be able to find out how much the annual food production varies under normal circumstances, and how much it has been "stimulated" (upward or downward) by government subsidies (including the ones that say "we'll pay you NOT to plant corn on those 40 acres of land, and we'll pay you NOT to raise another hundred hogs this year").
The implied suggestion that the American food industry is so finely tuned, and so carefully adjusted to the current level of demand, just doesn't sound right to me. If that's the case, why are agricultural prices at a 50 year low? Why are wheat farmers and hog farmers having such a hard time with their over-production? There may be logical answers to these questions, and I'll happily admit that I have no detailed knowledge of the food/agricultural industry ... but I can do arithmetic (a college math degree occasionally comes in handy!), and nobody has shown me the arithmetic in a sufficiently credible and detailed fashion.
I'm not suggesting that Mr. Koskinen is lying to us with his example of a pound of beans for every American, but his answer isn't convincing. It also occurs to me, by the way, that Mr. Koskinen is a lawyer, not an enonomist or an agricultural expert, either. I'd like to hope that he's getting his information from a competent economist or agricultural expert, and it sure would be nice if the detailed figures could be shared amongst those of us who are curious to know...
Ed
-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), March 24, 1999.
Computer Pro,Sorry to hear your teeth are hurting ...
It didn't occur to me that anyone would want to know what kind of problems PNM is experiencing -- but here they are (from the back of the letter mentioned in my essay):
****************
EXAMPLES OF BILLING PROBLEMS WHICH DELAYED THE MAILING OF SOME PNM BILLS
Tenants recently moving to a new location were charged for the previous tenant's last month of energy consumption
Bills without meter readings.
Active customer accounts showing zero consumption where there was actual energy consumption.
Customer accounts with more than one meter and services requiring those accounts to total to one master bill. These totals were wrong.
Detailed, converted customer information -- such as payment histories - - from the old systems did not match the customer information in the new system.
EXAMPLES OF MISSING INFORMATOIN ON SOME PNM BILLS. (THESE BILLS WERE MAILED BECAUSE METER READINGS AND THE TOTAL AMOUNTS DUE WERE CORRECT. HOWEVER, A FEW HAD SOME OF THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION MISSING.)
Budget Bill history information and actual account balances were not printed on the bill.
No Gas Use graph showing previous month's usage.
The Due Date shown on the bills was not always 20 days from the Meter Read Date.
********************
Before I respond to your general point about "the ridiculous notion that puts large development and maintenance projects on an equal footing", let me make one observation: though the PNM letter does not explicitly say so, it's reasonable to assume that the primary reason PNM was implementing the new system in the first place was to replace a non-compliant legacy system. Why else would they make such a point (in boldface font) that "the good news is that we now have a computer system that will operate beyond the year 2000."? I mention this because in many organizations, the Y2K strategy does involve creating a new system to replace an old one that is hopelessly undocumented, etc, etc. From that perspective, I would argue very strongly that PNM is dealing with a Y2K problem, and one that is clearly taking months to fix. But if my choice of an example confused matters, I apologize -- I used the example simply because the letter from PNM arrived a couple of days, and the bold-font reference to Y2K attracted my attention...
As for your general point about development versus maintenance: in an earlier essay, Y2K Projects: Deja Vu All Over Again, I discussed my reasons for believing that Y2K projects have many of the same characteristics as any other large development project. I'm not sure if you've read it, but I'm well aware that not everyone agrees with this assertion, and I won't bother repeating the arguments. However, I wonder if you could offer some alternative explanation for the fact that, during the past two or three years, we have seen increasing evidence that Y2K "maintenance" projects have suffered the same kind of cost over-runs as "normal" projects? (Example: the Y2K budget for the U.S. federal government has increased by 300% in the past two years, and will probably continue to increase during the final 9 months of 1999). Perhaps you could offer an explanation for the emerging evidence from real Y2K projects that indicates the number bugs in supposedly-tested, remediated Y2K programs is the same as the number of "bad fix" bugs in "normal" projects?
Bottom line: the single most important reason that ANY software project finishes late is that it starts late. That's true for development projects, and it's true for maintenance projects, and it's true for Y2K projects. I don't care what kind of code you're writing or fixing, the simple reality is that you've got to have a bunch of people and a budget and a schedule. The typical corporate situation is that someone says, "Y'know, we really ought to have an XYZ system by the end of the year..." And that's followed by weeks and months of committee meetings, where everyone sits around chatting about how nice it would be to have an XYZ system. And finally, about three months later, they get around to hiring a project manager, but they don't give him any staff. When the staff is finally assembled, management casually announces that the XYZ system absolutely, positively MUST be finished by the end of the year - - even though they've wasted 6 months yakking about it. Bottom line: if you start late, you finish late.
And that's what's happening with Y2K. The reason that the Social Security Agency is (allegedly) finished with its Y2K effort is NOT that they're geniuses, but simply that they started early. The reason that the city of Washington, DC is virtually guaranteed NOT to finish its Y2K project on time is not because their programmers are stupid or lazy, but simply because they dawdled and diddled around until June 1998. The outcome is now virtually predetermined, and it doesn't matter whether we're talking about a development project or a Y2K project. It's deja vu all over again.
Re your reasonable question: "What does this have to do with fixing maintenance problems associated with Y2K?" I assume that the point you're trying to make is that bugs encountered in a maintenance situation are easy to find and fix, whereas bugs encountered in a new development project are, by their very nature, difficult to fix. Perhaps that has been your experience; mine has been different. I find it a lot easier to find and fix a bug in MY code that I just finished writing yesterday (yes, I do still know how to write code) than it is to find and fix a bug in undocumented code written 20 years ago by some long-dead programmer who pulled every trick in the book to squeeze the code into the smallest possible amount of memory. (One of my first programming assignments was to fix bugs in an assembler for the PDP-5 computer, despite the fact that there was no source code and no program listing for the assembler.)
But in the end, your opinion doesn't matter, and my opinion doesn't matter. If your perspective on all of this is valid, then you (or your organization) should have some credible data to prove it. How many bugs were encountered in the testing efforts of your company's Y2K projects, and what was the mean-time-to-repair for those bugs? What percentage of the "serious" bugs took more than two or three days to fix? And let's not forget the embedded systems, where the remediation typically requires installing a new, compliant chip or circuit board -- so, in your company's efforts, what was the average amount of time required to order, receive, and install a replacement chip?
I'd love to be proven wrong on this one -- and if I am wrong, it should be easy to prove. Just show me the numbers.
Ed
-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), March 24, 1999.
ANP,Re your comments about Chernobyl and Bhopal: my understanding of the situation is that the residents of Chernobyl are still suffering the consequences, because new radiation-induced cancer cases are still appearing. This is in addition to losing their jobs, being forcibly relocated to some other part of the former USSR.
I suppose you could say, "Well, yeah, it's too bad for them -- but it was just an unfortunate 'local' disaster." It wasn't a year of living dangerously for us lucky Americans. Of course, some Europeans might take issue with that; I don't know how long they had to worry about the possibility of radioactive contamination.
