(snip) What about year 2000 computer bug fears? Certainly, there's a lot of time between now and Jan. 1. Some investors may indeed become spooked by fears that enough computers will crash on or around Jan. 1 to cause a worldwide panic. Applegate's view, however, reflects what a computer consultant told him recently, which was that "80% of Y2K problems are going to be fixed in 72 hours" after Jan. 1 (a weekend during which most people won't be working anyway, except perhaps on their hangovers). As long as the financial system is largely still intact, investors who suffered through the Armageddon threat of last fall may find minor Y2K problems a nuisance at worst, some Wall Street optimists say. ( end snip )

It took us years to " supposedly reach" 80% remediation and the last 20 % will take 72 hours....... am i missing something ?

-- kevin (innxxs@yahoo.com), July 07, 1999

Answers

full story @ http://www.latimes.com/HOME/BUSINESS/WALLSTCA/t000060466.html

-- kevin (innxxs@yahoo.com), July 07, 1999.

It's not what you are missing . . . it's what THEY are missing . . . the TRUTH!

-- winna (??@??.com), July 07, 1999.

Some things will be fixed very quickly.

I'd much rather fix a totally hosed system than repair one that's currently up and running. It's like doing a valve job on a cold engine, or doing it with the thing running. When it's dead, I can do anything I want without coordinating with users. I can test in the live environment (well, if you gotta you gotta) and nobody gets in my way. Some things that take months on a running system will be fixed in hours when the system dies.

Terrific, right?

Problem is, lots of systems (maybe MOST systems) can't be fixed in a few hours. If you have a database that uses a 2-digit date as an index field, you're down until you unload, reformat, reload that index. If you've never done that before, you have to write some one-shot programs to do the reformatting. And you have to change, test, load all the production programs that touch that index.

And if power is dirty, or the PCs that you program on are hinky because they have noncompliant OS, the fix that should take, oh gosh, maybe a week on a dead system (and six months on a live one) might take six months anyhow.

Some stuff will be fixed by power-off-power-on. Some will get fixed in 72 hours. Some will get fixed in a week or two. Question is, can we live for long enough without the things that can't get fixed in 3 days? We've never done this before.

The other day I said Y2k is not a bump in the road, it's an impact on a network. We don't know if it's like catching a nerf ball in a fishing net, or catching a line drive in a spider web. Time will tell.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), July 07, 1999.

bw, "we don't know" and "time will tell" are absolutely the most honest things I've heard anyone say yet. Thank you. PS liked the nerf/line drive analogies too.

-- Barb (awaltrip@telepath.com), July 07, 1999.

bw- Interesting perspective. However I question the issue concerning the repair of a working system vs the total impact theory. I work for a very large data center in the Financial Industry. I guess I am looking at this from an environment perspective. Today, we solve problems in production on an adhoc basis. The thought of a full blown failure is something we never want to experience. The problem isolation, research and resolution would be much greater if we experience a global systems failure vs an isolated fix.

With respect to the 72 hour rule, I hope the Contingency Plans for BCP's include restoration of some level of Service or work around until the existing system is repaired. Without a solid Contingency Plan, which includes your need to test, check and fix a failure, a company is in serious trouble.

Thanks for your comments.....

-- Y2KDUDE (Webmaster@Y2KDUDE.com), July 07, 1999.

I gotta mirror Barb's thoughts here re: "bw's comment - "We don't know if it's like catching a nerf ball in a fishing net, or catching a line drive in a spider web". This was the best y2k analogy I have ever seen.

-- CD (not@here.com), July 07, 1999.

I gotta mirror Barb's thoughts here re: "bw's comment - "We don't know if it's like catching a nerf ball in a fishing net, or catching a line drive in a spider web". This was the best y2k analogy I have ever seen.

-- CD (not@here.com), July 07, 1999.

CD, my money is on the fishing net, wanna make a wager? Ill admit it was creative, but one is "possible", the other is clearly "impossible" Any argument their?

-- commonsenseanyone? (midwestmike_@hotmail.com), July 07, 1999.

Let's not forget this comment made by John Koskinen:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_if=000n8Y

[snip]

We are running events in the United States focusing on small businesses, trying to provide them technical information, trying to encourage them to take action in the face of what we find increasingly is a position where many of them are saying they're simply going to wait, see what breaks, and then they will fix it once it's broken. We are trying to tell them that that's a very high risk roll of the dice, because when they go to get the fix, whether it's an upgrade in their software or a replacement for the software or the hardware, it will be obvious what the fix is, everyone will know how to do it, but the risk is, they will be at the end of a very long line of other people who waited to see what broke and then decided to fix it. And the fix will work just fine when it arrives, but it may not arrive until March, April or May of the year 2000, and these companies and governments and those who decided to wait and see may find that they're going to be severely challenged in continuing their operations while they're waiting for that fix to arrive.

[snip]

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 07, 1999.

72 hours is small enough that the masses can justify not prepping.at this late date,many will probably die.time to harden our hearts and start thinking about survival.The government knows this.people will die.Human suffering will probably be great.The race will continue,really that's all that matters.We wre never given a choice as to whether this is the type of world we'd choose to live in.It's always been a world of pain,but our government has kept our santioned killers convienently out of sight so we don't have to feel any responsibility for the crimes that are commited under the catch word of freedom. The government probably knows this and is powerless to stop it.some will live,many will die.I agree,life is not fair.

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), July 08, 1999.

Y2KDUDE,

Good point. The current crop of programmers has mostly never heard the eerie pseudo-silence when disks are still spinning but the machine is dead. Twenty years ago it was not uncommon for a mainframe OS to hang, but the OS has gotten progressively more robust and now they run forever. Current testing methods typically prevent an entire online system from hanging, but in the older approach (throw it in and see if it works) it was not that unusual.

I worked on an online system that degraded day by day while we patched around flaws (being generated by an unsupported OS and a poor transaction handler). We asked for downtime to fix it, but we were told by that era's equivalent of a pointy-haired manager that we could surely last till the weekend. Around Thursday it crashed with no recovery, and we were free to fix however we wanted. Heck, at that point we could have gotten a BIG raise, if we'd thought to ask!

Going to be interesting to see how programmers cope. Interesting to see how managers respond, when they realize that the computer really doesn't care who wears a tie or speaks in a clear, commanding voice.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), July 08, 1999.

zoobie, people will die for sure, but let's not harden our hearts. It's bad for the health.

Hey, you all forgot about the Magic Fairy Godmother Effect, or the Last Minute Aversion of Disaster by the Good Guys button, made popular by the Grimm Bros. and Hollywood.

Got tuna?

-- Mara Wayne (MaraWayne@aol.com), July 09, 1999.