What is certifiably compliant as of NOW?

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Hello, I am new to this forum. I have been lurking for several days now; I am definetly a GI/Doomer -I have been ever since last year, and my feelings about Y2K and it's impact have not gotten better.

My real question to ALL is just what the title states: What is certifiably compliant as of NOW?

please provide a link if possible.

Thank you, Brent

-- Brent James Bushardt (brentj@webt.com), July 12, 1999

Answers

Try and find a list of noncompliant systems. It will be much shorter.

Regards,

-- Mr. Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), July 12, 1999.


Hi, Brent and welcome to this forum. It is a great source of all different points of view re Y2K.

Your question is really the ultimate unknown. I would even go further and say that there is no possible answer to your question. You see, it all depends on what the definition of "certifiably" and "compliant". There is not one company that is dependent only upon itself. Ultimately, as some of us on this forum have concluded years ago, the concept of "compliance" is impossible. There is only sofware or embedded systems that have been remediated. This still doesn't mean anything since some or most of the time remediated programs don't work smoothly or at all.

So, 4 months and change to go and then we all get to see.

-- Jim the Window Washer (Rational@man.com), July 12, 1999.


Hey Decker, I believe Brent came to his GI/Doomer status after reading a few of your posts !! Maybe it only took one.

Your Pal, Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 12, 1999.


Jim- hmmmm ya. Only thing is, I don't want to wait and see.

Decker- wrong. That is not what I asked for. Please back up such a blanket statement with SOME kind of link or proof. or else don't waste your time and credibility here.

All- I like Sam's Club :> Went there this past weekend and had fun buying large quantities. I also really like the Idea of having a large stock of food in the house. I live in the NorthEast and during the past winter the city I live in was shut down for most of a day. The corner convenince stores ran out of bread and lunchmeat rapidly (ie. a few to several hours) The major grocery stores- well, I don't know how well they did, because I couldn't get there.

Oil shortage anyone ?? Brent

-- Brent James Bushardt (brentj@webt.com), July 12, 1999.


Welcome aboard, Brent :o) What you'll find is a lot of Pollys posting happy face press releases about companies being "Y2K Ready" or "Y2K Ready with exceptions," (don't you just love that one?). Hoffmeister had a lot of links to companies claiming to be ready, but I haven't really seen one company that has tested end to end... although the DOD is supposed to be performing such a test.

What we've seen is a lot of missed deadlines, with less and less time for testing.

Hoffy, you're about the only polly around here I half respect, whatcha got for us? Anybody claiming compliance?

-- Sandmann (Sandmann@alasbab.com), July 12, 1999.



Though you may burn in Hell for visiting Debunker, there are a number of links to companies who have announced compliance. Try using the Yahoo news search engine for the past six months (keyword: Y2K) there are many stories and press releases. You can read about ADP in a thread I posted a bit ago.

Despite numerous requests, no "pessimist" has produced a comprehensive list of noncompliant hardware, software or embedded chips. Would it helped if I offered a bounty in gold coin? Just curious.

Regards,

-- Mr. Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), July 12, 1999.


Decker- please note the use of the word "COMPLIANCE" is not the same as "READY". A press release stating that a company is "Y2K Ready" is worthless. Utterly. Kinda like still believing a President after he is caught in a lie.

Please, I am seriously looking for a statement that claims COMPLIANCE. Surely there is at least ONE in the whole wide world at this very late date???? Right??? Please??

-- Brent James Bushardt (brentj@webt.com), July 12, 1999.


So you crawled out from under your rock again eh Mr. mcDicker? There are plenty of companies that have put their non-compliant software/hardware/chips, on their web sites. As to answer the question, there are a few that have claimed to be COMPLIANT. Sorry, I do not remember which or where.

-- FLAME AWAY (BLehman202@aol.com), July 12, 1999.

Decker, you can ship the gold coins to me. It was childishly simple to acquire a list of non-y2k complaint microprocessors. Just go to: http://www.mot.com and go to their semiconductor products search engine and type in "non-y2k complaint semiconductors" in Search. It resulted in 23,275 documents, showing how many chips are and are not compliant. Of course, Motorola is just a doomer front organization and probably made up all the tests....I am curious what polly spin you will come up with, and whether or not I get my gold.

-- Sure M. Worried (SureMWorried@bout.y2k.coming), July 12, 1999.

Decker -- I actually thought someone had impersonated you until you reiterated what you said. You are certifiably insane.

-- BigDog@duffer.com (BigDog@duffer.com), July 12, 1999.


Hi,

The only item I found to be 100% Y2k compliant are our

great ""everyone a strike"" matches.

