InfoMagic, last summer -- "At this point the stock market bubble will burst. I have predicted that this would happen in the October/November time frame, and I stand by my words. Shortly after the November elections, I expect some outside trigger event, probably the devaluation of the Brazilian Real, and the collapse of their economy. This will be so close to home, and it's effect on US banks so great, that the bear-fact will be readily apparent even to the bulls -- the global economy really is in deep trouble and none of the economic gimmicks are going to work.

"However, the market will not just crash as it did in 1929. Trading stop measures put into place since then will prevent a massive drop all in one day. Rather, there will be a series of major drops over a period of several days or even weeks. I expect a two to three thousand point drop in the DJIA by the end of November, with continued declines throughout December and early January. It will not be a happy holiday season for many. Doors will close and jobs will be lost, and the general sense of depression will weigh heavily on many.

"Then, in January '99, we will see a sharp rise in the number of software failures attributable directly to Y2K. Many will fail because they hit data event horizons one year into the future, in 2000 itself. Others because they hit the year-99 special handling boundary (which includes, but is not limited to, treating "99" as "end-of-file").

Link

=========================

Cory Hamasaki, last fall -- "Here's my guess. The backroom processing is doomed. The failures now are little surprises, lost records, missing transactions, incorrect total roll-ups. There have been about a dozen cites on c.s.y2k in December 1998 and the first week of January 1999 for problems. Some are early Jo Anne Effect and others seem to be "99"=error situations. Others are difficult to categorize.

According to Jo Anne's analysis, the problems should not be visibile until February or March. We're seeing the camel's nose."

COMMENT: It's now April 5th. Jo Anne Problems? Where are they? Where are these huge Jo Anne problems? Answer: THEY HAVEN'T SURFACED, TO ANY SIGNIFICANT DEGREE. Those that have, are an anthill, compared to the predicted Everest.

Link http://www.sonnet.co.uk/muse/DCW-107.TXT

=========================

Ed Yourdon, this past May:

"I believe that we will begin seeing Y2K problems that do cause noticeable disruptions in our day to day lives; I believe we'll start seeing them by this summer, and I believe they'll continue for at least a year. As many people are now aware, 46 states (along with Australia and New Zealand) will begin their 1999-2000 fiscal year on July 1, 1999; New York (and Canada) will already have gone through their Y2K fiscal rollover on April 1, and the remaining three states begin their new fiscal year on August 1, September 1, and October 1. We also have the GPS rollover problem to look forward to on August 22nd, as well as the Federal government's new fiscal year on October 1st. There is, of course, some finite probability that all of these rollover events will occur without any problems; but there's also a finite probability that pigs will learn to fly."

COMMENT: ZERO OCCURRENCE THUS FAR. PIGS HAVE LEARNED TO FLY. Sir Ed "retired" not long after he wrote this piece of erroneous prognostication.

Link

Conclusion: The Doomer position is now based on nothing more than emotion and preconceived, outdated ideas. Facts have fled. There will be problems, sure enough: but they won't be to any severe degree, not in the U.S. And not as bad as Doomers predict, ANYwhere.

Problems that arise will be the 'work-around' type; human history will continue as it always has. Doomers will become a footnote to history, as all extremist groups have.

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), July 09, 1999

Answers

You're right, chicken... it IS hard to deal with these events, especially with the way things are being spun. What people should remember is that businesses and government agencies, who absolutely SWEAR that they have a handle on things, promised they'd be finished with remediation in September of 1998...ooops, make that December of '98...ooops, make that March of '99...darn, make that June of '99... sunuvagun, I guess we'll have to wait till September...ARGGHHH!!

Got truth serum?

-- Sandmann (Sandmann@alasbab.com), July 09, 1999.

Chicken BIG,

We will have the ANSWERS soon !!

Looks like mama let the kids out to play this morning.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 09, 1999.

"I guess we'll have to wait till September..."

Don't count on it Sandmann. I think we're gonna have to wait 'til 2000/01/01... <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), July 09, 1999.

Chicken, here's another set of faulty progonstications: April 1, 1999. On this date, Canada, Japan, and the State of New York begin their fiscal year. This will, of course, include dates beyond Y2K. As a result, planning systems, especially budgets that have not been repaired will fail as they attempt to process Y2K dates. Since New York City is the media capitol of the world, problems there will grab headlines worldwide. Problems in Japan will remind everyone again of how interconnected our world is. The Japanese will also be forced to admit that there systems might not make it. I expect the stock market to react and begin (or continue) its downward spiral. Public confidence will continue to wane and the number of Y2K optimists will continue to dwindle.

July 1, 1999. On this date, forty-four U.S. states begin their fiscal years. The problems that began in New York will now spread exponentially across the country and around the world. The public will feel the global and pervasive nature of the Y2K Problem for the first time. This will be further exacerbated by the fact that many states have not had the resources to adequately address their Millennium Bug problems. Consequently, the failures will be real and widespread.

From the 12 Oct 1998 issue of Westergaard - Michael Hyatt

-- Y2K Pro (2@641.com), July 09, 1999.

Who said these folks weren't organized ??

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 09, 1999.

When the GPS thing turns out to be nothing, and then Sept. 9th is just another day, we'll hear more from these guys. Then January 1st, when their lights are on and they can connect to the internet, they're sure to post again.

Swapping failed predictions (especially if quoted out of context) from concerned experts and unconcerned experts can be fun.

Any experts want to predict the price at the pumps next July?

