Seeing they will not see hearing they will not hear

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

There are a few out there that still think that y2k will not be a big deal because the work arounds for the 99 problem have work so far rather well. They dont acknoledge the sewage spill in los angeles or the failure of elevators and building equipment in a city hall that was suppose to be complient or the many recent explosions at refineries putting new software on line that was rushed into service or airtraffic control technicians picketing the faa offices because new systems are buggy and dangerous and they cant get funds to keep the old systems up properly.

We are only seeing the tip of the iceburgs. y2k is already rearing it's ugly head in many different ways and in many places. Dont count on rushed code working well, historicaly there is no evidence to support that we will fix enough of it in time to keep it from being a large scale failure of I.T systems. Weigh the evidence for your self then make an informed life safety choice. Y2k will not be a walk in the park. The y2k problem is severly embedded into the many layers of software that make our world function.

picture software like this there is several bad set of bolts in the steel of every skyrise office building around the world and on jan 1 and sept 9 1999 those bolts are going to break your job is to find and fix it. to fix it since you cant tare down the building you try to get the buildings maker(software and firmware vendors) to give you the blue prints of exactly were they used those bolts. They wont because they are afraid they will be sued so they says I dont think youl have any problems because my guys didnt use those bolts ( Embedded software and firmware) you dont trust their anwsers so you call in your experts and find that the building is full of them, and you only have one year to find all the critical ones in the building or else the building will collapse . Investors know that there is a design problem out there and are calling you on the carpet so they wont lose their investments or get sued by the people who the buildings fall on. what do you do, they are asking for anwers if you are going to have a safe building on jan 1 or sept 9, 99. If you tell them the truth that there might not be enouugh time to get all the bolts you will be out of business now because they will pull all their capital out of your firm. If you lie about it you now have an out because you can blame it on the builders (vendors) because they promised that the building will be safe and not fall. Dont be under the buildings when they fall be out of the stock market be prepared. then go back in when the dust settles. You cant tell which buildings will fall because they are all standing OK right now. But the clue is who is spending the most money and when did they start spending that money, who got started long enough ago to make it doable. That is the Key. Flight to quality and diligence. Only park your money with those who's diligent honest hard smart work is worthy of investment. Those who took y2k seriously from the gate and did the work will survive and recover well. There will be no short cuts with y2k.

-- y2k aware mike (y2k aware mike @ conservation . com), July 20, 1999


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