Y2K - The Mysterious Mindset Called 'Y2K Disconnect'

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Y2K - The Mysterious Mindset Called 'Y2K Disconnect'

From Y2KNEWSWIRE.com 6-27-99

This week, Y2KNEWSWIRE covers the "Y2K Disconnect" -- a mysterious psychology that allows people of all walks of life to selectively ignore a mountain of evidence that Y2K is not only unsolved at this moment -- it is unsolvable in the time remaining.

In part one of this report, we present this 36-item list, titled, "If Y2K were solved"

IF Y2K WERE SOLVED

1.the FAA would have tested all airport and en route radar control systems rather then just the Denver systems.

2.programmers wouldn't still be working on the problem.

3..the federal government wouldn't be reluctant to hold a nationwide Y2K test day.

4.the sewer system in Los Angeles wouldn't have spilled several millions of gallons of raw sewage into the city streets during a recent Y2K test.

5.the G8 meetings would not have urged member countries to urgently raise awareness among their populations.

6.Congress would have no reason to pass Y2K liability limitation legislation (and trial lawyers would have no reason to fight it).

7.federal agencies would have spent 100% of their Y2K budgets, and they would not be asking for an additional $1+ billion in emergency Y2K funds for fiscal year 2000.

8.President Clinton would be loudly and publicly proclaiming Y2K as being solved (and taking credit for it).

9.lawyers wouldn't be running seminars that teach other lawyers how to sue big companies over Y2K problems.

10.every publicly-traded company would file a non-ambiguous SEC statement claiming full compliance.

11.Y2K programmers, who make up barely 1% of the working population, wouldn't be buying up 10% of the long-term-storable food.

12.there would be no need to create fictitious subsets of systems-to-fix -- such as the now-famous "mission-critical" subset or, as President Clinton describes them, the "most important" systems.

13....banks would have no reason to spend millions of dollars convincing people not to withdraw their funds.

14....the members of the President's Year 2000 Council would be looking for new jobs.

15....airlines would not be grounding their fleets on December 31, 1999.

16....insurers would retract all the Y2K-immunity clauses they've issued over the past 18 months.

17....federal agencies wouldn't be afraid to have outside auditors verify their claims.

18....electric utilities, banks and federal agencies wouldn't now be naming "September" as their newest compliance target date.

19.Senator Bennett (R-Utah) would not be stockpiling food and water.

20....company and agency spokespeople would stop using words like "ready" and start using "compliant."

21....Janet Reno wouldn't have quietly created the "National Domestic Preparedness Office" to deal with Y2K.

22.President Clinton would not have recently modified Executive Order 13073 to include text describing the handling of Y2K emergencies and rebuilding efforts.

23....Marines wouldn't be staging urban military exercises in major U.S. cities.

24.John Koskinen would not have to hold "community conversations" to urge calm about Y2K.

25.The President's Year 2000 Council would not currently be employing a big-name Public Relations firm to engineer a "calming" Y2K communications strategy.

26.Rep. Stephen Horn's government Y2K grade card would not have to be based on purely self-reported numbers: it could be based on audited, verified numbers.

27.Power plants wouldn't be stockpiling a 60-day supply of coal (the few that are)

28.The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) would not be allowing on-site plant inspectors to make "exceptions" to safety rules in order to maintain the collective "safety" of the power grid.

29.The federal government would have no need to increase the stockpile of emergency oil reserves.

30.Government (both local and federal) would not be buying up all the high-output diesel generators on the market.

31.The banking industry would not be spending millions of dollars creating and running advertisements that attempt to persuade people that holding on to their own cash is a bad, bad, decision.

32.The GAO (Government Accounting Office) would be backing up the federal government's claims of compliance rather than challenging them (and exposing them as lies).

33.The Y2K budgets of every private company would have been entirely spent by now.

34.Nuclear power utilities would not be urgently issuing protective orders to prevent the public release of documents describing their Y2K status.