-- Gus (y2kk@usa.net), July 09, 1999.

Granted, the predictions haven't come to pass. There are still abundant reasons to prepare. The problem hasn't been solved, not by a long shot.

I'm tired of the continued attempt by CL and others at polarizing the "debate". With perhaps a few exceptions, this forum is not populated by "doomers" or "extremists". The vast majority are simply concerned about the potential effects of a very real, well-documented global problem. Nor does the majority attempt to "panic" anyone. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Few people here, other than CL and his/her ilk, have any certainty about what the future holds. It is this uncertainty which leads us to prepare. Past predictions notwithstanding, facts still point to global disruptions for which it is prudent to prepare.

-- regular (zzz@z.z), July 09, 1999.

It is curious, isn't it Ray? Yesterday was one of the better days on this forum...little disruption, reasonable discussions, and even civilized debate (gasp!). This morning I see Sistah, Andy Ray, Chicken Little, Y2K Pro and Mr. Decker all starting new threads...and the day is young. Hmmmm...

-- RUOK (RUOK@yesiam.com), July 09, 1999.

Nyuk nyuk...

and you guys talk about spin.

You can't "spin" direct quotes.

InfoMagic, JoAnne, Cory, Ed, and Hyatt have all made DEFINITE statements/predictions about what would happen. No getting around that.

NONE of their predictions have come to pass. Not even close. Not even one. Though they all talked in big-ass, definite terms.

Now. Talk about spin? I believe you're the ones spinning at this point.

**********

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), July 09, 1999.

A Y2K Q and A Christopher Ruddy and Gregory J. Hobbs July 8, 1999

Mr. Ruddy: "I'm a little baffled because some states have changed over to fiscal year 2000 and there have been practically no problems, at least that we know of. Why?"

Mr. Hobbs: "You must realize that most systems won't necessarily react to that. The 2-digit year field is still intact until the double zero appears. I believe that the next crisis for mainframe computers is the 9/9/99 date. Many programmers used the 9999 to signify the end of a process or the termination of certain aspects of a program. Enormous databases of information could be lost by deletion because the computer program now believes that the information associated with some process has been terminated or is no longer required for some reason. That will be a very interesting day. I am sure that the programmers working on or maintaining the old legacy COBOL systems are not looking forward to that day.

"Many states have performed what is deemed the required (minimum legally acceptable) tasks in order to claim compliance. The lawyers say that if a certain minimum level of work is done then there will be no grounds for lawsuits as a result. It is virtually impossible for large organizations and governments to perform compliance testing because they lack the system or computer capacity to perform the tests.

"As an example, if you have a large mainframe running various programs real-time online, so you can conduct business, it would be necessary to have another mainframe, of equal or greater size, in order to run simulations of your system in or beyond the year 2000 so as to test the software's ability to function after January 1, 2000. That capacity does not exist.

"Cursory short term testing of small segments of the systems are performed because the hardware capacity is insufficient to do anything else. Unfortunately, when you test in this manner it is impossible to do full integration testing of all the systems that will have to function together. So at best they are hoping that or they have deluded themselves into believing that the systems will function properly based on what they have done.

"Information systems groups - people that develop and fix software - are notorious for delivering products late. They are late as an industry 85% of the time and they never or virtually never deliver the goods in a fully functional state. Windows 98 is a perfect example, how late was this product? That is a glaring example, but you should realize that corporate IS departments are just as bad when it comes to delivering the goods on time and in working order.

"With Y2K, you are asking an industry, with this kind of a track record, to deliver o- time and without flaw the corrected software for internal data processing and external exchange of information on over 100,000,000 (yes that is one hundred million) computer systems worldwide. If you believe that the odds are in favor of that happening then you should stay away from places like Las Vegas. IS departments are also notorious for not telling you the bad news (its not finished or not working) until the 11th hour. They hate giving upper management bad news. And, you know as well as I do that if you really want something screwed up, let the government do it.

"Everyone must act or be prepared to act according to his or her own belief.

======================================================================

"IS departments are notorious for not telling the bad news."

They can control and keep the fiscal year problems from management and thus from the media and public view. What Hyatt and Yourdon el al were expecting was honesty and truthtelling. So, we will all have to wait until 1-1--2000 when the truth can no longer be hidden.

-- BB (peace2u@bellatlantic.net), July 09, 1999.

When meteorologists detect a major hurricane in the Atlantic and project landfall on a certain date, and it turns out that it hits a day or so later, does that make the damage that it produces any less severe?

Y2K is unpredictable. All of the authors above recognized that. They were giving their best guess at the timing of the event. Save your gloating for this time next year.

-- a (a@a.a), July 09, 1999.

Although CL, as usual, has cherry-picked, I am delighted that these predictions didn't come to pass. If Y2K is the BITR, I will be eating my beans delightedly over the next decade instead of the next year or so.

Everything I know from experience and analysis says that we are still heading for a cliff -- we simply don't know whether the ground is ten feet below, fifty feet below or two hundred feet below. Injury is certain, culture death is possible (though unlikely).

If the ground is ten feet below, pollies will declaim that they were right all along. Who cares? Nothing can change the fact that Y2K remediation has been managed by the Keystone Kops and total preparation by governments (who are doing it), smart corporatios (who are doing it) and GI families (who are doing it) is ABSOLUTELY WARRANTED.

Hyatt, Yourdon, Infomagic, Hamasaki and the rest may have missed some dates, but their macro analysis of the imperative need to prepare has be been right-on from day one and remains so in July, 1999.

