this is what i mean when i say that somethings never change. the same attitude that pervaded the nuclear industry pre y2k still prevails. the 'engineers' that are privy to the esoteric rituals for the production of electricity ramble around in their facilities mumbling the same old mantras.

everything is fine, we have failsafes and redundancies built in, we can revert to manual. well everything is *not* fine, we are facing an unprecedented event, failsafes and redundancies abound... they did then and they do now, and reverting to manual in this environment certainly does not make me feel 'warm and fuzzy' inside... i'm more worried about being 'hot and toasted' on the outside.

tmi occurred during the best of times... what will happen during y2k?

Bob Long, Supervising Engineer: "Most of us who had spent our lives in this business didn't believe that could happen. We had a mindset that said we had these marvelous safety systems which had back-ups of back-ups...... So there was that mindset that I think made it hard for people to really come to grips with the reality that severe damage had occurred."

_never in human history have so many humans blindly trusted that so many other humans won/t screw up._

dr.edward yardeni

-- Anonymous, June 22, 1999

Answers

Never in human history have so many humans blindly trusted that so many other humans won't screw up.

Is that a real Yardeni quotation? I've never seen it before, but it sure does sum up the situation.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 1999

now lane,

i wouldn't make that up... i don't have a degree in engineering. i adopted it as my sig line.

and yes, you are right... for me it just about sums it up.

here is a copy of the original post... i could not remember the title so i could not post the url for you. i didn't have time to clean up the formatting as i am late for work.

copied the following text from dr. yardeni's website. this is just one of the many reasons that, when added together, don't add up to why there are so many 'happy face' reports. these reports are generated by the pr departments of government and industry.

this is what the geeks are saying. check out the figures that show the % of errors experienced in 'y2k ready' commercial software(28%)

text:

survey says i.t. crowd forsees y2k crisis

87% see global trobal. the information technology association of america (itaa) claims to be "the only trade association representing the broad spectrum of the world leading us information technology(it) industry." itaa includes over 11, 000 direct and affiliate members "from america's largest corporations to the entrpreneurs building the blockbuster it companies of the future."

on january 20, 1999, the itaa issed a press release describing the y2k poll conducted by the organization of its members during december of 1998. the press release put a rather positive spin on the findings. however, under closer inspection, there was plenty of material suggesting that a negative spin is more accurate. even the upbeat press release noted

87% of the survey respondents said that the year 2000 problem is a crisis for the nation and the world. 52% think the millenium bug will hurt their companies; only 29% disagree with this notion. over one third said the bug has already started to bite, triggering failures under actual operating conditions. of those reporting specific failures, these included data exchange errors(34%), accounting errors (27 %), errors in "y2k ready" commercial software(28%), errors in tested software causing rework(25%), database file corruption(21%), and computer crashes(18%). in test mode 71% of the respondents are finding failures.

again, itaa issued a press release with this startling information. why didn't the press report the story? this is a very credible organization. why is there so much public optimism about y2k, when the "insiders" are so pesimistic? I don't have the answers, just the questions.

unvalidated vendors. the press release also observed that "the survey seemed to generate questions about how agressively companies are persuing the contingency-planning process. although 44% said they will stop doing business with companies found to be non-compliant, only 33% said they would actually visit suppliers to ascertain their y2k status.

_never in human history have so many humans blindly trusted that so many other humans won/t screw up._

end of text

this is not industry specific... this is across the board.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 1999

Oh, heck, I didn't think you made it up. :-) It's just that a lot of quotations get ascribed to persons who didn't really have anything to do with them, and they get passed on to others who don't know that.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 1999