I apologize in advance if someone has already asked this question.

Now that the June 30th deadline, goal, or whatever, has passed, and there are still many reports of companies, agencies, etc. working on becoming compliant, has anyone heard of a new one?

I try to keep up with y2k related topics and feel that I'm pretty well informed, but I haven't heard anything official on this. Have they decided not to make another deadline (becides 12-31-99)? If not, why do you think that would be?

Thanks,

-- Curious (Just@wondering.com), July 27, 1999

Answers

Since I am new to this forum, let's take your question one step further: since the deadline you speak of has come and gone without any words of statewide catastrophes anywhere in the landscape, should we put any credence into the relationship between this non-event (apparently) and the date rollover? With some foresight in mind, will the coming and going of 9-9-99 without incidence be able to hearten me at all?

Yeah, yeah, I know this is probably old hat, and I think I can probably answer my own questions, but I'd like to hear it from you all.

Mr.Badco

-- Bad Company (johnny@shootingstar.com), July 27, 1999.

Bad,

I was asking a sincere question. Why did you make a post that will obviously disrupt this thread and get in the way of sincere answers? You have the same capabilities as I do to start a thread and ask your question. Why didn't you do it?

In reply to your question, the only date I'm concerned about is 01-01- 31. Lack of catastrophic failures until then mean very little to me.

-- Curious (just@wondering.com), July 27, 1999.

9/9/99 has never posed a danger. I very much doubt that any knowledgeable programmer ever suggested that 9/9/99 would cause problems.

It went like this, I suspect: A programmer told a reporter that a date of "all nines" could simulate an end-of-file condition. That means 99/99/99. The programmer thought that meant 9/9/99, and reported it. Presto, urban myth. 9/9/99 is 090999 inside the machine, and in 25 years of programming I never saw a program use that date as an end of file marker. 12/31/99 yes, 9/9/99 no.

So forget 9/9/99. Nothing unusual is gonna happen. But you can BET that clueless pollies on 9/10/99 will say that the lack of failures means Y2k is a hoax. Y2k is real; 9/9/99 is a myth. Get over it.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), July 27, 1999.

I doubt that firm deadlines will be announced for anything from this point on. It's "done" for some and "seat of your pants" for others. Many deadlines have been slipping for years, why would we expect them to not continue to slip? As for Bad's question, I think it's unrelated to the question Curious raises regarding whether or not new deadlines will be announced. Personally, I never expected "catasrophic" failures in state systems. There is, after all, a reason why it's called the Y2k problem. I also don't think that all problems will occur on 01/01/00. IMHO, we're in for a roller coaster ride of problems, some bit, some little, some catasrophic, some not even noticed, that will occur for the next couple of years. That means that people will be on the rollercoaster too riding the different levels seeing some curves and some hills ahead of time and reacting in some form or fashion. It'll all be happening at the same time...perception and reality. And, what does it matter if the problem is real or perceived into being...the outcome will still have ramifications. My motto? With Y2k, perception IS reality. This is why I give very little chance of possibility to BITR. If there are problems that occur that people will notice then everything that occurs and all fears will then be focused on it being a Y2k problem. We're already seeing that now with people who are very informed of regarding the issues. Just think what will happen when the uninformed start to wonder. Mike

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

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), July 27, 1999.

Sure, December 30, 1999...which leaves a full day for testing.

Seriously, each company is scrambling to achieve whatever day they can...and will see further deadline slippage, and elimination or curtailment of testing to make the mandatory deadline.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), July 27, 1999.

Curious,

As far as I know...no new deadlines have been stated.

However, for whatever reason, 2 organizations have setup system wide Y2K tests to occur on 9/9/99. It's my guess that if they do have a failure they will blame the date, set everything back, and pretend that it no longer matters since 9/9/99 will no occur again for 100 years.

One of those organizations is NERC. I can't remember the other one off the top of my head. Maybe it was the FAA, but I'm not sure.

DJ

-- DJ (reality@check.com), July 27, 1999.

opps sorry! hit submit too fast, can I try again?

I doubt that firm deadlines will be announced for anything from this point on. It's "done" for some and "seat of your pants" for others. Many deadlines have been slipping for years, why would we expect them to not continue to slip?

I think that deadlines now would be kept quiet. Too many have been missed publicly and it's just better business to push on now until it's done or get ready for when the SHTF.

As for Bad's question, I think it's unrelated to the question Curious raises regarding whether or not new deadlines will be announced.

Personally, I never expected "catasrophic" failures in state systems. There is, after all, a reason why it's called the Y2k problem. I also don't think that all problems will occur on 01/01/00. IMHO, we're in for a roller coaster ride of problems, some bit, some little, some catasrophic, some not even noticed, that will occur for the next couple of years. That means that people will be on the rollercoaster too riding the different levels seeing some curves and some hills ahead of time and reacting in some form or fashion.

It'll all be happening at the same time...perception and reality. And, what does it matter if the problem is real or perceived into being...the outcome will still have ramifications.

My motto? With Y2k, perception IS reality.

This is why I give very little chance of possibility to BITR.

If there are problems that occur that people will notice then everything that occurs and all fears will then be focused on it being a Y2k problem. We're already seeing that now with people who are very informed of regarding the issues. Just think what will happen when the uninformed start to wonder.

Mike

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

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), July 27, 1999.

Some are EOM SEPT. some EOM OCT. some EOM DEC. If indeed some are getting close to compliance, and I believe many are, the last part will be the biggest headache. In my not at all humble opinion, they are out of time. There will be little if any time to test properly. There will be many failures of FIXED CODE, not to mention, the still broken code.