Regrettably.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), July 09, 1999.

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory."

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

-- - (-@-.-), July 09, 1999.

@, who knows everything, said:

"When meteorologists detect a major hurricane in the Atlantic and project landfall on a certain date, and it turns out that it hits a day or so later, does that make the damage that it produces any less severe?"

@, have you ever lived through a hurricane? I've been through three (3) in the past three years. When Fran came through here, the wind was 95 MPH outside my window. Serious stuff. You don't need to be preaching to me about hurricanes. How many have you been in?

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), July 09, 1999.

Chicken, is what Little brain you have caught in some kind of loop?

Why do you not post this fifty times in a row and get it out of your system. You will feel better and we can skip fifty threads.

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), July 09, 1999.

Are fiscal year rollvers in accounting software a reliable indicator of what will happen in January 2000? See this thread:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00122f

"Significance of States Fiscal Start"

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 09, 1999.

Chicken said:

@, have you ever lived through a hurricane? I've been through three (3) in the past three years. When Fran came through here, the wind was 95 MPH outside my window. Serious stuff. You don't need to be preaching to me about hurricanes. How many have you been in?

Chicken, I was in Hugo. The highest winds were 140 MPH. Loved every minute of it. Found it to be "exciting". Y2K is different. It's unpredictable, its consequences will be much more long lasting and severe, there will be no outside help, it will hit every person, every government, every company, in every city, state, and country in the world more or less simultaneously, and you can't run from it even if you wanted to.

And I'll add someting to my previous comment about a predicted landfall that is a day off: In many cases, this allows the storm to intensify.

BTW, my handle is 'a' not '@'.

-- a (a@a.a), July 09, 1999.

Big Dog said:

"Hyatt, Yourdon, Infomagic, Hamasaki and the rest may have missed some dates"

"Some dates? They missed EVERY date. So far they have been completely and absolutely wrong with every one of their prognostications. How Doomers can still follow this gaggle of losers is beyond contemplation...

-- Y2K Pro (2@641.com), July 09, 1999.

Mike --

you can basically just kiss my ass.

a --

Hugo was intense. Got friends in Marion SC, so have an idea. I still say you folks are spreading FUD though -- disagree in the strongest terms.

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), July 09, 1999.

It would appear that most everything is beyond contemplation for you, Y2K Pro.

-- what do you think (.@bout.all_day), July 09, 1999.

"They missed EVERY date."

Gee, the last time I looked, they called it the Y2K problem, not the various dates in 1999 problem. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), July 09, 1999.

Y2K Pro, (BTW, that handle tells me all I need to know about you),

Ask yourself this question:

I have posted the same post above at least twenty times and it just doesn't seem to change the doomers minds, any of them, I wonder why?

When you have come up with the correct answer, you'll stop posting it.

-- BB (peace2u@bellatlantic.net), July 09, 1999.

Here is the prediction that Yourdon/Hamasaki/Hyatt/Infomagic/a/BigDog/Milne/North/etc have been absolutely correct with:

Nearly everyone will be (culpably? incompetently?) breath-takingly late remediating their code and testing it .... or will not test at all.

Alas, I have been amazed that this prediction, even by me, has come true more universally than I expected when I first began touting it.

There are hundreds/thousands of mainstream media articles that casually report this (because they're too stupid to understand the consequences, so they don't even bother to put it through the spin-cycle) en route to "don't worry, be happy".

It's unchallengeable.

Now, whether the concluding clause of those predictions will be correct (the size of the drop off the cliff) remains to be seen AFTER ROLLOVER. And it was ALWAYS after rollover.

The 1999 dates were and are a subtext. Always have been. Like Lane Core, I always thought they were dumb. So what? Glad they passed without incident. Get a life before you lose it.

Guess I'll have to post a thread on this. See what you've made me do, Chicken?

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), July 09, 1999.

How can you guys be so "smart" and so stoopid at the same time.

"They missed EVERY date.

Gee the last time I looked, they called it the Y2K problem, not the various dates in 1999 problem<:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), July 09, 1999."

Come on Sysman, people who live in caves in Borneo have read the Gartner report that says that only 8% of Y2k failures will occur on 1-1-2000. You knew that. I hope.

BigDog -- "Nearly everyone will be (culpably? incompetently?) breath-takingly late remediating their code and testing it."

So what. It's human nature to be late. I read all these things where all these folks are all in a flurry because they didn't get it finished by June 30. SO F**KIN WHAT! That means there are still 6 months to go. Even if it doesn't all get finished by Jan. 1, that doesn't mean the end of the world. It really doesn't. Someone's sold you a psychological bill of goods, and you've swallowed it HL&S.

**********

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), July 09, 1999.

Y2K Pro uttered:

"Some dates? They missed EVERY date. So far they have been completely and absolutely wrong with every one of their prognostications. How Doomers can still follow this gaggle of losers is beyond contemplation...

Now that is good news!

Are you able to provide 100% verification on a global scale that absolutely no computer problems happened on those dates that were caused by those dates or looking ahead to a future date? You see I know some people that are very worried about Y2K and I wish to set their mind at ease that it is all a big hoax.

How long will it take you to photocopy all the government and company documents that you have that certify this? Also how much will it cost me to ship it all over to me so I can have hard proof that absolutely nothing happened?

Thanks for the information Y2K Pro, I am sincerely indebted to you in providing me with the information I need to set my family and friends at ease. Regards, Simon Richards

-- Simon Richards (simon@wair.com.au), July 09, 1999.

