Crisis of Y2KFaith

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First off, just so whomever is reading this knows, I'm not a full-out doomer. Rather I'm a conservative doomer, more toward the middle of the scale than the far end.
Last night, I was looking for newsgroups along the spiritual lines and happened to lurk through one on the paranormal (all right, and sometimes I just CAN'T resist looking at bad photos of the Beautiful People when they show up in the tabloids at the check out line). Here's what I found: Dozens of posts from people counting down the days to THE DAY OF RECKONING, August 11th, when we have a solar eclipse and supposedly some mammoth comet named LEE becomes visible to all. Now I have no idea what this comet's final target was, Earth, probably, and these people were acting as if a honking chunk of rock striking the planet would be survivable, but "Oh, won't everybody be surprised on the 11th!"
My point is in a way, they sounded very much like some of us here on this board. Is Y2K real? Is it really real?
Back in 1992, I lived near downtown L.A., watching on TV while my local Ralph's and Thrifty Drugstore burned, as people rioted just two blocks away. I watched a cop with his gun drawn, sneaking up on looters trying to break into Circuit City. The city burned, and it was pretty damn ugly, but personally, my life remained largely untouched by these events. Are we perhaps blowing Y2K out of proportion, just as Tom Brokaw and all the other news anchors did when they continued round the clock coverage of the riots for days?
Some opinions please. TROLLS NEED NOT REPLY, though.

-- CD (CDOKeefe@aol.com), July 30, 1999

Answers

No biggie CD, just Hale-Bopp swinging back around for the stragglers. Tickets please.

-- For (your@info.com), July 30, 1999.

LOL, For! No, I'm not worried about the comet. I'm concerned we're being as looney as the people on that paranormal board sounded.

-- CD (CDOKeefe@aol.com), July 30, 1999.

When I was a Kid in the midwest I remember seeing cartoons with the picture of an old man with a long beard and a placard sign that said "The End Is Near". I was confused because I had never seen this on any street corner in my little hamlet. Things were OK and life was not a big deal as a kid! Now, you are right, in the burg were I work, THE NET, there are lots of OL'GUYS with signs that the WORLD IS GOING TO END!

In 1996? I remember listening to a religous broadcaster on the SW claiming he KNEW the date of the LORDS RETURN. He made the prediction and counted down the days. When the date came and went with no apparent change he stated "He had miss computed the date, THE LORD WILL COME IN TWO WEEKS. Needless to say this did not happen either. This guy still broadcasts bible readings, but he is out of the END OF THE WORLD biz.

The point being, if you base your actions on FEELINGS or PROPHETS that bad times are a comming, then you are in good company, the end of the world has been "just a day away" for a long long time (read "back to the start of recorded history"). But you may be unhappy if it is not TEOTWAWKI.

However, if you look at the singularity called Y2K. An event very close to the invention of the "modern" computer in 194? or 1952 (if you wish to use the release of the first TRANSITORIZED (yeah it still had a lot of DDL) computer (the CDC 1604)) you might find that we have a bug in the system. It is called a bug as in the first computers (based on relay logic) when it was discovered that a particular program did run properly the problem was traced to a dead bug trapped across the relay contacts, thus producing the incorrect result.

Y2K is such a problem. It is a bug on the relay contacts.

It is not a god given call to doom of man. It is an error in the design of the program. We have not lived with computers all that long. I remember well the Punch card bills that came with the warning "DO NOT BEND, SPINDLE, OR MUTILATE". Y2K is the ultimate BEND-SPINDLE-MULTLATE. It is a path that some programers have chosen to walk (short date fields) that is a dead end. Lots of us have followed these "leader" programers into a blind canyon. It has happend before it will happen again.

Y2K is bad. Is it as bad as those who died in blind passes on there way to California in the mid 1800's. Maybe. Will humans live through Y2K. YES. Will corporations, individuals, countries, try to exploit Y2K? YES! YES! YES!

NOTICE:

We (humans) have been led up a blind pass. The problem is that some systems we utilize to cloth, feed, and house many of you will not work after Jan 01, 2000. We will develop new systems, many of which are under development right now. There is reason for concern. Make your plans acorrdingly. Some will make the transition, some will not.

I hope to see you on the other side.

Keep the faith.

-- helium (heliumavid@yahoo.com), July 30, 1999.


Cd,

Enjoyed your post. I too, tend to be on the consertative side when it comes to predicting y2k consequences. I am a optomist by nature and just don'nt like to look on the bad side of things. yet, y2k forces me to. If I did'nt have over 35 years of projeect management experience I'm sure my view of y2k woould be much brighter. Like you, I have to keep telling myself that the spinmeisters just can'nt be telling the truth when they put on a "happy face".

In my career I've planned and scheduled over a thousand projects, and very few of any complexity met their original schedule date. So when I hear that SEC says for instance that they are 98% complete, I have to laugh. Hell, I 've worked on many projects that were 98% complete for over six months or a year. The point is people lie, and when it comes to project schedule status, they almost always lie.

-- Watcher6 (anon@anon.com), July 30, 1999.


Asymptotically. That's how we approach the completion.

-- dave (wootendave@hotmail.com), July 30, 1999.


It's a good question CD. We spent approx. 8 months pondering about it as well. The last 4 months have given us a much clearer picture. It's not fixed and won't be in the time remaining. There isn't enough completed, worldwide, to stop the trail of dominoes or even divert or arrest the fall, in our opinions anyway. As a side note, we simply aren't willing to risk being optimistic, but more than willing to be incorrect.

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), July 31, 1999.

You bring up a good point, CD. But you know, sometimes the small minority of people who worry about things that the rest don't seem to be able to grasp, ends up being right. My favorite example is the early days of Nazi Germany, when a small minority of Jews decided to flee, believing that to remain would put themselves at a huge risk for what might be coming. As history sadly shows, they were quite right and prudent, the rest quite wrong.

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), July 31, 1999.

I checked in on some of the comet Lee websites awhile back. They were interesting. I keep an eye on it from time to time, but how can anyone really prepare for a comet anyhow. I know Dinosaurs who stored food and water,..even moved out to the country. They're sorta extinct now.

Preparing for something you CAN prepare for, makes sense, don't worry!. Preparing for something you CANT prepare for, that's a spiritual kind of preparedness I guess.

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), July 31, 1999.


Thanks, everyone, for those VERY thoughtful posts.

-- CD (CDOKeefe@aol.com), July 31, 1999.

Watcher6 -

I know what you mean: "90% of the work in your project uses up 50% of your schedule. The last 10% requires the other 50%"."

That saying used to be pretty funny to me. Used to be.

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), July 31, 1999.



Mac,

I think you meant to say the followiing:50% of the work in your project use 90% of your schedule, the last 10% requires the other 50%. Sadly, my experience supports the above statement.

-- Watcher6 (anon@anon.com), August 01, 1999.


I also read some of the Comet Lee sites. Lots of scientific sounding facts and figures. Except for when the "experts" said that adding or subtracting mass changes the velocity of the comet, which is not correct. Only the distance from the body around which the object is orbiting determines the velocity, not the mass. This error made me suspect that the "experts" were not really experts. But then I read further, and found out that Nostradamus may have predicted this comet. Then I was SURE that the experts were not experts.

I am willing to negociate some very liberal odds that there will be no Comet Lee suddenly appearing from behind the Sun on August 11. Any takers?

JOJ

-- jumpoffjoe (jumpoff@echoweb.net), August 01, 1999.


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