On one of the recent embedded systems threads, Flint said,

"The embedded systems arena in general is simply too broad and diverse to make meaningful generalizations. Nothing in this area, from zilch to meltdown, would surprise me."

Yes, it is true that Flint EXPECTS Y2K to be an event that is UNNOTICED by most people. I'm NOT asking him to backtrack from that. Expect = prediction. Flint is a polly.

But the statement above both explains why Flint himself has prepared for a year of disruption as well as why the "prudent long-term lifestyle" prep approach is woefully insufficient to Y2K. Let me be specific:

Any preparation that does not take into account the possibility of an EMBEDDED SYSTEMS melt-down (supply chain collapse) is meaningless.

Can everyone envision let alone prepare for a "melt-down"? No. Not the point.

Everyone can envision the way in which an embedded systems melt-down is NOT an "ordinary" recessive or depressive economic event but that PLUS something more dangerous for you, your family and your community.

Medicines. Water. First-aid. Security. Food. Heat.

There is a reason we have been discussing these preps for two years and still discuss them in depth on the Y2K Prep Forum. The chance, impossible to quantify, but REAL, of an embedded systems meltdown, is that reason.

An embedded systems melt-down won't care whether North, Yourdon or Hyatt blew 1999 predictions. It also won't care about Hoff's function point analysis.

What should you do, at a minimum? You should have a real, red-alert urgent plan in place for a bug-out bag and several bug-out locations. If embedded systems prove to be "zilch", you thank God and use your bug-out bag over the years (and you will). If it proves to be a melt-down or JUST A MELTDOWN IN YOUR LOCALITY FOR A GIVEN SECTOR (Water. Chemicals. Other.), it may save your life.

Aren't going to leave your locale? Cool. You still need a survival kit -- and the longer it will enable you to survive a meltdown in-place, the better.

Cost? Could be as little as $100 or as much as $2K. Up to you. EVERYONE can afford it.

Y2K software remediation failure certainly has the potential to bring supply-chain breakdown. But those failures are more likely to be long-term economic, than short-term life-threatening.

An embedded systems meltdown is life-threatening. But that doesn't mean you have to die.

I don't know whether the probability of a sector or multi-sector meltdown is .01 (zilch) or 95%. IOW, we will only know retrospectively WHY what happened ... happened.

Yeah. Flint is a polly. But I know that anyone who thinks that the possibility of a supply chain breakdown is a doomer fantasy isn't a polly, but a fool.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), October 28, 1999

Answers

Russ,

Of course a "meltdown" is possible. It is also possible a hostile power (or terrorist group) will detonate a nuclear device in the upper atmosphere. The resulting electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) would be FAR more devastating than Y2K chip failures.

By most reasonable accounts, the number of "at risk" chips is rather small. For most chips with time/date logic elements, the time/date function is not "critical." For some chips (like water system PLCs), a power loss resets the time clock to zero.

If you are arguing straight preparation, Russ, you have a stronger argument outside the bounds of Y2K. I can list a half dozen threat scenarios I think carry more risk than Y2K. As such, I think our best route is to encourage the military to think about warfare (and defense) in the next millenium. With threat like bio-weapons, individual preparation becomes more problematic.

-- Ken Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), October 28, 1999.

STOP THE PRESSES. BigDog Announces An End To Coherent Diatribes

What exactly was that Russ? Was it another Flint-bashing attempt? Was it a "how to prep" advisory? Was it yet another outburst of your frustrations or merely idle speculation on a lazy thursday afternoon?

For somebody who announced they've had it with all the attention Flint gets around here, you sure have a strange habit of bringing his name into the spotlight. Glutton for punishment?

Forgive me if this sounds a bit terse. It's just that I can't seem to forget about that thread you created warning us "non-techies" how Flint was the embodiment of all evil and we should only listen to you. (Whiners tend to irritate me. Especially when it comes from somebody who should know better.)

-- CD (not@here.com), October 28, 1999.

Decker -- we're not that far off, with this caveat that I obviously don't believe the embedded system threat is as minor as your prose dictates. If our man Flint won't be surprised by an embedded systems meltdown (and, after all, that is his field of expertise), then I sure as heck don't want to be.

There are undoubtedly a range of serious and real threats over the coming decade or two that are, much like Y2K/embeddeds, difficult to quantify but critical in their potential impact.