As long as it doesn't rain on 01-01-2000 they should work everytime .

************ standard disclaimer *************************

The above statement is in no way a waranty that said instrument will allways work. As with all matches, failure to strike does not nessesary mean it is a failure on our side and there is no way you can sue us for not making a product that may or may not work when you need it and freeze your butt of because the power is off and the natural gas is not working at your place. As allways please be adviced that you should have a backup means such as a pack of our competitors matches. We of course do not waranty the Y2k compliance of our competitors products.For more information about the compliance of our product please call our attorneys office at 1-800 eat sh*t..

-- itburnsgreat (burn@great.up), July 12, 1999.


Brent:

At the risk of guilt by association, jumping into the midst of all this bickering...

[rant mode on]

*Nobody* will be, nor can be, certifiably compliant. Ever. Oh, you might find some outfit to certify you if you pay enough, but what does that really mean? What do they know? Would you trust any such certification anyway? Remediation is intended to *reduce* exposure to y2k bugs. It can never eliminate it.

This whole business of certification is a red herring, a complete distraction from what really counts. Most of the 'certification' madness was begun by Gary North and his ilk, so that he could continue to preach doom in the face of massive remediation progress. This is so that when an organization has essentially identified and eliminated all serious threats to their operations, North could jump in and say "ah, but they aren't *certified"! Hogwash. North knows as well as you do that there is NO 'certification industry' and can't be.

As far as I'm concerned, playing the certification game as you do is a sign of desperation. Look around you right now? Got power? Clearly you do (or you couldn't have posted). Are they 'certified'? By whom? Why? Is your grocery store 'certified'? What nonsense. Can you buy food despite this lack of 'certification'? Are you starving because your grocery hasn't done the impossible and unnecessary? Don't be silly.

What most of us are really concerned with here is the continued functionality of our suppliers of jobs, goods and services. Whether or not those suppliers have undergone some nonexistent paperwork is completely irrelevant. Whether they have adequately fixed their bugs is critical.

And just whom would you prefer do this 'certification'? A private industry? They're all liars in cahoots, you know that. The government? They're not only dishonest, they're incompetent, right? The IEEE? Their members work for those whom they'd be certifying anyway, so how could you trust them?

You aren't looking for reassurance that y2k won't kill you. You're setting up one of the weakest straw men around, so that you can knock it over with a finger and claim you were right all along! I'd suggest you spend a couple more days considering the real issues, except your question shows so clearly that you are beyond serious consideration, and have moved to defending an entrenched position. The fact that you have chosen neither an intelligent nor an honest method of doing so ought to get your attention, but somehow it never does.

[rant mode off]

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 12, 1999.


Flint- All I'm looking for is a claim of COMPLIANCE; I don't care too much about the certification side. Oh and nice try at NOT ADDRESSING the issue - something that I see most Pollys are excellent at. Just to refresh your memory the issue here is:

Who is claiming compliance??

Not readiness...that's lame, 'cuz I'm ready, you're ready, we're all ready for it....one way or the other.

-- Brent James Bushardt (brentj@webt.com), July 12, 1999.


"This whole business of certification is a red herring, a complete distraction from what really counts. Most of the 'certification' madness was begun by Gary North and his ilk, so that he could continue to preach doom in the face of massive remediation progress. This is so that when an organization has essentially identified and eliminated all serious threats to their operations, North could jump in and say "ah, but they aren't *certified"! Hogwash. North knows as well as you do that there is NO 'certification industry' and can't be."

What a crock. "Y2K certification" was trumpeted by the government and business community as the goal THEY would achieve. We can argue about why they dropped it but trying to pin this on Gary North is absurd. At most, he hoisted them on their own petard.

Even "Y2K readiness" seems to be too much to achieve.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), July 12, 1999.


Sandman, why the sarcastic "Y2k ready with exceptions" talk.......

Honestly, that is the nature of software..........every program I've ever used in a business environmnet is "ready with exceptions". Ever heard of a patch!! That's normal buddy.........

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), July 12, 1999.



Brent: "Compliance" is expensive. Most large companies would have had to have acted responsibly and began remediation 5 or 10 years ago to be "compliant". You know, back when they were firing their programming staffs to maximize profits.

"Readiness" is a poor mans compliance. It's cheaper and quicker (in the short run) and extremely risky. We are about to see just how much money all those astute managers actually saved.

Flint can rationalize all he wants, but the bottom line is that we're heading over the falls with a half assed patch job on our rubber raft.