But the key point here, I think, is that any location is "local" to the people that live there. The government officials are telling us that we need only plan for a three-day snowstorm for our personal preparations; and my reaction to that is, "Well, what if the consequences of Y2K in my home town, or in my state, last a month or a year?" You may recall that the FEMA official who testified before Congress a couple of days ago essentially alluded to this when he said (and I'm paraphrasing here, because I don't have the speech in front of me), "Overall, there won't be any serious problems, though we could have some localized disruptions in the West." Well, guess what: I live in the West! (FWIW, I think that Mr. FEMA is wrong, and that we'll have far more serious problems in the big cities back East, but that's a topic for a separate discussion.)
Ed
-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), March 24, 1999.
Computer Pro,Thanks for your interesting responses... four comments:
1. My assertion that "the single most important reason that projects finish late is that they start late" is not just a personal opinion. It's the result of research on a large number of projects conducted by Dr. Barry Boehm, a software engineering professor at UCLA, and author of Software Engineering Economics.
2. Re the impact of requirements on project failures: yes, I agree that it's important. (In fact, I've written a few books on the subject; it's something that I do understand reasonably well.) But I think it's a dangerous assumption to believe that the requirements for Y2K projects are "crystal clear". For one thing, your system and all the other systems with which you interface have to agree on what "Y2K-compliant" really means. Second, you find yourself dealing with lots of little nit-picky requirements problems -- like, "Uhhh, excuse me, Mr. User, but in the course of repairing your system, we've found 13 ancient bugs that have been in the code for the past 11 years. Oh, and by the way, we also found that 10% of the database has been corrupted; it appears that nobody noticed over all these years. What do you want us to do about that?" But by far the worst requirements problem has to do with the discovery that your mission-critical business partners are (a) not compliant, or (b) bankrupt as a result of their own disruptions. "Uhh, Mr. User, what would you like us to do about the fact that XYZ Corp is no longer sending us the 10 million transactions a day that we so vitally depend on?" Interestingly, this kind of conversation is typically taking place at the END of Y2K projects, under the heading of "contingency planning". But I contend that it's really an aspect of requirements definition, since it involves business decisions made by the user. And I think we're going to discover, once the fireworks begin, that we've made LOTS of mistakes in this area.
Your point about Y2K costs being increased dramatically because of shyster consultants is a valid one, but I'm not sure how representative your example is. MY example involved the entire Federal government, whose Y2K remediation budget increased from approx $2.3 billion in Feb 1997 to approx $6.8 billion in Feb 1999. I have some difficulty believing that the entire Federal government could fall victim to a mob of shysters. Similarly, if you look at the SEC 10-Q reports for most of the large Fortune-500 companies, you'll find that their Y2K budgets have escalated dramatically, because they've overrun their budgets. They've also fallen behind on their schedules, as you can also tell by comparing old 10-Q and current 10-Q reports.
4. The anecdotal evidence from the one Y2K project you've mentioned is interesting -- but what we really need is hard, quantitative figures about ALL of the Y2K projects in your organization. I'm willing to accept the notion that you're a super-star and that you've achieved miraculous results on the system you've been working on; but things tend to average out when you start looking at big numbers. You've probably got hundreds of systems, perhaps thousands, in your company; and your company is probably one of hundreds, or thousands, in your industry. I thought the SWAG guess in my article was reasonably optimistic -- i.e., 30% of the organizations have at least one mission- critical failure amongst all of their systems, and 20% of those failures turn out to be the ones that take a long time to fix.
Ed
-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), March 24, 1999.
Diane,Thanks for the links and quotes about the food supply problem. I can understand the idea that food processors might need months to gear up for a SUDDEN "spike" in demand, if it occurs all at once. But how big a spike are we talking about, to require 6-9 months of advance planning? Again, I'm talking about an 8% increase, over and above the current level of agricultural production, in order to generate the equivalent of a month's supply of food. If we had start planning for this last year, or even at the beginning of this year, I don't see why we couldn't have accomplished it. Even if you accept the premise that the spike is going to occur in one swell foop, the food companies were telling us that all we have to do is make the decision no later than ... ummm... March 31, 1999. Hmmm, that's next week, isn't it? What are the chances of that happening? About the same as the chances that pigs will fly, I suspect...
Ed
-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), March 24, 1999.
Ed,This is another well balanced masterpiece drawn from your years of experience and your exceptional conceptual capabilities.
Thank you for your continuing generosity of sharing your extraordinary awareness.
-- Watchful (seethesea@msn.com), March 24, 1999.
Dear Ed:Though we probably will never meet, I want to offer my heartfelt thanks and sincere appreciation for all you have so selflessly given. I personally find your logic unimpeachable and your writing style reader-friendly, throughly accessible and nearly seemless. You clearly are a gifted, decent, gentle man and we all are better-off because of it. Thank you just for being who you are.
Bing
-- Bing (jfrewb@aol.com), March 24, 1999.
Ed --- As you well know, the spread of Y2K effects over time is one of the classic gotcha args proposed ("it will only be 3 days, but if it isn't, that's good too because everyone can cope with the lessened intensity of flattened bell curve effects.") As you imply but don't stress (not the point of this piece), the longer the period of effects, the l..o..n..g..e..r still the period of effect, due to the nature of fixing software.You didn't mention that PNM can get away with its billing problems, both because it is 1999 (and kudos indeed to them for facing up to it now) and because they're a utility. Most competitive private businesses won't have months available, at least if a visible competitor is compliant. I have always assumed compliance will confer competitive advantage, but I have come to believe that advantage will be extreme. Post-Y2K "flight to quality." OTOH, the ones that make it through will be unable to ramp up fast enough to absorb new business for a long time, providing the newly unemployed can still buy the products.
Interface issues deserve an article all to themselves, though most folks would nod off after two paragraphs. Some of us remember that interface testing was slated to be the entire Y2K work of the world in 1999 ("compliant by 12/31/98, test systems and interfaces throughout 1999"). The corruption of systems accepting both badly formatted data and well-formatted data with bad date calculations will probably cause more problems for a longer period of time than the unfixed Y2K bugs by themselves.
I know that YOU know how your article didn't even attempt to make the arguments on their blatantly obvious technical merit but stooped mainly to meet the ridiculous "logic" of the three-day argument. You couldn't call it ridiculous, but I can. We are so far past a technical basis for a three-day bump that, what? Both laughter and weeping are inadequate to describe the appropriate reaction .....
When I say elsewhere on the forum (even last night) that the problem remains systemic, the computers are broken and won't be fixed in time, it still draws patronizing push-back. Even many computer professionals on this board don't understand software engineering in-the-large and the inescapable impact of actions not taken in time on outcomes.
I believe Ko-skin-em that a conclusion was drawn by the government (probably 4Q last year) that national preparation was now impossible due to supply chain constraints. Since K. HAS said this, Occam's Razor suggests it as a more than adequate reason for the coordinated government position on three-days. The absurd Gartner Group FOF position is just a convenient fit.