I don't think our military needs any particular encouragement about this but I agree that they need to address it. It is highly regrettable that cyberterrorism, bio-, chem- and nuke-threats may pose an inviting opportunity for some in the government who would like to reduce our liberty and privacy in the guise of defense -- because an honorable discussion about the trade-offs IS indicated.

I believe that the entire country should be encouraged to "prepare", that is, to make our communities more resilient/redundant, to these threats. Every little accretion of resilience will help. So far from an attack, say, on JIT, this will enable JIT to move forward aggressively while we intelligently defend against still-unknown points of attack. It is actually quite akin to the concept of computer "back-up" and "24X7" availability.

I happen to also believe we have vast resources in American tradition and history (self-reliance, to start with) to tap which could actually bring our country closer together.

I have also always believed individual preparation is problematic, even for Y2K, and I've often said so. Alas, with Y2K, we've been stuck with doing the best we can. One would like to think that a measured national sea-change for the sake of our future security could be staged over a period of years and placed on a community as well as an individual basis.

Reading the articles on our own government's acknowledgement of threats against our agriculture made me wryly aware that my "vast" store of non-hybrid seeds (enough to feed 200 people) was not perhaps such a waste as I might fear. Yes, I know 200 is a drop in the bucket. But it beats "0".

Summing up these ramblings, there ARE some REAL threats out there and they are current as well as future. While we Y2K preppers have been merely a pimple on Koskinen's nose, the lessons we are learning -- AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL, cultural and political dynamics we are wrestling with are, IMHO, of authentic value to our fellow citizens in the near future.

Meanwhile, Ken, since you seem to get so much pleasure out of addressing me informally, I assume you have your own bug-out bag and locations PLANNED? If not, get on the stick. It isn't that expensive and most of the items are a lot of fun to acquire and pack.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), October 28, 1999.

Individual preperation should be a component of a comprehensive national civil defense policy. And for once the taxpayers will get what they pay for.

Mr. Decker

You said "By most reasonable accounts, the number of "at risk" chips is rather small. For most chips with time/date logic elements, the time/date function is not "critical." "

Do you mean the number is a small percentage of the total number of chips, like $100,000 would be as a percentage of Bill Gates total wealth? Or do you mean that the number of overall chips that fail will be small, like my $5 taken out of the bank would be in relation to the economy. There is a difference. Also take in to account that many of the chips that are time sensitive might be so for a maintenance reason. And if you have that built in to a chip, I'm guessing that it would be an important component of something expense or safty related. (unless it's in a VCR) And how many chips measure hours of use vs date based maintenance intervals. If we knew the answer to that question we could say we had an indication of what to expect. But we don't, so we must consider the possibilities.

Watch six and keep your...

-- eyes_open (best@wishes.not), October 28, 1999.

CD (Poole? CPR? Doc Paulie?) ---

I never said everyone should listen to me, you troll. The regulars know better. Even Flint knows better, I HOPE.

What I did say is that Flint was essentially sucking the forum into his own uncertainty like a black hole. He was. The hole seems to have narrowed a bit lately.

Does Flint infuriate me sometimes? YEAH. But you know something? For all his revolting-ness intellectually, there is a "there" there. Contra the world of political correctness, it is possible to be ferociously upset with an adversary and yet view them as a WORTHY adversary.

Which you are not.

I do pretty much ignore Flint, except when, in my vast omniscience, arrogance, narcissism and psychosis (let's let the DeBunkies have some fun, shall we?), I choose not to.

Deal with it, O Useless Troll ....

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), October 28, 1999.

Shut up Big Dog, while you're behind once again. Just go away quietly and you'll not have to suffer the indignity of having been made a fool of again any longer.

I've been around this BB a long time, and one thing I've picked up on is that you never fail to shoot yourself in the foot in the safest of conditions time and time again. Amazingly enough you still have quite a following. Will wonders never cease is right.

-- (flint@has nothing to do. with Y2K severity), October 28, 1999.

ah, more mental fecal matter from russ lipton. You've been slacking on your thought policing, Russ. Good to see you are still looking for ego strokes from your extremist compadres. "yAAAH bigdog! wayto bash that asshole Flint!""yippee, horay for bigdog! keep thinking for us"

(and the biggy) "why, that is the best and most concise I have ever seen that statement framed. Good for you, bitchdog!" - Yourtoasted

You need a monthly dose of this, or is weekly more your schedule? Maybe should get a good colonic, bud.... It might even help your mental state, who knows?

-- BS Detector (Ego detector @ is sounding.now too!), October 28, 1999.