"Even if it doesn't all get finished by Jan. 1, that doesn't mean the end of the world. It really doesn't. Someone's sold you a psychological bill of goods, and you've swallowed it HL&S."

Right. The world won't end. Yawn. As if. That's the best you can do at this stage of the game? On a separate thread, "a" rated the end of the world (so-called Infomagic) at 1%. Big woop.

Unfortunately, code isn't impressed by psychology one way or the other. It takes 'x' amount of time to test large, enterprise systems (those little babies like the IRS, USPS and their biz analogies). Not very profound.

And I already said the drop off the cliff might be 10 feet, didn't I? A broken worldwide ankle?

You're not listening or learning anything, Chicken.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), July 09, 1999.

Big Dog,

the zeroes and ones are the final arbiter. But what living people do as a result of their perceived risks comes into play too.

If I'm at an ATM at 11:58 on Dec. 31, a computer that only knows zeroes and ones can't hurt me. It can only screw up and give me not enough money, or too much.

An unreasonably hyped-up human being, however, can hurt me. Or can get hurt by me.

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), July 09, 1999.

Chicken: I think I speak for most of us here when I say I'm more worried about what Y2K might do to unprepared people than what an unprepared person might do to you.

You are coming from the low road, quite obviously.

Still stuck on the bank-run fear: and so typical of pollyannas, who honestly believe that nothing bad could come out of Y2K except for bank runs.

It's what's keeping you in denial: you can't get past it and examine the much, much larger risks that face us.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), July 09, 1999.

Chicken -- yes, we have found something on which we agree. And I have no more interest in facing hyped-up people than you.

I'm even willing to stipulate that NO ONE, doomer or polly, on the "power side of the equation" (gov, media, technical) has done a very good job EITHER WAY (quelling panic by encouraging preparation AND/OR, in other cases, by not over-stating consequences).

This is Lane Core's position, btw.

My gut feeling is that it is too late to affect this much one way or the other and I don't hold you responsible (as a "polly") or myself responsible (as a "doomer"). Y2K is way too big for this little dog. I have always stated what I believed was the minimum consequence of this charade: the need for family preparation that is balanced by the positive hope/understanding that Y2K might end up being a modest phenomenon.

There are going to be hyped-up people: some because they are expecting "apocalypse" and some because they expected "nothing".

IMO, of course, the code IS broken, badly. When we add the hyped people to that, it is indeed scary. Pretending it isn't or blaming folks who are peons (and that includes most everyone on this forum) is counter-productive to preparing ourselves and our families/communities to weather the "weirdness."

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), July 09, 1999.

Big Dog,

Now you're speaking language I can deal with. I just don't think that the code is broken THAT badly; feel like it can mostly be fixed, and what can't be fixed in time, can be worked around in a semi-efficient manner to where we doin't have a complete breakdown.

I feel like it's people who aren't self-sufficient to begin with, is where a lot of the fear is coming from.

But I dammit still think there is an element that is PUSHING the fear element, for whatever reason -- money, ideology, political power....and I resent that element, on whatever front.

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), July 09, 1999.

For any newbie or lurker who wades through all of this and reaches the end of it wondering what is going on, should I prepare or not, are the polliannas right, please click on this LINK

-- Sandmann (Sandmann@alasbab.com), July 09, 1999.

"As an example, if you have a large mainframe running various programs real-time online, so you can conduct business, it would be necessary to have another mainframe, of equal or greater size, in order to run simulations of your system in or beyond the year 2000 so as to test the software's ability to function after January 1, 2000. That capacity does not exist. "

Hobbs doesn't have a friggin' clue about mainframes.

It's called an LPAR, Logical PARtition, and it's how my company tested all of our stuff...even on the same logical box. We IPL this "box" to different dates in the future all the time, have been for over a year testing and retesting.

Unfortunately, when you test in this manner it is impossible to do full integration testing of all the systems that will have to function together.

Wrong again. My company has done this before, and we are doing it again for all of our products, from generating transactions to making out files.

And this statement kills me: "It is virtually impossible for large organizations and governments to perform compliance testing because they lack the system or computer capacity to perform the tests.

So, I take it he's surveyed all of the companies in the US to determine their capacity?

Authority? Who said that? This dude is full of crap.

-- JAW (clueless@pollyanna.com), July 09, 1999.

Well, since we're quoting sources.....

<<<<"Some early failures have already occurred. According to one survey, more than 40 percent of companies in the United States already have encountered Year 2000-related system failures. --- The U.S. Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, "Summary of Oversight Findings and Recommendations" , October, 1998>>>>

So lets see. 40% percent of just the Fortune 1000 would be 400 failure DIRECTLY related to Y2K. Any of you Pollys care to point me in the direction of where I can find 400 failures listed? Maybe 300? 200? OK, just 100?

No? Guess maybe no one wants this info to to be publicly available? Not good for the public image you know. Maybe we've not been told about these failures? Maybe we're STILL not being told about recent failures, if they're occuring?

Anyone else noticed the tremendous increase lately in computer related problems and other just plain weird problems problems NOT attributed to Y2K, and the degree that the press releases go to in an effort to make certain that you understand it's NOT a Y2K problem? What are the odds that SUDDENLY out of nowhere all these problems start occuring?

<<<<"The bug is biting now. One in 10 companies interviewed by Action 2000 has already suffered disruption caused by the bug. I strongly urge board directors, managers and employees alike to ensure their firms, their jobs and their livelihoods are safe from the bug." Tony Blair, British Prime Minister February, 1999, State of the Nation Report >>>>

Once again, WHERE are the reports of these failures?