Unlike many on this board, I don't believe the government cares negatively about us on this forum UNLESS or UNTIL our views began to influence the majority. That is highly unlikely to take place: we're a nasty zit on their PR program but not much more. If I were them, I would (secretely) like the idea that a tiny group of people WERE preparing.
If we're lucky, the cooler heads there are reading the preparation threads and anticipating the value forums like this will play in national recovery during 2001-2005. Are you feeling lucky today?
-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), March 24, 1999.
And Amen to you Ed.It baffles me how the willfully ignorant attempt spin to debunk facts.
The idiots will again assail your latest masterpiece of logic, but it shines bright enough on its own that anyone with common sense will be able to view the truth without murkiness.
I wonder if this latest crisis in Kosovo will overshadow Y2K, and delay preparations even further?
Y2K may yet become a thief in the night.
Sincere thanks Ed.
-- INVAR (gundark@aol.com), March 24, 1999.
Heart-felt thanks again, Ed, for telling the truth. As evident in your writings, the truth has a way of shining through all the crud - I think thats the main reason your work is so popular - you tell the truth (a comparatively rare commodity), and in doing so have become a true friend to many.About small businesses/agencies:
In the regional office (120 people) of the state agency where I work the new "Y2K expert" (he was told he volunteered) told me he received a total of 4 hours of training for his new additional job (he has no software or any computer background) and is now (3/24) starting the inventory process. I know the office where I work (regional-1 of 5 in state) is small potatoes, still it shows once again that in many instances the problem has not yet even been addressed.
-- Jon Johnson (narnia4@usa.net), March 24, 1999.
Good stuff, Ed. Thanks.It's going right into the "Bag of Tricks." (Binder of tricks? Disk of tricks?)
-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), March 24, 1999.
Fantastic essay Ed. Should be easy for you to fix up the following trivial typos and repost:many of us question the relevant of "bump in the road
So, how long can we expected the Y2K winter storm to last?
-- Blue Himalayan (bh@k2.y), March 24, 1999.
Thanks, Ed. You do a great service for the people of this country. I sincerely feel lives will be saved through your efforts in Y2K awareness.Sincerely, Apple
-- Apple (villarta@itsnet.com), March 24, 1999.
Throughout history, when man has been faced with extraodinary challenges, ordinary men have risen to meet those challenges and achieved greatness. Thank you Mr. Yourdon
-- MarktheFart (quke@ix.netcom.com), March 24, 1999.
Thanks much, Ed. Deeply appreciate your continued honesty and courage. Your willingness to stake your considerable reputation on this issue was a big factor in getting me started on my preparations.Big Dog, I hope you're right in your last point. The whole don't-panic-the-supply-chain idea is misguided, IMHO. If the systems fail, the panic will happen, regardless. The only question is how acute the panic is. If it starts now, at least we spread it out over nine months, and have time to ramp up some production, reallocate, etc.
I saw a don't-panic article from the pharmaceutical industry the other week. They didn't recognize any possibility of systems failure, but did say the panic could cause shortages, because it makes the demand unpredictable. Their computers model demand cycles, and base production on those predictions...in other words, they could make more pharmaceuticals, but they don't, because their models don't predict that the excess would sell.
I sent them an email saying solution is simple: make as much as you can. I said that the pharmaceutical industry is the keeper of a public trust, to provide medicine to the sick. Instead of assuring an adequate supply, they are attempting to assure themselves of profits, and hence violating that trust. It is for that very reason that the public feels compelled to take up the slack. There was no response.
-- Shimrod (shimrod@lycosmail.com), March 24, 1999.
While OT to this thread mainly (my fault), your comment about supply chain illustrates the lack of integrity to the three day preparation mantra. The claim is that "panic" would be self-fulfilling. Maybe. We don't know, do we? We do know that you can't ramp up the JIT system unless you can forecast demand: effectively, Koskinen and the PR machine is suppressing demand.Even today, what would most likely happen if the truth were told?
The market would plunge 1,500 points over a couple of weeks and then (I think) stablize for the next four or five months. An initial crazy wave of panic would be exchanged for thousands of valuable media pieces EXPLAINING how to prepare (including how to do all the old-fashioned stuff that doesn't take much money). Families, neighbors and communities would begin to do REAL planning and sharing of skills and what was available.
And, IMO, 90% of our citizens would recognize the simple reality that prep supplies are bound to be tight for the rest of this year and (WOW) adjust.
RIDDLE ME THIS: how is it that the same populace that the government says can handle whatever happens next year with no sweat can't be trusted to handle reasonable preparation ahead of time? Hey, how about a thread on that odd little discrepancy?
-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), March 24, 1999.
Big Dog: I think you're exactly right here. I also recall Koskinen's concern about the economy's being able to meet the demands of widescale preparation.I wonder if someone in government took a bunch of factors like economic output, economic slowdown later (as we live off our stockpiles), likelihood of panic, and some estimate of what the mean preparation level would be based on the time period estimated in public pronouncements. Then ran these parameters through various models to find an optimim recommendation likely to achieve the best results.
Of course this model either ignored actual bug impacts, or factored in some SWAG. Or maybe actual bug-impact is used as a control factor, and the model can be used to estimate how large that impact can be before we're all hosed no matter *what* we do?
-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 24, 1999.
Ed,John Koskinen's comments about the system not being able to handle most Americans preparing--not even if they start now--can be heard with RealPlayer software at this link:
http://webevents.broadcast.com/freedomforum/mar99/freeradio990310.ram
The audio is from a media conference during which John Koskinen and Edward W. Kelley Jr. of the Federal Reserve spoke to journalists about Y2K: The Press and Preventing Panic.
On the following thread, I transcribed the comments by Koskinen you're wondering about:
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000ajF
[snip]
[Journalist introduces himself and asks a question]
Matthew Holme, Country Living Magazine. Are we actually creating panic if we tell people to start preparing now?
If they are going to stockpile food or something, if they buy an extra pound of beans every single week from now on, isn't that just helping the economy, rather than putting a great crush on things and taking things out of stock?
There is a supply now. There is no shortage. If people prepare gradually, then they're not going to have a problem.
[John Koskinen's answer]
Clearly, if people are going to accumulate anything, we'd do better if they start accumulating now and send that signal to the market.
But again, when you say everybody should get a pound of beans, you've got to understand if 200 million Americans all decide to go out and buy beans, I can guarantee there are not beans in the process to start accumulating it at that rate.
So the difficulty for all of this is trying to figure out what is the risk and what are the appropriate preparations to make sure that we can deal with them in advance.
I had a meeting with our pharmaceutical working group on Monday where we have the whole pharmaceutical industry -- the manufacturers, the wholesalers, retailers.
It's critical for us with them to work out what are the actual risks in that system, because it's a little like a seed.
If we're going to make judgements about inventories and productions of prescription drugs, those have to be made now, in advance.
So it's not as simple as saying, well, everybody should start early and there won't be a problem. Because for a lot of things if you have 255 million people, it doesn't make any difference.
A hundred million people start doing it early and it's a problem early, rather than a problem late.