-- FLAME AWAY (BLehman202@aol.com), July 27, 1999.

The original slogan "remediated by 12/31/98, with a whole year for testing", even though few achieved this, still implied that testing (and repairing any failures that show up) will continue right up until the remaining bugs bite. It seems unlikely that any medium to large organization will shut down testing before then, even if no new bugs have surfaced for some time. It's always true that the *next* test might find a big one.

In reality, most medium to large organizations are in all stages at once, with the mix steadily including more testing and less first-cut remediation, and with the remaining remediation including less and less important systems all the time. (And yes, there are some, especially in government and overseas, with critical systems still in hopeless shape. Some probably made them worse trying to remediate!).

It seems needless to say that all organizations who are making a real effort will continue to do their best, such as it is, and hope any remaining problems are minor. The *real* deadline will arrive soon enough, and most prior deadlines were largely meaningless.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 27, 1999.

Flint commented:

"The *real* deadline will arrive soon enough, and most prior deadlines were largely meaningless. "

I'm SAVING this one Flint!! To whom were these missed deadlines meaningless??

Your Pal and still waiting for an answer on the Weiss thread, Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 27, 1999.

Flint,

I appreciate your insight. You wrote, "Some probably made them worse trying to remediate!" I've thought about this and it really is a shame that some of these systems weren't simply dumped for new technology, etc. It's tough to think about the billions being spent to simply maintain business continuity and not further push the envelope into new technology and new ways of doing things.

However, I'm not so worried about those currently spending billions, millions, etc. and having their deadlines slip.

My question for you is this...

There are at least a certain percentage of SMEs along with larger corporations that have realized they cannot fix or don't have time to fix their systems before the roll over. For them, it is a high risk, fix on failure strategy.

How likely is it that these entities can fix in days what they could not fix in months/years prior to the rollover.

It's those who have chosen FOF for what ever reason and what ripple effect they will be part of/contribute to that have me very worried.

Thanks,

Mike

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

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), July 27, 1999.

Mike:

I can only give you my interpretations, since I have no more facts than you do. YMMV.

"There are at least a certain percentage of SMEs along with larger corporations that have realized they cannot fix or don't have time to fix their systems before the roll over. For them, it is a high risk, fix on failure strategy."

Your conclusion doesn't necessarily follow from your premise, and your premise is itself far from complete. Some large organizations have decided that certain noncompliances aren't worth the money to fix. Chevron essentially said this long ago. The phrase "fix their systems" strikes me as too general, and vaguely implies an all-or- nothing orientation, buttressed by your FOF conclusion. But in reality, we need to know *which* systems won't be fixed, what these systems do, and what's wrong with them. I would imagine (I don't know) that many systems were tested, noncompliances noted, and then stuck in the "ignore" category. These won't be fixed on failure, they will *never* be fixed, no need. "Risk" in these cases is zero.

Furthermore, most SME's are small, because there are many more small businesses than medium ones. SBA defines a 'small' business as 1 to 5 employees. Surveys, for what they're worth, estimate from experience that these small businesses remediate for an *average* of under $1000 and an *average* of three hours. This is mostly spent installing upgrades and patches. For these companies (and there are millions of them -- some individuals run multiple 1-person companies), there is no reason to rush, since new upgrades and patches (often to 'fix' the previous ones!) come out steadily.

Of the remainder, a lot of SME's (and some large companies) have assigned to the FOF category those systems they can easily do without if they crash and burn. If you simply can't fix everything (that *needs* to be fixed) in time, you drop the least critical from the list.

I'm not saying there aren't real dangers, but lumping "their systems" into one homogenous category and then stating that FOF of "their systems" is high risk, misrepresents what's actually happening. The risk is often known to be low.

"How likely is it that these entities can fix in days what they could not fix in months/years prior to the rollover."

Again, this is a misleading question, since it implies nothing was done during those months/years. Think of a marathon race with a time limit. You've run the 26 miles, you still have the (what?) 440 yards to go. Now, how likely is it that you can run 440 yards in a week or two, if you couldn't run the whole distance in months/years? Clearly, it all depends on how much you have left -- how close did you come?

In addition, it's often damn near impossible to deduce the impact of a bug just from looking at it. I know this from long experience. When it's buried in a huge mass of code, it *might* be harmless and it *might* be a killer. You can't tell, so you fix them all. The IT geeks on this forum have pretty much agreed that only a few percent of the total y2k bugs will be really painful, we just don't know which ones in advance.

Once they start biting, it will become very obvious which ones are the biggies. If this is 5% of the total number of bugs, you can fix that 5% and ignore the other 95% until things settle down a bit. If (see above) this is the worst 5% of bugs in your *least* critical systems, you have a very manageable problem on your hands.

"It's those who have chosen FOF for what ever reason and what ripple effect they will be part of/contribute to that have me very worried."

Yes, there's reason to be worried. But don't blow this out of proportion. Put it in perspective (as I tried to do here).

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 27, 1999.

Regarding that SME question:

I have a friend who is a FoxPro contractor in Illinois and she's recently been working on remediation of these systems. She works 5-6 clients at a time and can finish documentation and all within a few months. They're simply not the effort that one associates with large systems.

-- Anita (spoonera@msn.com), July 27, 1999.

Just Curious, please pardon my stupidity. I thought the two DID go hand-in-hand. I apologize for stepping on your toes.

Mr.Badco

-- Bad Company (johnny@shootingstar.com), July 28, 1999.