35.Insiders in law enforcement, Fortune 500 companies, oil companies, the military and the federal government would not be contacting Y2KNEWSWIRE and spilling the beans on how non-compliant their organizations really are.

36.The United States Post Office would not be firing people for refusing to falsify Y2K compliance documents.

37. y2k pro would have a life 9relatively speaking...)

This list is just the beginning, of course. There are so many things that would be different if Y2K were solved, it's impossible to list them all. The only way to observe all these things and still conclude Y2K is solved is to mentally invoke the Y2K Disconnect.



-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), June 28, 1999

Answers

A pathetic straw man. No one said the problem was entirely solved. Some companies are not yet remediated, those that are, are in the expensive testing period.

This article (if you can call it that)seems like another sad attempt to fleece the suckers with advertising about gold or MREs.

-- Y2K Pro (2@641.com), June 28, 1999.


Yes. The article is pretty banal, unless you equate "Y2K not completely solved" with "We're in big, BIG trouble". Which is the leap of bad logic that Y2K Newswire presumably expects its typical readership to make. It's all quite amusing, in a sad sort of way.

-- Richard Dymond (rdymond@healey-baker.com), June 28, 1999.

That is interesting because when I read that article I didn't automaticaly make that jump of logic. It tells me that it's June 28, 1999 and Y2K is still out there at large...and the waiting continues. It also tells me that perhaps we are getting a little closer to the wire every day and maybe that is not such a good thing. In my opinion, they started way too late. They could have been in the "expensive testing phase" last year at this time. It's not like they didn't know about Y2K in 1997, or 1996, or 1995. Sounds like it was put off to the last minute by people who didn't realize the logistics of remediation.

-- (html@guy.com), June 28, 1999.

Andy,

I would move #8 up to #1. Clinton would not only be proudly boasting about the success of the remediation, but would have his hand on Al Gore's shoulder as he proclaimed the genius of his IT-VP in handling so much of the difficult work of coordinating the victory!

-- Gordon (gpconnolly@aol.com), June 28, 1999.


Right on - Gordon and Andy

-- dave (wootendave@hotmail.com), June 28, 1999.


I thought the "expensive" stage was when the replacement software and hardware arrived, assuming of course it isn't hopelessly backordered (something noone intends to admit until next year). I don't see why testing would be nearly as expensive, unless of course there is still lots of remediation to be done to make compliant a system that never was.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), June 28, 1999.

whatever happened to "with a full year for testing"?probably the same thing that'll happen to "with 6 months for testing"

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), June 28, 1999.

In famous Y2KNewsWire fashion, we are given opinions tarted up to look like facts. I'd like to see the source data for all this gross speculation. Of course, none will be forthcoming. Must be all those "deep background" Fortune 500 sources (who are still holding the stocks of their worthless companies.)

Regards,

-- Mr. Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), June 28, 1999.


"the FAA would have tested all airport and en route radar control systems rather then just the Denver systems"

Remember the 140,000+ lines of bad code from the *corrections* alone,when they "fixed" a couple of computers at O'Hare? I wonder, what kind of party is waiting for us next?

The odds are to great (if you have any values) not to make this your top concern.

-- BiGG (supersite@acronet.net), June 28, 1999.


Mr.Decker,

While I can understand how you or anyone might find the Y2K Newswire site less satisfying than you wish, you did make a statement that puzzles me. You said: "opinions tarted up to look like facts." It seems to me that describes almost the entire area of "facts" that is offered up to us almost daily by the various agencies of the government itself. Or do you think those statistics of 90%, 94%, whatever, compliance are indeed facts?

-- Gordon (gpconnolly@aol.com), June 28, 1999.



Once again the apathetic disease spreads its insidious dendrites throughout cyberspace: PVS (Pollyanna Vegetative State).

Watch out! PVS is deadly!

-- Randolph (dinosaur@williams-net.com), June 28, 1999.


Anyone catch double-deckers's take on this?

puerile, infantile, or what ??? he's losing it :)))

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), June 28, 1999.


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