The real question is, people need to do what needs to be done as best we can determine.
[end of John Koskinen's answer to Matthew Holme]
[snip]
[John Koskinen's comments about this are near the end of the conference]
-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), March 24, 1999.
Ed --- (thank you, Kevin). I *seem* to recall a more direct statement even than this, but I might be dreaming. But we're all pretty much on the same page here. I'm not sure why it would be so bad if everyone couldn't get beans anyway ... go for corn or just plain wait until the pipeline fills up. Psych prep and community planning based on institutional honesty will mean more to most people than a pound of beans anyway.Anyway, it's too late for that. I think the Feds have boxed themselves in for the duration with respect to populace-wide prep, but could still target one or more industry segments (and thereby help ordinary people a LOT).
On your other thread, re: your visit to DC, I make an arg that many lives could be saved if a death march was visited on the health care industry (including czar, legal/financial incentives, supply chain lengthening, etc). The government could win a LOT of friends (I'm one of them), even though they've blown this so badly, if they treated ONE exposure area with integrity and dynamic action ahead of the fact. But this option will be closed out within the next couple of months as well if they don't act.
-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), March 24, 1999.
It's charming that your computer illiterate fans find your latest essay so inspiring, but for computer professionals like me - you know, the people who actually fix Y2K - this is getting so dumb, my teeth hurt.It is bad enough that you are one of the primary proponents of the ridiculous notion that puts large development and maintenance projects on an equal footing, but this latest piece about PNM really takes the cake.
Now you want us to believe that there is a comparison between fixing bugs in a proven system and implementing an entirely new system from scratch. Clearly this is the case with PNM. Nowhere is there one iota of evidence than ANY of the problems they are dealing with have anything to do with Y2K (is that why the "most common mistakes on the reverse side of this letter" does not make it into your quote?). Can the enormous effort associated with changing over to an entirely new application to be rectified in three days. Well no - DUH! But what does this have to do with fixing maintenance problems associated with Y2K??
In rhetoric, this kind of game is called "putting up a straw man" so that you can knock him down. But with this example, it's more like putting up a straw man and hitting him with a flame thrower - from behind. This might trick the technical know-nothings who inhabit this forum, but it does not have the slightest chance of fooling anyone who has completed Comp Sci 101.
Well Ed, it's perfectly clear why you don't call yourself a programmer anymore.
-- Computer Pro (first_minister@hotmail.com), March 24, 1999.
In the past we have read that feeding & raising slaughter animals is much more expensive and land-+-water-consuming than raising fruits, vegetables, grains, seeds, nuts, legumes, etc.We are vegetarians for a number of reasons, over 20 years. Naturally we think there would be plenty of healthy food for everybody to have a year's worth stored if certain abusive disgusting farm/agricultural practices were eliminated and modified.
Not that there's time at this point; more short-sighted idiocy rebounding.
Why try to figure Koskinen out? He's a stupid evil bought-off droid. Today we read the Yugoslavian govt telling the people to "stay calm and live life normally" even though they *all* knew in just HOURS they would be bombed. Does *that* spell it out? In the face of known mayhem, destruction and certain death, the message is the same old "stay calm."
GOVERNMENTS ARE LOBOTOMIZATION FACTORIES !!
They don't give a rat's a** about the weeples' suffering and despair.
The weeple weakness just gives the govt more power! SICK !Deadening mind control games
Ashton & Leska in Cascadia, getting quite an education just reading the news and thinking these days
xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx
-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), March 24, 1999.
Just a little suggestion Ed: next year is NOT the 21st century, it is the last year of the 20th century.
-- A Picky Little Snot (the_dot@dot.com), March 24, 1999.
i have 3 different pamphlets that i obtained this year from the local red cross, produced by red cross-FEMA including the one mentioned in ed's essay. i have checked the recommendations and the dates, with interesting results. in order of publication:1."emergency preparedness checklist" November 1991. No set amount. 2."your family disaster supplies kit" March 1992. Minimum 3 days. 3."food and water in an emergency" November 1994. Minimum 2 weeks.
it seems to me, that up until recently, red cross-FEMA recommended amounts were increasing. i WONDER why the change.
-- jocelyne slough (jonslough@tln.net), March 24, 1999.
Ed:I have a few comments on a cursory reading of your new essay. The first one was already covered by someone above but has always been a minor irritant of mine and that is the 21st century stuff. In this time of rampant rumors and secondhand information, shouldn't we try to be a little more precise where there is no question?
Secondly, your use of the Blizzard of 1888 is a little puzzling. I am not aware of anyone using the term "bump in the road" to describe that particular blizzard so I guess I missed your meaning. Nor do I think that the Blizzard of 1888 would be considered a 3-day winter storm by anyone.
Thirdly, the following comment really has me stunned:
But none of this has anything to do with Y2K computer failures. In the worst case, all it will take is one catastrophic failure at one of the 432 world-wide nuclear utility facilities, or one catastrophic failure at one of the hundreds of thousands of world-wide chemical processing plants, to find ourselves facing a crisis that will render any comparison with three-day snowstorms ludicrous and embarrassing.
Do you not consider Chernobyl a catastrophic failure at a nuclear facility? Do you not consider Bhopal a catastrophic failure at a chemical facility? Then how can you say that just "one" failure will result in a situation far worse than a 3 day snowstorm. We have been through both and neither came anywhere near causing a "year of living dangerously."
ANP
-- Another NORMal Person (ANP@BettyFord.com), March 24, 1999.
There's definitely something weird about FEMA's current 3-day fixation. Below is a verbatim quote from recent (but pre-y2k awareness) FEMA documentation.And by the way 'Pro', I 'inhabit' this forum, and have not only completed cs 101, but 15 graduate level cs courses as well.
Long-Term Food Supplies
In the unlikely event of a military attack or some other national disaster, you may need long-term emergency food supplies. The best approach is to store large amounts of staples along with a variety of canned and dried foods. Bulk quantities of wheat, corn, beans and salt are inexpensive and have nearly unlimited shelf life. If necessary, you could survive for years on small daily amounts of these staples.
-- Blue Himalayan (bh@k2.y), March 24, 1999.
ANP:We're getting close to the point where there's no remaining *argument* that the 21st century starts next year. Ed's statement agrees with, I'd estimate, all but about 2% of the population, and those are the anal diehards.
You need to understand that this is arbitrary -- a matter of definition, not a matter of fact. Just like saying the sky is blue - this is an arbitrary name we choose for that particular part of the spectrum. If I say the sky is red by my definition, then it's red by my definition. The issue is, how many agree with me?
If 98% agree with Ed, his definition is well-accepted and understood. Also, there is something a bit magical about *all* the digits changing at once.
If there's any reason to celebrate on January 1, 2001, I'm sure we'll all celebrate.
-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 24, 1999.