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


Hi Brent! If you are still reading after all that was posted before this, try going to this site:

http://206.54.108.130/19990712art.htm

It is Y2KNewswire. Good article about compliance and non-compliance.

-- winna (??@??.com), July 12, 1999.


I have been suspecting this for the past months, but to have it confirmed is depressing. Last year the big word was compliance. Now that is forgotten along with missed deadlines. Are those people that make these decisions that blind?? or is this all just a spin job??

Whatever happened to "we will be Y2K compliant by date x:x." That demise of that statement is, it seems, a harbinger of things to come next year. I am afraid.

-- Brent James Bushardt (brentj@webt.com), July 12, 1999.


"the bottom line is that we're heading over THE WORLDS LARGEST WATER FALL INTO THE GREAT ABYSS with a half assed patch job on our rubber raft, WE LOST BOTH OARS, THE CAPTAIN SAYS IT ISN'T A WATERFALL IT'S JUST A LITTLE SWAMP GAS REFLECTING VENUS and WE'LL BE ABLE TO PULL AWAY AT 11:59:59 ON 12/31/99 WITH A FULL SECOND TO TEST RESPONSE TIME."

: )

luvin' you "a", but don't get any ideas, I'm happily married.

Mike ==============================================================

-- Mike Taylor (getting tired of typing my email all the time@darn Microsoft Explorer wont hold my cookie!@home.com), July 12, 1999.


Brent:

You're still splitting definitional hairs. If a company declares that they have reached a point where they will be able to continue normal business without interruptions due to problems within their jurisdiction, is that 'compliance'? Is it 'readiness'? Is it important?

I addressed the issue of certification because that's what you wrote yourself. You wrote: "What is certifiably compliant as of NOW?" This deals with certification. So how did I change the subject?

OK, now you want to talk about compliance, certified or not? Fine. Read a few threads, you'll quickly discover that the mantra of the month is "self-reported". Organizations by the thousands are now claiming that they'll be able to continue with a manageable level of errors. Are these claims credible? *I* don't know. I expect they range from well-documented solid confidence to pure wishful thinking. But none of us are privy to the salient details.

Read any recent NERC thread. Those who generate a large percentage of the power in the US (at least 90%) have formally claimed they have addressed all date issues within their operations, to their satisfaction. What does *that* mean? Beats me. Will you have uninterrupted power? Probably. How probably? If I were you, I wouldn't risk it. I'm not risking it either.

I'm trying to determine what threats I most likely face, and what those likelihoods are. I view all claims of compliance, or readiness, or 'substantial' compliance or progress, as positive but neither definitive nor binding. They're good signs, but not great signs. We'll know how good in a year or less. Best I can say.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 12, 1999.


Flint- question 1: It is compliance; their definition. question 2: You avoided the question of what is COMPLIANT. I did not say that you changed the subject. I said that you did not address the issue; ie. avioding the question of what is COMPLIANT.

The buzzword last year was compliant; this year it is ready. face it Pollys, the situation is alot bleaker as of now, than it was last year.

-- Brent James Bushardt (Brentj@webt.com), July 13, 1999.


From the Motorola Web Site:

"Product Review

SPS has substantially completed an extensive review of its approximately 90,000 semiconductor products to determine if they are "Year 2000 Ready" by utilizing a Four Phase Methodology. We have determined that the vast majority of these products are either "Year 2000 Ready" or do not have the capability to handle date data (diodes, rectifiers, etc.)."

Motorola does have some "noncompliant" semiconductor products, and it clearly lists them on its web page. This said, the Motorola list covers only their products... not what I would call comprehensive. The real question... who is using these "noncompliant" devices and are they aware of the problem? I'd guess customers of the noncompliant products have been informed. My organization has received notices from vendors about noncompliant/nonready "stuff." Like I posited, the world of Y2K compliant/ready hardware, software and embedded systems is far larger than the "noncompliant." In the end, I agree with Flint. The compliance/readiness issue is a red herring. The stuff that will bite us in the backside will not be on "the list."

Regards,

-- Mr. Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), July 13, 1999.


Timely thread. On his web site today, Gary North has asked the pollys to prove one of two things: 1) Y2K is fixed, worldwide; or 2) that even though it is not fixed, it is by its very nature such a trivial problem that there will not be any significant problems.

As "a" basically says, nobody knows WHAT the state of affairs is. Work has been done, but those "compliant by end of 1998 with a full year for testing" promises failed big time. Can even a 10% Y2K failure rate be tolerated -- especially if the other 90% depends on, and exchanges information with, it -- across all industries?

Anyone who believes condition 1), based on self reported information, is kidding themselves. And that sure applies to the pollys here.