All you morons that believe computers will be A-OK, hunky dorey when the century ends are...well, morons. You've all invested way to much into that rich fantasy life, called denial. I'm no computer expert, but, hey, I understand logistics. But then again, I have a brain. Oops. Forgot, you pollies can only count to 2. Try using your fingers and toes, if that helps.

-- wowe (--@--.com), October 28, 1999.

Meow!!! this threads getting catty!

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), October 28, 1999.

Is there any way we can transfer this ugly polly fixation to me instead of BigDog?

I'd much rather you pointless assholes take swipes at me.

Fu(*&^(*&ng idiots.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), October 28, 1999.

Wow, the trolls (Poole and friends) haven't had their medication today, apparently. I guess it just shows this thread is more right-on than I thought, eh?

While we're at it, have a look-see at the ongoing embedded threads:

http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001eWJ

and

http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001eyJ

What the trolls really don't like is Flint's own statement:

"The embedded systems arena in general is simply too broad and diverse to make meaningful generalizations. Nothing in this area, from zilch to meltdown, would surprise me."

I AGREE WITH FLINT.

I AGREE WITH FLINT.

I AGREE WITH FLINT.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), October 28, 1999.

wowe,

When do all computers EVER work hunkey dorey? When do even 50% of them work hunkey dorey? In forty years of computer history I would say that I have never heard even the most optimistic programmer say that everything is going to be fine all the time, 1/1/00, or not. In fact, even reaching 80% functionality is a good start. 90% and you are da man! 100% ?, Hell, you'd have to be able to turn water into wine and walk on glass. We are humans remember, it's ALWAYS been an imperfect world.

And yet, somehow, we manage to struggle through.

-- (yeah@ok. hows your brain?), October 28, 1999.

I'm so mad I can't remember the details, but some Y2K remediation team found some Y2K problems ACCIDENTALLY: THEY ACCIDENTALLY found problems in a [bleach??] plant that could have killed 8 million people.

Can this NOT sink into your decrepit collective crania?!?!?!?!?!?!?

-- lisa (lisa@work.mad), October 28, 1999.

Or rather, walk on water. Or maybe very,very thin glass.

-- (anyway@ the point is. you're a dope), October 28, 1999.

Of course you can't remeber the deatails Lisa, because you are angry. You think with you emotions and not your brain. Because you a woman, I assume.

The key phrase in your post is: "could have".

Says who? Another Doom Zombie who works for the bleach plant with an over active imagination.

Maybe you could recall those details so you don't look like such a freak, 'eh?

-- (not@lisa. not at work), October 28, 1999.

Yeah Ok:

Devastating fact-laden critique. Boy, I feel better just looking at your 'fact-challenged' argument for safety. NOT. You may want to consider something more convincing than anecdotes, assuming that you have the ability to do so.

-- X (X@X.com), October 28, 1999.

Hey notLisa:

Provide some facts of your own, loser. And take the woman-hating elsewhere you sexually-frustrated incest product.

-- not Lisa is inbred (notLisa@ISaMoron.com), October 28, 1999.

The idiot pollies demand a 25% bankruptcy rate and acres of corpses before they come of their insanely adolescent "prove it" mantra.

I can't take it anymore.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), October 28, 1999.

64 Days Left.

Embedded failures, bad programming, embedded lies or bad luck, at this point it just doesn't matter.

The clock is ticking.

Pray that it won't toll for you and yours.

-- snooze button (alarmclock_2000@yahoo.com), October 28, 1999.

OK, now where were we when we were so rudely interrupted? Hmmm. Oh, yeah.

For an investment well within your means ($100 to $2,000), you can dramatically maximize your chances of surviving an embedded systems meltdown ... or a bio/chem attack in your neighborhood. You will also end up with a small supply of cool first-aid and emergency items that might save your life or the life of a loved one in OTHER emergencies.

Get it? GI? This is a pretty simple one, friends.

As for bug-out bags, there are many threads in the archives of this forum and the Y2K Prep Forum that can help you.

WE'RE AT THE 60 DAY MARK. JUST DO IT NOW.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), October 28, 1999.

Inbred Lisa,

So you are mad at me for pointing out the obvious flaw in women when it comes to analytical thinking?

Well, gee. I'm really ashamed for making you mad. Just remeber you are the one who started in with the incest nonesense. Heaven forbid a man should even so much as cast a dispersion on the opposite sex, lest he be castrated and paraded around the village square by the Femi-nazis.

Lisa,

No, pollies just want proof, not opinion.

-- (not@lisa.not at work), October 28, 1999.