Well I would certainly say that Bhopal was a lot worse than a 3-day snowstorm, since snowstorms don't usually kill 3000 people. And I lived in Germany when Chernobyl blew up. We were pretty far from it, but we couldn't buy fresh produce, or milk (luckily the Germans, unlike us, drink most of their milk out of boxes with a very long shelf life) or walk barefoot on the grass. I'll take the snowstorm any day.Economically, it seems to me that if a lot of people start buying grain, the price of grain will go up, so producers will be motivated to sell more of it direct to the public. Possibly there's not enough time for that adjustment, with long-term contracts, futures and such. Maybe Yardeni could address this.
-- Shimrod (shimrod@lycosmail.com), March 24, 1999.
---------- Ed wrote:> Sorry to hear your teeth are hurting ...
Thanks for the concern :-)
> EXAMPLES OF BILLING PROBLEMS WHICH DELAYED THE MAILING OF SOME > PNM BILLS
As expected, nothing mentioned about customers not having paid for a 100 years ;-)
> though the PNM letter does not explicitly say so, > it's reasonable to assume that the primary reason PNM was > implementing the new system in the first place was to replace a > non-compliant legacy system.
An assumption with a grain of truth to it, no doubt, but probably overshadowed by some more important issues: WHY was the decision made? I cannot comment on PNM's circumstances, but I am well aware of the type of decision making process that corporations go through when they must decide to fix an old system or buy a new one. Frequently these decisions are based on estimates for Y2K repairs that are wildly exaggerated, courtesy of consultants like Gartner Group (more on that later), and low ball estimates from the salespeople who represent the vendors of the new system. All too often, IT managers see Y2K as a golden opportunity to get rid of a legacy system and bring in some new technology - and greatly enhance their resume.
> Why else would they make such a point (in boldface font) that "the > good news is that we now have a computer system that will operate > beyond the year 2000."?
For the same reason that Sanyo puts a "Y2K compliant" decal on its cheese grater. http://www.sanyousa.com/products/home_appliance/small_appliance/cheese_grater.html
> But if my choice of an example confused matters, I apologize
Apology accepted, I think it is important for your readers to understand the difference.
> However, I wonder if you could offer some > alternative explanation for the fact that, during the past two or > three years, we have seen increasing evidence that Y2K "maintenance" > projects have suffered the same kind of cost over-runs as "normal" > projects?
That's easy: banditry. Here's an example from Naples, Florida. A Y2K remediation project that was estimated by a software consulting group to cost $13.8 million, was completed by a small team of maintenance programmers, well ahead of schedule for $700,000. http://www.naplesnews.com/today/bonita/d186959a.htm http://www.naplesnews.com/today/bonita/a58405e.htm
But that is not the really interesting part of the story. When the county received that wild estimate, they brought in high profile Y2K experts to review it. These gurus strongly recommended that the county commissioners accept the high priced proposal rather than do the job in-house, adding "the board was taking a tremendous risk that a small internal organization can get the job done." And who was the provider of this "sterling" Y2K advice at a mere $590 per hour? Ah yes, Gartner Group.
Wilkinson's contention that "There's a lot of fear and intimidation by outside firms who come in and make proposals based on what could happen, and there's nobody to question it" hits the nail on the head. If there is no fair minded technical person to review these proposals, the bandits can write their own tickets. Sadly, heroes like Wilkinson are extremely rare, most IT managers would never dream of sticking their necks out in this way.
> Bottom line: the single most important reason that ANY software > project finishes late is that it starts late.
WRONG!! And this myth is responsible for so much of the silliness regarding Y2K.
By far the most important reason that large development software projects finish late is because of problems with specifications. Most of these disasters can be traced to one critical flaw - a failure by the people building the system to understand what the user really wanted. To be fair to systems analysts, users themselves often don't understand what they want, or are unable to express it cogently. Or often the users are on track, but the institution's administration either overrules them, or doesn't listen. These project nightmares occur because rather than a straight path from A to B, they follow a maze of successive approximations, slowed down by a lot of frustration, finger pointing and arguments. Believe me, when you say "weeks and months of committee meetings", I know exactly what you are talking about!
What makes Y2K such a breeze for software professionals to work on is the "specs" are absolutely crystal clear. No endless meetings, prototypes, alpha, beta, etc, etc, that drives all of us programmers crazy.
To use a metaphor from the building industry, think of all of those grandiose projects like the Big-O in Montreal, or Toronto's Skydome, with their obscene cost overruns, where the building design kept changing and the contractors kept jacking up the price. By comparison, fixing Y2K problems is like putting a new roof on your house - a somewhat less than inspiring job for the roofers - but one which the contractor can give you at fixed price because it is clear to everyone exactly what needs to be done.
> How many bugs > were encountered in the testing efforts of your company's Y2K > projects, and what was the mean-time-to-repair for those bugs?
On the ancient legacy system I just finished the volume was pretty low, overall, about 1 in 50 date references required a code change, though with many thousands of those references, admittedly it does add up. Most of these were fixed quite rapidly - in the order of a few minutes or a couple of hours at the most. True, there were a few tricky ones, including a sneaky one where the two digit year was encoded in a serial number, which was subsequently parsed and used in a sorting algorithm in a related system (Yuck!), but no single problem that would take anything like two or three days to fix. > And let's not > forget the embedded systems, where the remediation typically > requires installing a new, compliant chip or circuit board -- > so, in your company's efforts, what was the average amount of time > required to order, receive, and install a replacement chip?
Sorry, have not run into any of those. So far the procedure has been: 1. Power off 2. Power on 3. Reset date and time Takes about 30 seconds.
Lest your fans think that I am too resolutely negative of your work, to be fair, I must agree with some of the things you say. In particular, your statement that not all of the Y2K bugs will occur simultaneously at the stroke of midnight on Jan 1, 2000, is absolutely correct. As you say, potential Y2K date problems are quite spread out and in ways that may not be intuitively obvious.
For starters, January 1999, was huge, I don't think the general public has the slightest idea how much remediated code was put through its paces in those first few days of the month. But the monster, as you correctly point out on your count down page is only 7 days away when the 2000 fiscal year begins in many places.
Why is this so important? Without getting into too many technical details, fiscal periods always represented the lion's share of the Y2K remediation problem. It turns out calendars are actually very easy to deal with - they follow carefully proscribed defined rules. The part which is horribly non-standard is the output format that people like to see: March 24, 1999, 24MAR99, 99-03-24, and so on. The point is that none of these output formats has anything to do with the way the date is actually kept internally to the system. For example today's date might be stored as 11406, the number of days after January 1, 1968. Then March 24, 2000 would be stored as 11772. In this way, performing date calculations across centuries is a no-brainer.
By contrast, fiscal periods are trickier to handle. Yes, they do follow rules, but they are an arbitrary construct of accountants. A fiscal period can be pretty much what you say it is, and the relationship to the calendar is somewhat indirect. So next month's fiscal period "00-01" may very well be stored that way. Obviously making "00-01" sort ahead of "99-12" requires some code gymnastics.