I've not heard about these disruptions except for a few well publicized cases. Have you?

<<<<"30-50% of companies and government agencies worldwide will experience at least one mission critical system failure (includes all sizes, all industries, all countries) through Q1 2000. In the U.S., 15% of companies and government agencies will experience a mission critical system failure ...10% of failures will last 3 days or longer. The cost of recovering from a single failure after it occurs will range from US $20,000 - $3.5 million.">>>>

<<<<"U.S. investors are provided very optimistic , often inaccurate, disclosures from publicly traded companies (to the U.S. SEC), and therefore accurate investment risk assessment data is not often available. This is likely to affect our U.S. market and several other economic factors as we get closer to 2000.">>>>

Well, can you blame them? Bad news would just bring eveyone down, not to mention stock prices.

<<<<"Even if we were to miraculously fix every one of these domestic issues and make certain all U.S. companies and government agencies will get themselves Year 2000 compliant before 2000, the absolute largest risk to the U.S. and to U.S. citizens is the impact from companies and governments outside the U.S. Far too many companies and governments critical to our continued strong economy, and providers of key resources, are more than 30 months behind private industry in the U.S."

Gartnet Group report>>>>

The problem with making exact or even approximate date predictions is that is the date is off then the predction immediately becomes suspect. Personally I'm amazed at the really outstanding "happy face" campaign going on and how well it's working. But it can only go so far.

"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity"

What do you people need, a sharp stick in the eye, to see this is a problem? The only unknown is to what degree.

-- John Beck (eurisko111@aol.com), July 09, 1999.

blahdee blah de blah blah blah blah blah.

blah.

-- corrine l (corrine@iwaynet.net), July 09, 1999.

Enough squawking! Significant thread just posted. Take your fight over there.

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0013zI

(And somebody go find Andy Ray!)

-- go (to@this.thread), July 09, 1999.

Here's a list of 55 problem dates between 1998 and 2002 from Mitre Corp. http://www.mitre.org/research/y2k/docs/Y2K_SITEMAP.html. We have only passed 9 dates out of these 55. Problems encountered, if we are lucky, would be immediately obvious. However, if they are not obvious, it usually means they are more serious, and are silently corrupting the global data network.

1. January 1, 1998: To ensure that the digits "98" do not trigger a red flag, result in erroneous branching, or otherwisecause a processing error or that "time error" faults occur. Also to ensure that December 31, 1997 was calculated as the365th day of 1997. [Found in Y2K patches in mainframes and elsewhere.]

2. December 31, 1998 to January 1, 1999: To ensure that the digits "99" do not trigger a red flag, result in erroneousbranching, or otherwise cause a processing error or that "time error" faults occur. Also to ensure that December 31,1998 was calculated as the 365th day of 1998. [Found in Y2K patches in mainframes and elsewhere.]

3. January 1, 1999: First day of 1999. Introduction of electronic version of the Euro. First annual plan to look ahead pastrollover date.

4. February 4, 1999: 1st possible airline reservation problems (Max 330-day look-ahead)

5. March 1999: Securities Industry Association simulates December 29, 1999 trading. Fiscal Year 2000 for Business and Industry: Depending on the business, the fiscal year could start on March 1, 1999,July 1, 1999 or match the government fiscal year of October 1, 1999.

6. April 1, 1999: New York state's fiscal year (FY) 2000 starts, and it is the start of the Canadian and Japanese FYs.Governor of New York Announces Year 2000 Compliance of States's Mission-Critical Systems.

7. April 6, 1999: The start of the U.K. FY 1999-2000.

8. April 9, 1999: A system looking at Short Julian days might stop since this is day 99 of year 99 (9999).

9. July 1, 1999: FY 2000 begins in 46 U.S. states. Quarterly plan that includes 9/9/99.

10. August 21, 1999: GPS receivers use a 10-bit field for weeks since January 5, 1980. To get the current date, theycompute the days since the base and divide successively to get the increments for year, month, and day. Given the limitto 1024 weeks, input values at receivers using the 1980 base date will roll over at midnight on August 21, 1999.

11. August 22, 1999: Overflow of week counter (e.g., GPS). Unremediated GPS will get reset to 1980-01-05.

12. September 1, 1999: FY 2000 begins in the state of Texas. Monthly plan that includes 9/9/99.

13. September 9, 1999 (9/9/99 or Possibly 9999): To ensure the digits "99" or "9999" do not trigger a red flag, result inerroneous branching, or otherwise cause a processing error.

14. September 10, 1999: In systems that have used 9-9-99 as a never expire date, logic allowing deletion of data after aspecified date may fail to protect data that should be maintained forever.

15. September 23, 1999: 99 days to Year 2000.

16. September 30, 1999 to October 1, 1999: This is the last fiscal rollover prior to Y2K [for many including the USGovernment].

17. October 1, 1999: First day of fiscal year 2000 [for many including the US Government, and states of Alabama andMichigan]. First quarterly plan to look ahead past rollover date.

18. December 1, 1999: First monthly plan to look ahead past rollover date.

19. December 31, 1999: Last day before 2-digit year equals 00. Many systems will not operate correctly as they transition 20. to the next day. Also, sometimes used as "Never Expires" date (IBM tapes are marked 99365--all tapes marked withexpiration dates of 99365 or 99366 are not supposed to expire, even when created after 1999).