And when you stop to think about it, proving life as we know it is about to end shouldn't be too hard.

-- (not@interested. in myth), October 28, 1999.

Yikes! The tension is running high. First, Russ, I choose to ignore your chosen handle. You strike me as neither Big nor Dog. Overall, you seem a decent fellow, except when on some subjects (read Y2K.) On Y2K, you channel the spirit of Willian Jennings Bryan complete with populist soap box.

I've been around long enough to know most folks have quirks. On the subject of Flint, it's hard to call him an "optimist." His world view seems tinged with cynicism, though I think he tries strict rationalism on Y2K. Flint does disconnect the preparation issue from Y2K... for the most part. As a realist, Flint acknowledges the nonzero probabilty of catastrophic systems failure. You and he simply differ on the odds... and the implications.

On the other hand, you are steeped in Y2K... in my opinion to the point of tunnel vision. Hey, as personality quirks go, I've seen much worse. You are smart enough, however, to realize that you engage in some rather unpleasant tactics. (This is why I ping on you.) C'mon, Russ, from where I sit, Y2K looks a helluva lot better than it did last year. Sure, we could tailspin all the way into a depression, but it just doesn't seem very likely.

You can certainly justify the preps on the "what if" basis... but it's really a tarted up version of Pascal's Wager. Hey, it's your nickel. If you sleep better with grenade pits dug in front of your mesh-screened windows... more power to you. Can we just keep Y2K and preps from becoming totally enmeshed?

-- Ken Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), October 28, 1999.

Hmmm, Ken, I thought we were making progress but now I'm not so sure.

Are we back to "nonzero" in the vein of "being struck by asteroids"? That is scarcely the type of nonzero outcome that "just another engineer" has been discussing in the referenced thread -- why don't you join in over there if you question his argument.

Nor did I take Flint as merely nodding to a nonzero outcome: he said he wouldn't be surprised by a meltdown, no?

As for tunnel vision, I prefer to think of it as simple consistency. Psst, Y2K hasn't happened yet -- and the self-reported data still smells. But let's not rehash that.

You've been wanting to separate Y2K from preps from your first, ummm, visitation here, for reasons that still escape me. The supply chain is under threat with Y2K, just as it is with bio, chem or nuclear terrorism. Indeed, much more predictably so with Y2K: after all, we do have a date barrier for embeddeds.

The tunnel is the calendar, not me.

As for grenade pits, there is one I didn't think of. GREAT idea! Do you have plans for it you could share?

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), October 28, 1999.

Big Dog:

Just for you, I'll even go a step further. I'd be surprised by fewer than a *dozen* meltdowns, worldwide. There might be as many as a hundred! Then again, there are hundreds of thousands of various facilities in the world that could be in harm's way, so percentagewise even a hundred is small. Except if you're next door, or employed there.

And of course you realize these estimates are purely ex-rectum. I simply don't enough details about most operations to do better.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), October 28, 1999.

Don't worry, Russ, I wasn't keeping an empty seat at the table for you. You do dodge the "bullet" in my response... you have been a naughty boy during some of the debates. Either you don't realize this, or you feel justified in your tactics. Do tell.

For the record, I've always felt there would be Y2K problems. My prediction has always stopped well short of the Milne zone. (He shares the future vision of the "Terminator" movies.) As I noted about Flint, he has a cynical streak. I'm not sure much of anything would surprise him. (Including wholesale dishonesty by our current government!)

As a libertarian (of sorts), I really don't care how people spend their money. If you want "grenade pit" plans, you might check the "Frugal Squirrel" web page. I think they were selling the milspec manuals on "hasty fortifications."

-- Ken Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), October 28, 1999.

Not Lisa:

Who gives a --it about what you think? To ask Lisa for proof is fair. But take your women-bashing elsewhere, inbred rapist. If Lisa is thinking emotionally, then you are thinking with mutated genes befitting your inbred lineage. And you haven't brought --it to this forum. Go take your sarcastic a--hole comments elsewhere. You stupid pollies, with a few who actually bring facts to the table, are so worthless. If you don't like it here, than get the hell out. Go over to debunker and hang out with the rest of your no-life, loser friends.

-- asdfasd (NotLisa@Inbred.com), October 28, 1999.

Lisa:

Ignore the loser. He/It, based upon the woman-bashing comment,is probably the resident wife-beater and community rapist. An obvious woman-hater. Heaven forbid that he/it find your identity. LOL

-- r (r@r.com), October 28, 1999.