In his paper "Dangerous Dates for Software Applications", Capers Jones cataloged a list of major problems that could be expected before the year 2000. Foremost of these was the Euro Currency conversion of last January, which he predicted would effect 10 million applications, 2.5 million which would not be repaired in time. I guess the Europeans have a news black out on that one. His next biggy is The "Nines End of File Date Problem" which hits September 9, 1999 and which supposedly effects 4 million systems, of which 400,000 will not be repaired in time.
I would urge everyone to watch all of these dates very carefully. They offer an excellent predictor of whether Y2K is going to be a bump in the road or a major catastrophe. If all of these milestones are passed without major incident, then next January is going to be a piece of cake. I'll close with my favourite metaphor for Y2K: It's like one of those lakes out in the flats of the desert after a big rainstorm. It's a rare event, and the water covers a huge area - but it is only a few inches deep. That water is being evaporated by a hot desert wind. By the time January 2000 comes along, it will be just a big mud flat with a few puddles here and there.
-- Computer Pro (first_minister@hotmail.com), March 24, 1999.
Ed, with reference to lead time for increased food processor production, here's a snip from some notes on the Senate Y2K hearings on the food supply, February 5, 1999:"[Senator] Dodd: food processors need 6-9 months lead time to gear up for increased production."
This snip was the first bit of my note-taking when I was grabbing pencils and notebook; there very well may be more detail and clarity in the full transcript--if available, and I seem to remember it is, but don't know where. I think Diane usually keeps her eagle eye on these things.
-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), March 24, 1999.
On errors introduced during remediation, see new thread http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000e Ie
-- Michael Goodfellow (mgoodfel@best.com), March 24, 1999.
Ed,Good job, excellent possibilities to contemplate.
I also remember Koskinen saying the supply chain couldnt handle the surge in demand. But where? Hummn.
BTW, Dodd quote from recent Senate Y2K committee testimony on the food supply ...
... Retailers and manufacturers are extremely concerned that these fears could cause a surge in demand by late summer. Preparing to meet the sudden increase in demand takes approximately six to 9 months of lead-time. They must start making decisions now to avoid possible shortages. If they miscalculate and are unable to meet such a demand, this could flame public fears as we move toward December 31, 1999. It is increasingly apparent that a national public information campaign is needed to address public and business fears by providing recommended guidelines for individual preparedness. ...
-- Senator Chris Dodd
Links below.
Diane
Witness Statements from "The Food Supply: Will the Cupboards be Bare?"
February 5, 1999
http://www.senate.gov/~y2k/hearings/020599/ foodhearingcontents.htmlChairman Bob Bennett
http://www.senate.gov/~y2k/hearings/020599/bennet.htmlVice-Chairman Chris Dodd
http:// www.senate.gov/~y2k/hearings/020599/dodd.htmlThe Honorable Richard G. Lugar
http:/ /www.senate.gov/~y2k/hearings/020599/lugar.htmlSecretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman
http://www.senate.gov/~y2k/hearings/020599/glickman.htmlAllen Dickason, Chief Information Officer, Suiza Foods Corporation
http://www.senate.gov/~y2k/hearings/020599/dickason.htmlKen Evans, President, Arizona Farm Bureau Federation
http:/ /www.senate.gov/~y2k/hearings/020599/evans.htmlSenator Gordon Smith
http:/ /www.senate.gov/~y2k/hearings/020599/smith.html
-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), March 24, 1999.
Computer Pro, I'm really disappointed. I thought you were actually going to give us a good rebuttal. Darn!
-- none (none@none.none), March 24, 1999.
Ed:Thanks for 'almost' responding to my questions. I'll agree to disagree on the 21st century thing but I disagree with FLint that it is arbitrary and semantics. A century is 100 years and 20 centuries are 2000 years so the next century does not begin until the previous one ends.
I'm still curious about the blizzard reference? Why use something that happened over 100 years ago when there are many more recent examples? Isn't it possible that the deaths and destruction had something to do with the ability to respond to emergency situations 100+ years ago? The fact that snow plows were non-existant, that fire equipment was horse drawn, that telephone/telegraph wires were all point-to-point and above ground and thus easily susceptible? Why not use the blizzard of 1978 as an example of what might happen? Not enough death, huh?
On the third point, I agree that both Bhopal and Chernobyl were much more than "3 day snowstorms" for the local residents. But, they did not cause anything near the scenarios of worldwide disasters that you have written about. So, I assumed you were still talking about this type of a scenario when with that statement. Are you now saying that Y2K will be more like a series of local disasters or am I misunderstanding you again?
Finally, I find it interesting that you dismiss Computer Pro's discussions as "anecdotal evidence" and criticzing him for his lack of "hard, quantitative figures" and then admit to the number of SWAG's and guesses in your own article. I questioned you on this same topic in a thread above ("Y2K Tests Uneventful") but you didn't respond so I will ask again: Why do you hold those who question your premises to a higher standard than you hold yourself? Why do you accept and re-publish 'anecdotal' evidence without independent verification that supports your viewpoints but summarily reject similar evidence which contradicts it as insufficient?
-ANP
-- Another NORMal Person (ANP@BettyFord.com), March 25, 1999.
ANP:Are you just a stupid undergraduate nimrod who's tackling something he can barely understand? Or do you have at least a toehold on the truth?
I'm going with nimrod.
Have a nice day.... interesting to see you out of your element.
-- Lisa (doomer@everybody.dies!_kill_yourself_now!!), March 25, 1999.
Lisa:I have visited the GNIABFI forum but I have chosen not to post there. Even though my views on Y2K are much closer to the regulars there than the regulars here, the few posts I read seemed a little extreme. I had 'heard' that this forum was more moderate and open to differing opinions. Perhaps I heard wrong. In the last few days, I have seen just as many mindless personal attacks as on the other forum.
I must say, that your brilliant point-by-point rebuttal of my post is the best I've seen so far. I look forward to other intellectual sorties with you.
-ANP
-- Another NORMal Person (ANP@BettyFord.com), March 25, 1999.
Ed,I do not wish to prolong this debate, the thread is getting too long to start in on a topic like Y2K budget inflation in the U.S. federal government, but I do want to correct one misconception. I do not in any way consider myself a super-star or the results of my team to be miraculous. If I gave this impression, then I am sorry for that.
Actually, this issue is not about superhuman feats, silver bullets or magic of any kind. It is, and it always has been, about basic competence, common sense, and most importantly, the honesty not to use fear as a weapon to ruthlessly gouge the customer.
Y2K is a normal business problem, most maintenance programmers have worked on far more difficult projects during their careers. The fact that so many are working on a similar thing at the same time creates the illusion that fixing Y2K is some great, momentous undertaking, like trapping a fire breathing dragon. Those who capitalise on this fantasy are banking that next year everyone will be so relieved that disaster was averted, that they will quickly forget about the costs involved. Maybe, but some will find it curious, when the proud hunters return, that they carry not the carcass of a fearsome beast, but of a mouse.
-- Computer Pro (first_minister@hotmail.com), March 25, 1999.
ANP:Let's warp to another thread titled: "New York, New York and the Week of Living Dangerously: anatomy of a five day Blackout".
This is something you could possibly conceive happening, right? NYC grid hiccuping such that power is unuseable for five days?