21. January 0, 2000: To ensure this date is NOT processed [some spreadsheets and database applications do have thisproblem and count January 0 as a day before the 1st].

22. January 1, 2000: Key date in any compliance testing. First possible weekend day mistaken for weekday. There is apossibility that the date will be misinterpreted as 1900-01-01.

23. January 1, 2000, 1200 Hrs (Noon): Embedded date chip failure has been found.

24. January 3, 2000: This may be the first full business day in the year 2000. First possible payday after rollover.

25. January 4, 2000: This may be the first business day and first banking day in the Year 2000.

26. January 6, 2000: First possible weekday mistaken for weekend day.

27. January 7, 2000: First weekly payday.

28. January 10, 2000: First 7 or 8 character date in YYYY/M/DD format (2000/1/10 or 2000/01/10).

29. January 14, 2000: First semi-monthly payday.

30. January 17, 2000 (Martin Luther King Day - USA Holiday): This may be the first Monday holiday in the Year 2000.This holiday is always celebrated on a Monday rather than on a specific date. A day of the week calculation may berequired to identify this date as a holiday. A similar situation may exist for holidays in other countries.

31. January 31, 2000: First monthly close; first monthly payday. W2s due.

32. February 28, 2000: To ensure the leap year is being properly accounted for. Many programmers have incorrectly beentaught that the year 2000 is not a leap year -- Year 2000 IS a leap year. Systems should be tested to ensure correcthandling of the transition to the 29th day of February 2000.

33. February 29, 2000: To ensure the leap year is being properly accounted for. Some systems may transition to the 29th ofFebruary 2000 correctly, but may not allow the date to be set to the 29th. This would happen if a system wasreinitialized after the transition and should be explicitly tested for.

34. February 30, 2000: To ensure that this date is NOT processed [found in some PC applications]

35. February 31, 2000: To ensure that this date is NOT processed [found in some PC applications]

36. March 1, 2000: To ensure date calculations have taken leap year into account

37. March 31, 2000: First quarterly close

38. April 1, 2000: Possible false change to Daylight Savings Time (DST) (April 1 was first Sunday in April 1900).

39. April 2, 2000: First change to Daylight Savings Time (DST) after rollover (US)

40. April 3, 2000: First business day after quarter ends Friday, March 31, 2000

41. April 14, 2000: Last business day for U.S.A. 1999 tax transactions

42. April 15, 2000: 1999 tax filing deadline for U.S.A.

43. April 17, 2000: First business day after 2000 tax filing deadline for U.S.A.

44. September 30, 2000 to October 1, 2000: This is the first fiscal rollover following Y2K [for many including the USGovernment].

45. October 1, 2000: This is the first 7-digit date with a 2-digit month value. Parsing functions may need to be modified toallow for new date formats.

46. October 10, 2000: First 8 character date using a 2-digit month (2000/10/10)

47. October 28, 2000: Possible false change back to Standard Time (October 28 was last Sunday in October 1900).

48. October 29, 2000: First return to Standard Time after rollover (US). First yearly close.

49. December 31, 2000: 366th day of the year 2000. This could be a problem for systems that use Short Julian days.

50. January 1, 2001: First day in the 21st Century. This is the last leap year related date, testing the first day of January2001 to ensure it can be set.

51. February 29, 2001: To ensure that this date is NOT processed as a leap year

52. September 9, 2001: A UNIX date when the time_t value goes from 9 to 10 digits. Suspects are timestamps stored infixed-column tables and internal variables.

53. After January 1, 2002: Or any other date past this day, to ensure no processing errors occur in backward calculationsand processing of dates in the 1980s and 1990s at this point in time

54. June 30, 2002: Last day European national currencies are acceptable.

55. July 1, 2002: First day of Euro-only transactions in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).

-- a (a@a.a), July 09, 1999.

'a':

Unlike a hurricane that might hit today, or maybe tomorrow or maybe the next day, these experts (and they really are experts, I won't deny it) were speaking of specific known bugs (they wrote some themselves) with specific known strike dates. The list of dates you present are known for the same reason -- those who wrote them are telling us about them.

It would seem most reasonable to assume that on those dates, some significant number of bugs really did bite. We've heard anecdotes at least, of organizations kludging some, fixing some within a short time, and working long hours doing some things manually for uncomfortably long periods. From appearances (what few we can see, and stories from insiders) the past dates were quite real.

So wouldn't it seem most likely that we have a combination here of overestimating the criticality and number of date bugs, and underestimating our collective ability to deal with them? CL's stellar cast wasn't wrong in their predictions of bugs, only wrong in their inflated estimation of the social and economic consequences of them.

And wouldn't you expect that? Almost everyone overestimates the importance of what they know and do best, as part of the Big Picture.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 09, 1999.

Chicken Little, Your conclusion is yours. I've seen the same dates come and go and haven't seen any big problems reported either. But I don't trust that anything negative will be reported with any accuracy anyway. Isn't that why we are here, for additional perspectives and thinking? It ain't over till the fat lady sings, and we're not through it,yet.

-- Barb (awaltrip@telepath.com), July 09, 1999.

Many doomers have accused companies of continually pulling back there dates for y2k remediation completion. And now the doom zombies are doing the same thing.

As shown above in numerous posts, every single one of your dates has passed without the signs of TEOWAWKI showing up. And the problems that have been reported also have been worked around. And now we have some posting that problems will go into 2002 with Euro trading.