Ken, is true that you crossdress as Celia Thaxter?

-- a (a@a.a), October 28, 1999.

Big Dog -- You are too hard on Flint. He does tend to look at things from various sides, but this is simply a characteristic he shares with many other engineers (you can always recognize us, pocket protectors, high water pants, white socks, pens in every color of the rainbow, and a tie that was the height of fashion, oooh about 10 years ago :0). In particular, I believe I saw someone say that Flint was a hardware engineer. If so, then this would simply reinforce personality traits already shared with every other engineer worthy of the name, since once the board is etched it is so very *difficult* to unetch it.

Mr. Decker, Before you jump all over BigDogs case, you might want to check out the thread he is referencing. Flint and I had a pretty good back and forth on this issue. (And NOT in the vein of some of the juvenile delinquents who appear to have obtained illicit access to this forum on their parents computer,, and yeah, I *AM* talking about you, not-lisa, you twerp, but like a conversation between two adults). There is some good stuff there and I'd personally say that a lot of it came from Flint.

And before you jump all over me, you might read the original post. There are a whole *bunch* of caveats in there. But there is one point on which I am not giving any 'but I could be wrong' fluff, and that is that the situation as it stands absolutely *terrifies* me.

Lisa -- Ignore the trolls. Particularly the *UGLY* ones.

-- just another (another@engineer.com), October 28, 1999.

just another:

No, I'm basically a programmer, except everything I've ever done has been shipped in silicon, soldered to a board. But at that level, software and hardware are pretty close, and I do have a lot of input into board design. And I wouldn't begin any code until I'm satisfied with the schematics, since they become my functional spec.

In general, I'm not too worried about the standalone stuff. It's when I shovel bits up to an application running at some higher level that I start to worry a bit, because I don't know what will be done with it. I do know some things that will fail, but nothing critical simply because I haven't done that work. My concerns are based more on a "guilty until proven innocent" approach to complex systems, but I think I'm more satisfied than some here with testing that's broad rather than deep.

And this gets more into a philosophical area, it seems. How much is really "good enough"? I'm aware that vendor assurances aren't always accurate. But if you got a late start (like most), your time is probably better spent on those systems that are unknown, or that the vendor says may be trouble, rather than validating the vendor's assurances. This does seem to be an area where perfect is the enemy of excellent.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), October 28, 1999.

Flint --

Okay, I can go with that. What kind of turn around time can you get on a fix? (Remember, my time with embedded systems is probably over, and 5 years gone, so I may be working from 'expired' data.)

My point being, if there is a failure, what kind of time frame are we looking at for a fix?

-- just another (another@engineer.com), October 28, 1999.

I have never understood why pollies hang out here,it just doesn't make sense..........unless....

-- mango (sammy1@indiasite.com), October 28, 1999.

Mango,

Same reason doctors hang out at insane asylums. To learn.

-- (_@_._), October 29, 1999.

"a,"

Have Diane or one of the forum "monitors" check Ms. Thaxter's IP address. It ain't mine. I do find Ms. Thaxter an interesting read, and she has opened a can of "whup-ass" on a few local pessimists. Take care, "a," lest she find you in need of the woodshed.

"Engineer,"

I call 'em as I see 'em.

-- Ken Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), October 29, 1999.