So let's say it does - you don't think there'd be New Yorkers who'd wished they'd assembled a bugout bag (yep! stuffed with iron and lead, too!) and used it to bugout? Not even concerned here about Y2K math problems yet - just how cold, untrusting, scared people react when the juice doesn't seem to be coming back on.
If you agree (not to put words in your mouth yet) that NYC'ers might consider a vacation circa rollover, then you're aligned with the doomers - certainly to a lesser extent, but aligned, nonetheless.
The assumption that most...hell, all, here share is so simple: maybe some of the risk presented by Y2K is worth taking precautions against. For some people, not many precautions (aka preparations), some people a lot.
(Back to this thread.)
Anyway, I think - by the way, I'm not trying to get into the discussion you're having with Ed, I really just want to understand the root of your vitriol - that when Ed says this:
"But none of this has anything to do with Y2K computer failures. In the worst case, all it will take is one catastrophic failure at one of the 432 world-wide nuclear utility facilities, or one catastrophic failure at one of the hundreds of thousands of world-wide chemical processing plants, to find ourselves facing a crisis that will render any comparison with three-day snowstorms ludicrous and embarrassing."
I don't think Ed's saying one plant gone kapooey equates to a year of living dangerously.
I think he's objecting to the spokespersons that be using the storm metaphor - do you think JQP understands that a plant really could blow if critical maintenance/adjustments aren't performed due to human error caused by acting (or not acting) on erroneous system control data derived from - gasp - Y2K math, measurement and control problems? Probably not, he's thinking along the lines of ice storms, like he's been assured will be the case?
Imagine:
JQP: why did that refinery blow?
Management: Moan' likely because of our Y2K fix-on-failure approach to remediation.
If any of JQP's family or friends are involved, do you think JQP will still be buying the "imagine a 3-day snowstorm" meme? Yes, meme. A damned dangerous one, IMO. If, suspiciously, we have a far greater than average number of plant oopsies circa the rollover, you might have the workers at plants around the world seeing their big metal structures in a whole different light, no? Might see their job as a way to live dangerously?
But, anyway, I'm not gunning after you over plant blows.
I want to know why you harbor so much hate and disgust for people who are really and truly worried about what Y2K might do to people who have no inkling as to what Y2K might do to them.
To balance this: (this is something my favorite aggravateur posted)
Mutha Nachu has observed that the doomers are putting the newbies at risk by insisting that they quit their jobs in order to cash out the 401k, sell their house, move to the sticks, spend all their cash on gold and lead, etc (can't find the thread or I'd link it) and I think that's a honorable reason to jack with doomers - the idea that EY people really are causing harm to the populace. Not that they necessarily are causing harm- but I appreciate the pollyanna righteous indignation and even commend it. Does this describe you?
Hope I've closed all the tags....
-- Lisa (ok@fine.let's_go), March 25, 1999.
Lisa:This is something you could possibly conceive happening, right? NYC grid hiccuping such that power is unuseable for five days?
No, absolutely not. Why should it? There are 40+ utilities that have already turned their clocks ahead and had no problems whatsoever. Some are even still operating with the year set to 2000! See Link . So, we have a fundamental disagreement already! Work goes on, progress gets made, and problems get fixed. Will 1/1/00 be trouble free? Absolutely not. I never said it would be. But it will not be a "year of living dangerously" nor a decade of depression. Predictions of major problems on January 1, 1999 have already been shown to be complete hogwash. April 1st and April 9th will also pass unceremoniously, with a glitch here and a snag there but nothing remotely bordering on a disaster. Everybody makes a big deal out of the fact that only X% of these systems are compliant today -- so what? Today is not 2000, neither is tommorrow. Is a system that is compliant March 1st any better than one that is compliant Decemeber 1st? No.
I don't think Ed's saying one plant gone kapooey equates to a year of living dangerously.
Then why did he say so? Why did he say just one failure at either would make the three day metaphor seem ludicrous? Why has he not clarified what he meant?
I want to know why you harbor so much hate and disgust for people who are really and truly worried about what Y2K might do to people who have no inkling as to what Y2K might do to them.
First, I don't hate anyone. Secondly, I have a lot of disgust for people who are using Y2K for personal gain at the expense of a largely ignorant public. Essay's like Ed's are full of what if's and maybe this, and little or no actual fact, intended to do one thing and one thing only -- spread FUD among those who are technologically naive. You don't sell books or get paid to give speeches saying that Y2K will NOT cause a major disaster. I have disgust for people who are predicting economic scenarios based on limited facts and massive assumptions (and who, btw, are not even economists!) and influencing the uninformed to make critical decisions that will negatively impact their economic future. I have disgust for people who propose scenarios about "plants blowing up" who don't know the first thing about how a plant works or what a control system does.
Now, I know you will give me Ed's famous quote ("I'm not telling anyone to do anything, this is just my opinion, blah blah blah..."). If you believe that, read the summary of his latest essay. He says there are only a few possible explanations and then enumerates three: one which is his opinion, and the other two which you would have to admit to being a moron. He then says that each citizen needs to decide which of these three explanations is most plausible. He allows no other possibilities, only the three he listed. Not that maybe he is wrong or overstating the situation and the government really is correct. Noooo! Two choices: Ed is right or you are a moron. Choose now! If that is not trying to influence someone, I don't know what is.
--ANP
-- Another NORMal Person (ANP@BettyFord.com), March 25, 1999.
ANP --- It's refreshing that you're honest enough to reveal your own agenda in your final post here. There is no doubt that Ed has earned money for his own Y2K work. So what? So have you, apparently. That tends to happen within our system. He makes no secret of it. Saying that Ed's intention is to cause "FUD" and sell books is a flat-out attack on his integrity. And, for that matter, De Jager will make a million dollars this year saying that Y2K's danger is over, so you're not even accurate. As I said though, thanks for your honesty. It greatly illuminates the rest of your posts on this thread.BTW, who are you in real life? Care to say? Your email address isn't real. Mine is. Why is that? Ed's name and email are. That says something too about accountability, doesn't it? Have you posted here under other names before? Are you and the "Computer Pro" the same person? We wouldn't know, would we?
Your arguments and the so-called Pro's are not nearly so obvious (let alone, technical) as you fancifully imagine. Hope you'll join up to some of the many techncal discussions that those of us in the field had, have and will continue to have over the coming months as we attempt to sort out Y2K information from disinformation.
-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), March 25, 1999.
OK BigDog, what is my agenda? I am the Year 2000 Manager for a large international Automation & Control Company. I have made no more money off of Y2K than I did before taking this position. And I am not selling my opinions and pushing them as facts to anyone for personal gain. The fact that DeJager will make money this year does simply reinforces my point because, up until a week ago, he was preaching a similar but toned down message to Yourdon's. He is recognized because of what he said before, not because he now says that Y2K will not be a problem.As far as my anonymity goes, I don't need junk e-mail. That happened to me once before and I don't need the hassle. You believe that you have instant credibility and accountability just because you use a real e-mail address? You are just as anonymous as everybody who uses a fake one, unless Big Dog is your real name. If I get a hotmail or yahoo e-mail address, will that make you happy? To answer your questions, no, I have never posted on here under another name and, while I believe Computer Pro has some very valid points, he and I are not the same person.