I sure hope that 2) turns out to be our salvation. But I sure would not count on it -- if that were the case, that would have been seen early on, and all this time and trouble (and money) would never have happened.

The answer, as always, is: Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), July 13, 1999.

Decker- You are now confusing me. In your recent post you state *"My organization has received notices from vendors about noncompliant/nonready "stuff."*

Earlier in this thread you state *"Despite numerous requests, no "pessimist" has produced a comprehensive list of noncompliant hardware, software or embedded chips. Would it helped if I offered a bounty in gold coin? Just curious."*

Now what I don't understand, is why would you need to see a list produced by a pessimist when you have seen such a list at your organization??

However, the BIG DEAL is here: *"Like I posited, the world of Y2K compliant/ready hardware, software and embedded systems is far larger than the "noncompliant." In the end, I agree with Flint. The compliance/readiness issue is a red herring. The stuff that will bite us in the backside will not be on "the list."*

The first sentence is a blanket statment made out of arrogance, ignorance, denial and fear. Unless you have seen a majority of statements from the whole world, then you are guessing. AND as your last sentence states, the stuff that will cause the major problems will not be on "the list." SO we don't know how many systems there are that have not yet been discovered. The embedded problem was only thought of recently (within a year); or at least that's when it was talked about on the net. "They" probably won't find all of them.

Oh, and the code's not broken, right?

-- Brent James Bushardt (brentj@webt.com), July 13, 1999.


Brent

Just curious. What part of the world do you live in now? Must be a really nice piece of it to be error-free. I'm assuming it's error-free now because that's all you seem to know.

Brent, our world (at least my part of it) is not error-free, never has been error-free and never will be error-free. What would the CE's and SE's do if it were?

No system is 100% 'compliant' at any time. But they are 'ready' and they do 'work'.

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), July 13, 1999.


Brent, you'll have to forgive Decker, as I've really put him on the run today by challenging his grasp of his coveted macroeconomic theory. But your comment "why would Decker be asking for a list of noncompliant devices when he has already received such lists from vendors" is illustrative. And it's this skewed logic that is used also by Hoff and FactFinder when they ask for examples of data contamination. If we knew where the bugs would occur, we could fix them. That's why it's meaningless to give a hypothetical example, because the pollys will just say "well, that's not a problem, because we can fix it by doing so and so!"

-- a (a@a.a), July 13, 1999.

Deano- I work at a mainframe and PC support desk; A help desk for a big company-maybe you've heard of them: IBM. I know ALL about problems, small and large. I have asked for the last 3 days of the year off; so far it is approved. I plan on telling them that I am sick when they come around and revoke the vacation time.

Y2K will be a phone-ringer here...as long as the Iron triangle works....

-- Brent James Bushardt (brentj@webt.com), July 13, 1999.


Main Entry: com7pre7hen7sive

1 : covering completely or broadly : INCLUSIVE

Motorola has a list of Motorola products that will fail on rollover. They inform their customers. So what next? The customers huddle in the corner waiting for Y2K and the end of life as they know it? Please. My firm doesn't use any of the products on the Motorola list. The "noncompliant" systems here were remediated or replaced six months ago. We've provided compliance statements to vendors and received them from our vendors and financial services partners.

The list I'm talking about are the major hardware or software systems that WILL fail on rollover and where the vendor is making no effort to support Y2K compliance. And not just for one manufacturer (thus my careful use of the word, "comprehensive.")

Bottom line: is my organization typical?

Regards,

-- Mr. Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), July 13, 1999.


?!?!?!?!?! Decker- What the heck is your point above??? You definetly know about that river in Egypt. Do you live there?

-- Brent James Bushardt (brentj@webt.com), July 13, 1999.

Brent

I'm thinking you're one of the lucky ones. We have EXTENSIVELY tested a couple of your mainframes - the 9672-Y86 CMOS and the 9121-742. Both machines were rolled over and everything functioned properly, our applications included. The current OS/390 and CICS packages worked perfectly as well. We're a fairly large customer of yours with 5.4 terabytes of DASD (all IBM), 1564 MIPS and 438 total channels and are very pleased with our test results.

The only problems we experienced were at the very beginning when we set the clock ahead a couple years and (immediately) had a couple software package liscence agreements expire (no one thought of that, but then again who ever sets the clock ahead on your mainframe?!)

They've already put a moratorium on vacations down here. Can't be more than 4 hours away from the office from 12/28 thru 1/4. No biggie, it's only a few days out of a few hundred that you can't take off.

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), July 14, 1999.


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