Flint, I respect your opinion. I'm not a super doomer but a middle of the road guy. I do not, however, believe we have the levity for unfounded optimism at this point. I do not work at the microcode level, however I operate in a multi-threaded client server data base acquisition and processing environment. On a previous thread I put forward a code fragment with a preported Y2K problem in a challenge to one guy who was a pure pollyanna. I do not believe you are a pure pollyanna but have a reasonable but slightly different point of view than my own. It was multi-threaded code that had timer threads monitoring the health of a data acqusition process. It worked fine in test, but failed when we went to production because the hardware operated at a faster speed. This was because the powers that be in our organization decided to implement different hardware than that used in the test lab, causing a real time problem in the thread synchronicity. This was because the testing wasn't deep enough, and the coordination between Distributed systems, and development/testing wasn't cohesive enough. The result was I've seen a management information system providing realtime information on 180,000 employees fail. Thanks to networking a solution was available and implemented in a week. Also the system wasn't critical to the business operation, and so wasn't readily apparent to the customers. My point is that in best case situations we never have enough time and testing. In the Y2K situation we are being forced by time constraints to roll out upgrades with even less than insufficient testing because comittee's are changing the infrastucture platform even while we are rolling out. Hence the increasing failure rate we are seeing. I believe we will make it thru this but this is a deep subject and pure pollyanna's don't understand complexities of this nature.. Also there appears to be a disconnect in the minds of management between hardware and software. A code regression test that produces zero differences between expected and actual results in test could be influenced by changes in hardware/OS at rollout time. Nothing this large (whole U.S. rollout over approximately same time frame) has been attempted in history. If anything we need more broader testing and deeper, unfortunately fate and time has denied us this luxury. A problem such as I've mentioned would never have been picked up by an IV&V code factory walk thru, but it happened. Good procedures are a must here. The U.S. has spent the money (200b) and the fix is in. The problem has been addressed, but it is inevitable that were going to have problems. The IV&V guys should be commended. The ones I've worked with have humbly tried to excersize diligence in the face of a bad situation and have done thier best. every day more remediated systems roll out and are being impemented, and I've really seen people pull together in a bad situation. Lets hope and pray that it is enough. I say to all the pollyanna's out there that I understand why you would say what you say but don't you really think the people have a right to know. You super polly's are making the doomers come down on moderates who might present a reasonable view to support your argument. (By the way, if you don't know what a regresion test is you probably shouldn't be stating you case as to wether you think the problem is fixed or not)There's no logic in these arguments if they are heated. In any event the super polly's (some of whom are most likely plants to disinform and break up public opinion) seem to have muddled the view point enough to prevent preparation by 90%+ of the population so its really to late now. I would just like to point out to the pollyanna's that if we get through this with only a small number of catastrophies that it was because of the dilligent hard working IT guys working at all levels.. Microcode hardware integration, database processing, networking, business cycle programming, who have stated facts that you've had to shoot down over the years, that you made it. Slammer...

-- Slammer (BillSlammer@Yahoo.Com), October 29, 1999.

Bill -- This is an excellent post, both from the heart and the intellect. You are so right about the way the debate has been "forced". Unfortunately, as the Clintons have illustrated, if you keep attacking WITHOUT any defense being made, you "win" by the sheer impact on people's unconscious thinking.

Hence the necessity to pick up the trash repeatedly on this forum.

Most likely, barring embedded systems collapse, we will make it through. But it is going to be a very close call and many people will be hurt, some die.

This entire post should be read by everyone on this forum, but I'll pick this out. You said,

"A code regression test that produces zero differences between expected and actual results in test could be influenced by changes in hardware/OS at rollout time. Nothing this large (whole U.S. rollout over approximately same time frame) has been attempted in history. If anything we need more broader testing and deeper, unfortunately fate and time has denied us this luxury."

And, as you pointed out, the hardware infrastructure is being jimmied simultaneously.

Hoff believes, in essence, that the rollout has already taken place. You and I believe we are just now exploding into rollout. On that difference rests whether Y2K will be a 4-5 or a 9.

Thank you for your work trying to help ME and my family get through.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), October 29, 1999.

Slammer -- Have reposted your post to Hamasaki's thread.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), October 29, 1999.

oh here we go again whah-aaaaaaaaaaa! the pollys are stopping people from preparing! waaaaaaa!

Shut up crybabies, and try this on for size....the pollys are stopping people from wasting money on the snakeoil salesmen who would shaft the terrified after spooking them with pure FUD. Those involved with MLM's (they know who they are), the shills, the overpriced vendors selling worthless junk, charging for free information....all BS.

Not a single "polly" has stopped anyone from "preping". How could they? This is still America, damnit! Spend your money on what you want to....just get informed before hand!

You LIKE that Gary North has a political/religious agenda and uses y2k to foster FUD so he can make money? FINE! just so long as you are AWARE of what the guy is REALLY all about.

just one example.

-- Leave the damn pollies (alone@you.jerks), November 01, 1999.

Try cutting back on the caffeine, dear. And wipe the froth off your monitor.

-- Mommy's (watching@you.dear), November 01, 1999.

Excuse me for interrupting, I just wanted to point out to the polly troll attacking Lisa that if it wasn't for Decker and Hoff, there'd be no "unemotional" polly arguement on this forum. Irrational emotional claims are the hallmark of pollies in general and all trolls. To wit, your post; "You think with you emotions and not your brain. Because you a woman, I assume." Can YOU back up this claim with facts and a logical argument?

"Maybe you could recall those details so you don't look like such a freak, 'eh?" Don't you think you sound rather hostile here yourself? Isn't that emotional?

-- (PotKettle@R.us.com), November 01, 1999.