I have posted several technically oriented posts ("did you all notice this y2k power plant example in that chicago trib story?", "Old info but apparently still being ignored...", and "Some basic Control System Fundamentals"). Since you believe my posts to be "not technical", I would be happy for you to show me the errors in them so that I may be as enlightened as you.
--ANP
-- Another NORMal Person (ANP@BettyFord.com), March 25, 1999.
[my comments in brackets]OK BigDog, what is my agenda? I am the Year 2000 Manager for a large international Automation & Control Company. I have made no more money off of Y2K than I did before taking this position.
[Great, very impressive, which company? Do you have five employees or five thousand? How would we know? Since you guys have kicked butt on Y2K, telling us who would be a real confidence booster for the weak-minded among us. Seriously. Oops, I guess you can't because the lawyers won't let you (or some other excuse). But we're supposed to take your anonymous posts by faith, right? And if I post anonymously about Y2K failures, shall we agree to those too?]
And I am not selling my opinions and pushing them as facts to anyone for personal gain. The fact that DeJager will make money this year does simply reinforces my point because, up until a week ago, he was preaching a similar but toned down message to Yourdon's. He is recognized because of what he said before, not because he now says that Y2K will not be a problem.
[There is some justice with that so far as De Jager goes, though it's been all of two months. I shouldn't have brought him up, actually, because I consider him despicable and did even when he was a "doomer". Nor do I need to defend Yourdon, he's well able to do it himself. But Yourdon's reputation goes back 25 years and, so he says, he makes no more money now than he did with his earlier work. I find that credible.]
As far as my anonymity goes, I don't need junk e-mail. That happened to me once before and I don't need the hassle.
[Fair enough. But my comments stand. You are virtual with respect to this forum. Ed isn't. I would suspect that, if you have the integrity you probably claim, you will recognize the fairness of this and its reasonable implications]
You believe that you have instant credibility and accountability just because you use a real e-mail address?
[No, didn't say that. Obviously, both are earned over time.]
You are just as anonymous as everybody who uses a fake one, unless Big Dog is your real name. If I get a hotmail or yahoo e-mail address, will that make you happy?
[Yes, it's "Mr. Big The Dog" to you, bub. I'll be happy if Y2K turns out to be a bump. Your getting an email address doesn't exactly turn me on and my happiness without you doing so remains perfectly intact.]
To answer your questions, no, I have never posted on here under another name and, while I believe Computer Pro has some very valid points, he and I are not the same person.
[So you say ....]
I have posted several technically oriented posts ("did you all notice this y2k power plant example in that chicago trib story?", "Old info but apparently still being ignored...", and "Some basic Control System Fundamentals"). Since you believe my posts to be "not technical", I would be happy for you to show me the errors in them so that I may be as enlightened as you.
[I didn't say that but that they are not SO technical as you IMAGINE. I stand by my last post. You honestly revealed your agenda, which is to communicate your disgust at people who are profiting by intentionally promoting FUD and a disastrous Y2K result. You say that Yourdon is doing this.
All I was doing is pointing out the obvious: let everyone who reads make their own decision about Yourdon and what it reveals about you. Or do you disagree with my simple play-back of your own statements?]
-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), March 25, 1999.
BigDog-excuse me, Mr. Big the Dog:Yes, I chose to keep myself and my company anonymous as 99.9% of the others on here do. Thanks, however, for clearing up your identity and occupation! Yes, Ed uses his real name and e-mail because he has to. How do you make money on books and speaking engagements if you post your opinions anonymously. I am not looking to profiteer on Y2K so I chose to remain anonymous.
[I didn't say that but that they are not SO technical as you IMAGINE.
Fine, then there should be no trouble for you or anyone else to shred my arguments.
You honestly revealed your agenda, which is to communicate your disgust at people who are profiting by intentionally promoting FUD and a disastrous Y2K result.
My primary reason for posting at all was the rash of disinformation I saw. I was simply presenting my viewpoints and experiences, along with some factual information on control systems and how they work. As I mentioned in another post, I assumed that the people on this board were intelligent enough to discuss a difference of opinion. I may register my disgust at what I perceive as people unethically taking advantage of a situation to line their own pockets but that is secondary. And how is that any different than Ed making anyone who disagrees with him out to be a moron? He is expressing his disgust at anyone who does not accept his not-quite TEOTWAWKI scenario.
-ANP
-- Another NORMal Person (ANP@BettyFord.com), March 25, 1999.
'....Ed making anyone who disagrees with him out to be a moron....'I didn't see Ed doing that in his essay. You need to back up that claim, 'Normal.'
-- Another Person (AP@home.com), March 25, 1999.
ANP --- You're a strong, smart intellectual dude, which I respect. I still don't feel you answered or rebutted my points above, but this isn't a debate and I'm not trying to score points. I'm willing to agree to disagree until we meet on other threads unless you want to continue here. Meanwhile, best of luck on your Y2K work and I sincerely hope you're right about Y2K and that your company makes it through successfully, to the benefit of all of us.
-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), March 25, 1999.
Another Person:Actually I already did. See the last paragraph of my response to Linda above.
-ANP
-- Another NORMal Person (ANP@BettyFord.com), March 25, 1999.
Fair enough BigDog. I thought I had responded but you are right, its not worth continuing if we agree to disagree. I did in fact agree with a few of your points (yes, I am anonymous and yes, disgust with profiteers is a secondary motive of mine). I'll keep an eye open for you in other posts.-ANP
-- Another NORMal Person (ANP@BettyFord.com), March 25, 1999.
"Ed is right or you are a moron. Choose now! "Those are the choices we have?
What if we didn't buy and haven't read the book? What if we're costing Ed money taking up disc space and CPU here, doing research (evidently you don't do a heckuva lot) and gnawing on our respective findings?
There is no middle ground for you, or so it would appear, ANP. You haven't been around here long enough to be using that big-@ss brush on everybody with any credibility.
-- Lisa (lisa@hmmm.hmmm), March 25, 1999.
Ed,This is not the Koskinen supply chain comment Ive been looking for (cant quite find it) but, it does illunminate what the prep reasoning is.
Diane
Found buried in ...
NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission Briefing On Y2K
Thursday, February 11, 1999
http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/COMMISSION/TRANSCRIPTS/ 19990211b.htmlMR. KOSKINEN:
... That brings me to my request of the Commission and the staff and the industry. That is that our other major problem and risk in the United States will be overreaction by the public to the perception of what this problem could look like.
We are concerned that if a few people decide to change their economic behavior, it won't make a lot of difference, if even a reasonable number of people do that, but if 200 million Americans decide to do anything very differently all at one time, the system is not geared up to deal with that, and we could have a self-fulfilling prophesy where we have a major economic problem even though the systems basically are functioning appropriately. ...
-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), March 26, 1999.