Let me be the first to say, if TEOWAWKI is in 6 months, nobody is going to give a damn about Euro trading in 3 years. Cause it ain't gonna happen. Pick one date and stick to it. Ed Yourdon did with the April 1st rollover and the guy waffled so quickly that he was gone in 2 months after the date. Now he is talking about how in the near future kitchen appliances will be emailing one another. As if I will be giving a damn if my toaster can communicate with my microwave.

Of course though having spent thousands of dollars on all the prep goods doesn't allow a person to say that they don't believe TEOWAWKI is now going to occur. And having a subscription past 2001 for the Remnant Review isn't much fun when the next end of the world theory sucks.

Paul Milne I believe will be the next one to go since he predicted that the country will envelope into madness on September 12th, as we enter the final 99 days. Of course I also hear Paul has taught pigs how to fly.

MrWayCool "Thats my reality, I could be wrong"

-- Mrwaycool (doomzombies@havebuyersremorse.com), July 09, 1999.

I'm asking in earnest, what is a doom zombie?

-- Barb (awaltrip@telepath.com), July 09, 1999.

A Y2K "prediction" published in April of 1998:

http://www.auto.com/industry/qbug23.htm

[snip]

But the Big Three are confident they will enter the new millennium smoothly. GM, Ford and Chrysler plan to finish debugging by the end of 1998. They'll spend 1999 fine tuning.

[snip]

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 09, 1999.

Anybody got a link to the Mitre chart showing the distribution of y2k failures across 1999/2000? It is consistent with Gartner's projection that y2k "starts" this month. It was posted at Westergaard a while back.

Linkmeister: Good one.

Mr.WC: The point of the list of problem dates is that we are by no means out of the woods. We are just entering them. I could also inject that we will run out of phone numbers and IP addresses in 2000, but, like your comment on the Euro, I think it will be a mute point after the effects of the rollover are assessed.

Flint: I repeat Problems encountered, if we are lucky, would be immediately obvious. However, if they are not obvious, it usually means they are more serious, and are silently corrupting the global data network. Furthermore, we ARE seeing an increase of snafus, just as predicted, although admittedly they are not indicative of TEOTWAWKI. Just remember,

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

On a more important note, how was your vacation?

-- a (a@a.a), July 09, 1999.

Barb --- I am a Doom Zombie. And also, as the Mr. pointed out not long ago, "BigDog is a classic Y2K zealot."

As Marv Albert likes to say, "YYYYYEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS"!

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), July 09, 1999.

"Gee, the last time I looked, they called it the Y2K problem, not the various dates in 1999 problem. <:)= "

Gee Sysman, than maybe you should start telling the folks making all those predictions at the top of the page that so they stop making themselves look like fools.

Course, one prediction was forgotten, the infamous Milne prediction from last August & September "The Dow Jones will be at 7000 by the end of October!"

*cough*

Hello?

Is anyone out there?

-- you folks (amuse@me.com), July 10, 1999.

'a':

My vacation was great. Thanks for asking. I got to spend a week out there where y2k doesn't exist in anyone's mind. Great to get away from it all.

I don't quite go along with Yardeni's quote -- he seems to be describing the division of labor in general. y2k is just one more aspect of it, albeit potentially a lot more visible. We got ourselves into this mess with the same blind trust we're using when we hope to get out of it. When you think about it, we're using this same trust whenever we turn the key in the ignition, flip a light switch, pick up the phone, or post to this forum. So far, the trust hasn't been misplaced (though things are never perfect).

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 10, 1999.

you folks: Wrong asshole. Milne said he "would not be surprised" to see 7000 DOW at end of October. Got any other incorrect assertions you'd like to test fly?

Flint: When you say "We got ourselves into this mess with the same blind trust we're using when we hope to get out of it" it should remind you that a problem that crept in over a 30 yers period is now attempting to be flushed out in a couple years. It's over Flint. In case you missed it, the remediation failed. It's ALL about planning for the crash at this point.

"A catastrophe is what occurs when an Immovable Object is hit by an Unstoppable Force". Something's gotta give."

-- a (a@a.a), July 10, 1999.

>I'm asking in earnest, what is a doom zombie?

A "doom zombie", as defined by the lunatics and cretins on the "Y2K Debunking Board", is someone who has determined, by his own reading and thinking about Y2K, that we are likely to see a major disaster next year and that it would be wise to prepare for this possibility. In other words, the famous "prudent man".

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), July 10, 1999.

Or "prudent woman" as the case may be! LOL

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), July 10, 1999.

'a':

Are you really trying to think about this at all? I know you've drawn conclusions that seem likely and reasonable to you, but you don't defend those conclusions very persuasively.

The idea that remediation either passes or it fails, isn't very useful. Remediation is intended to *ameliorate* the problem. It has a degree of effectiveness -- it's not a lightswitch, it's a rheostat. And while I agree that not much time remains for this process, still what can be accomplished in that time is not zero. A little testing can go a long ways, you should know this.

I admit that the magnitude of what we face will not become clear before we're actually dealing with it. Even then, it will be highly variable among different industries, different locations, different processes. In all our discussions here, we have designated no yardstick for measuring impacts. As a result, I've predicted that no matter *what* happens, everyone here (of all different viewpoints) will be able to say "I told you so."

In another thread a while back, I suggested one such yardstick. I asked people to tell us (a year from now) how many of their preparations they *absolutely* needed to rely on. If you could suggest another yardstick, I'd enjoy reading it.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 10, 1999.

