After reading this for a year or more and stock piling stacks of food, what has really happened? With the milestone dates come and gone, what has really happened with anything? Zilch. A few tiny bits and pieces but that's it. Over-the-top carry on if you ask me. You can say, well, that time will tell, but hey, what happened to being sensible? Seems to me like the Kosovo problem is likely to cause more of a glitch than Y2K.

-- pauline jansen (paulinej@angliss.vic.edu.au), April 18, 1999

Answers

Pauline,

I believe if you check your calendar you will find that today is April 18, 1999.

-- @ (@@@.@), April 18, 1999.

The correct position to take with respect to dates on which things didn't happen now depends on what didn't happen.

For deadlines the code wasn't finsihed by, or testing wasn't started by, or compliance wasn't announced by, these are still considered Bad Signs and severe warnings remain in effect until further notice.

For spike dates we've passed without predicted consequences, the correct position is now that these didn't really count. The forecast for century rollover remains in effect as well, with possible aftershocks predicted for 30 months to 10 years afterwards.

The recommended response if severe problems arise remains "I told you so." If severe problems do not arise, the proper response is gladness and relief. In that case, guarantees of catastrophe are *not* to be regarded as dishonest or misguided, no matter how many one posted.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 18, 1999.

Pauline, the only thing that has come and gone is vapordates for remediation. . . and with respect to those, you're right, nothing has really happened.

-- Puddintame (achillesg@hotmail.com), April 18, 1999.

Flint, Have you let this whole thing become entwined in your ego?

-- Puddintame (achillesg@hotmail.com), April 18, 1999.

pauline,

There's a really good article at Westergaard Year 2000. Written by Lane Core (I think that's his name) This might address your concerns. Sorry< I have no idea how to link)

-- (rcarver@inacom.com), April 18, 1999.

It appears to me that Sir Flint's responses were/are right on track - from all data available, we only beginning to see the faint start of the Bell Curve towards full compliance by even 50% of the government systems and large companies, much the vast majority of small and medium companies.

Total compliance (Mid-April 1999) is certainly less than 2.5% of total systems nationwide - perhaps much less. To meet 50% compliant by end of June, we would need to be 25-30% of all businesses reporting compliant now - 10 times the current number that "might" be completed through remediation.

The only other choice - aside from assuming that 499 companies out of the Fortune 500 will some how magically beat the Bell Curve and all finish by June 30, or even by Sept 30, is to assume that nothing will happen if a major, minor, or little company is not compliant before Jan 2000.

-- Robert A Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (Cook.R@csaatl.com), April 18, 1999.

The milestone date beside which all others are secondary is the rollover to 2000 at the end of 1999. That rollover is the basis of the Y2k problems -- no other date has a similar magnitude of importance.

That is always the way it was, not some hindsight revision.

Now, the _ratio_ of secondary-date problems to primary-date (2000-01-01) problems is _still quite arguable_. Some would say that our experience so far shows that all the dates' effects have been overfeared, rather than that the predicted secondary-to-primary problem effect ratio was wrong. Others may say that the predicted secondary-to-primary problem effect ratio was too high, but that the lower-than-predicted incidence of secondary date effects does not necessarily imply an overprediction of primary date effects.

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), April 18, 1999.

Robert, I'm guessing you ruined Flint's weekend by coopting his sarcasm to serve a rational end.

-- Puddintame (achillesg@hotmail.com), April 18, 1999.

While I admit I wrote with tongue in cheek, Robert and No Spam raise two excellent points, well worth considering seriously.

The pre-2000 predicted spike dates may or may not have been good indicators. Knowledgeable people certainly believed that sizeable chunks of code would encounter 00 dates for the first time. Presumably that happened, since the people predicting problems actually wrote some of that offending code. The question of whether we had little impact because less code was affected than expected, or whether we had little impact because date bugs aren't as virulent as we'd feared, remains an open question.

I should refer Robert to the thread on the meaning of compliance. I think we'd be better off of *nobody* reached 100% compliance but everyone got to 99%, than if 80% reached perfect compliance and 20% went belly up within weeks. And some individual date bugs clearly are much worse than 100 other minor ones. Are we squashing the big ones? It would be nice if someone would focus on functionality more than nominal compliance. So long as key processes are fully functional (with issues), we can get by.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 18, 1999.

The important "bugs' are the mission critical ones ... the ones that put peoples lives at stake, IMHO.

The rest is economics.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), April 18, 1999.

I concur with that assessment - far better that 99% be "almost" compliant - what concerns me now more than getting to 99% - is getting to that first 80%.

Granted, there is time left, but in the absence of even 5% of the Fortune 500 getting done by now, will even 80% of all companies get done?

I wish also we knew _absolutely_ the result of not remediating: that is, I wish a company would try to test (now, before remediation "begins") so we could determine what size hole will appear in the floor in the those companies that get remediation 99%, 95%, 67% and 50% complete.

Each member of a large corporate IT group I've spoke to (Sears, GE Capital, Home Depot, ATT, etc.) says they would have been "wiped out" if "we hadn't finished" - but what exactly does "wiped out mean - could they in fact have recovered after a few weeks (a few days ?) of chaos? Or would they have been unable to recover in time to keep the company "solvent" - pay its, bills, pay its employees, pay its rent and taxes?

What is the result of integrated system testing on a water, sewer, natural gas, and electric utility IF no remediation was done? We are told that relatively few controllers are fatally affected - but what about the interdependencies? Are utilities actually fairly resilant, or are they fragile to large shocks, but able to smaller ones?

-- Robert A Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (Cook.R@csaatl.com), April 18, 1999.

Pauline,

The reason "nothing" has happened is that almost everyone is still using non-remediated 1999 software and will until 12-31-99. Why put your company's reputation (and stock price) at risk? Even if the software is fixed, it will NOT be placed in production this year.

The few places that have done so have had it blow up - Ontario sending out collection notices for traffic "violations" in 2087, Peach Bottom Nuke losing both main and backup computers for seven hours (and earning a major incident classification to boot!) No, Year 2000 "compliant" software will not be run untill @000 and little gliches like that will appear all at once in EVERYBODY's computer.

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@xyz.com), April 18, 1999.

Hi Pauline,

Oz has its fair share of natural disasters. Those people in Sydney with tile/concrete roofs should (following the recent hail storm) be reroofing with corrugated iron. Y2K is a Technological disaster. People take sensible precautions in the face of natural disasters. We base those precautions on our knowledge of the past. With Y2K we have no previous knowledge from which to draw. A sensible person tries to estimate what will happen and takes appropriate action. Of course, what is appropriate for you will be different from is appropriate for others. A minimum requirement of each of use is to be tolerant of others preparations.

Y2K will happen regardless of Kosovo, though things do not look good there anyway we look at it.

I wish you well in your deliberations about Y2K.

-- Bob Barbour (r.barbour@waikato.ac.nz), April 18, 1999.

The important thing is to prepare.This whole thing has opened my eyes, I don't need to prepare for for just y2k I needed to prepare for anything. Y2k just opened my eyes' I hope your eyes will remain open.

-- RA (RA@wildcats.com), April 18, 1999.

I still say that the bottom line is "supply line". Even is the US were 100% compliant and EVERYTHING worked, most of what we eat and use comes from off shore. There has been no dispute regarding that much of the world is going to be in a Bangladesh (sp) mode. That means our supply line is cut.

Going to Sams

-- Taz (Tassie @aol.com), April 19, 1999.