Big Dog,Steve and Will, Thanks for the def. May I bother for another? What's the applicable term for someone who's between a polly and a doom zombie? I know I'm setting this one up but I am interested...give it your best! I really wanna know...

-- Barb (awaltrip@telepath.com), July 10, 1999.

Barb:

How about 'awake'? Those at the extremes are obviously dreaming.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 10, 1999.

Flint.....you left Disneyland too soon. An extreme Polly is an asshole, suffering denial. So what is 'your' version of an extreme 'Doomer'? How many on this forum preach Infomagic....death of humanity....stone age? PLEASE, by all means, name just ONE of us.

You are the South end of a North bound horse.

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), July 11, 1999.

Barb, in answer to your question, (sorry, Flitz sends me from time to time) I would respond a GI. Naturally, all varying degrees of GI are speculation based upon the facts available, and keeping the calendar in mind. That's where the fun begins, eh? Some take joy in their feeble attempts to skip from 'recession' straight to 'extreme' and lump people into this category in hopes of inflicting condescending humiliation by implications of mental, emotional and intellectual instability. They tend to be on the recieving end of alot of flak for their unclear perceptions. And I'm just the broad to return fire when needed.

*JULY 1999*

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), July 11, 1999.

Flint,I guess it's dangerous to try to define the unknown and I applaud your courage! Will continue, thanks for the input. There's a post above about Type2 pollys that I just read. So maybe there will be some thoughts provoked for a discussion about degrees of GET IT next. That would be interesting!

-- Barb (awaltrip@telepath.com), July 11, 1999.

For once I have come back to review the dust I stirred up.

And a comment:

"a" said,

"Flint: I repeat Problems encountered, if we are lucky, would be immediately obvious. However, if they are not obvious, it usually means they are more serious, and are silently corrupting the global data network."......

-- a (a@a.a), July 09, 1999."

I'd love to see some proof of this. Of which there is NONE at this juncture.

Typical Doomer tactics: make authoritative-sounding statements, with no supporting factual data whatsoever.

Ball's in your court, "a".

Put up or shut up.

******************

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), July 11, 1999.

Chicken Little

Interesting points. I've wondered along similar lines. Psychologically I'd prepared myself for the sky falling and now I'm going to have to be faced with the possibility that little, if anything, may traspire.

However, many of the said predictions of early y2k errors might have been quietly mitigated by temporary patches and bandaid fixes. What worries me is that these patches will ultimately be incompatible with others, triggering gradual, economy-wide friction that builds on itself. Another worry is that the nature of unfixed y2k errors after december will carry more weight and impact. Another worry is all those panicked, angry, crazed people who may or may not "go postal" and sabotage infrastructure. And of course I wonder about those terrorists who seek good, high-publicity windows of vulnerability, of which the 99-00 rollover is a prime opportunity.

You might be right, Chicken. But we differ in our level of certainty in that assumption.

coprolith

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), July 11, 1999.

Hobbs doesn't have a friggin' clue about mainframes.

It's called an LPAR, Logical PARtition, and it's how my company tested all of our stuff...even on the same logical box. We IPL this "box" to different dates in the future all the time, have been for over a year testing and retesting.

Unfortunately, when you test in this manner it is impossible to do full integration testing of all the systems that will have to function together.

Wrong again. My company has done this before, and we are doing it again for all of our products, from generating transactions to making out files.

And this statement kills me: "It is virtually impossible for large organizations and governments to perform compliance testing because they lack the system or computer capacity to perform the tests.

So, I take it he's surveyed all of the companies in the US to determine their capacity?

Authority? Who said that? This dude is full of crap.

-- JAW (clueless@pollyanna.com), July 09, 1999.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------

Here is Mr. Hobbs response to JAW the clueless pollyanna:

I believe that the person responding to my communication with Chris Ruddy took my example out of context. I was talking about government agencies and large corporations who generally have multiple mainframes as part of their network(s). The LPAR solution is generally only a valid test on a single mainframe and I was discussing full system integration testing. Using the LPAR makes the testing of multiple mainframes very complex and difficult. Two separate mainframes using LPAR will not share the same network connection without exposing the data being transmitted to severe corruption and interruptions. Establishing separate network connections between mainframes using LPAR's is a very expensive and complicated process and therefore not a realistic one for most large corporations or government agencies. I will concede that on a single stand alone mainframe the LPAR is one way to test for Y2K compliance, but again the subject matter, in the original discourse, was large entities that normally would have more than one mainframe, and we were discussing full system integration testing and not the ability to test one stand alone mainframe. Perhaps my example could have been better.

I have spent the last 7 years speaking with the individuals responsible for the information systems for major corporations and government agencies worldwide. I have spoken with no less than 7,000 of these organizations and I believe that number would constitute a reasonable representation of what these organizations have in terms of computing capability or capacity. My comments were based on that sampling. I would directly challenge the individual who responded to my comments to products documentation of any kind that would demonstrate that large government agencies or corporations have the surplus computing capacity that would come anywhere near that required to perform side by side full systems integration testing. As I said before that capacity does not exist.

I hope that this clears up any confusion about who may be full of crap.

Greg

-- BB (peace2u@bellatlantic.net), July 12, 1999.

Thanks BB for posting Hobbs response.

-- Lurker (...@home.com), July 12, 1999.

Good job BB. I have noted that JAW does not rebut challenges to his posts. He has left me hanging on several. Damn guerilla pollyannas. :)

-- a (a@a.a), July 12, 1999.