...let every man be swift to hear, slow to be speak...

I take it some have this wisdom at heart.

I see no responses yet on this forum regarding Dale Way's critique of Ed Yourdon's "Y2K End Game" essay that was posted by Roleigh Martin.

Looking forward to hearing some comments, especially as one tries to evaluate the level of response needed to prepare on a personnal basis as well as on the community level.

I agree with Mr. Martin's comment that he posted at Timebomb2000, stating that "it isn't so much a critique of Yourdon's position as it is using Yourdon's paper as a stimulus, a springboard, to launch his compimentary take".

Can we expect more of these "personal takes" on the situation from key people?

Won't they be a neccessary element at this point in time, seeing not many in authority are taking this seriously enough?

Couldn't this impact decision making for contingency planning at all levels?

My hat's off to Mr.Way for speaking frankly even though he is in such a visible position as chairman of the IEEE Year 2000 Technical Information Focus Group.

Been enjoying your discussions on this forum for quite a while and will be "lurking" for a while yet:).

Regards,

Andri (andreg@ntl.sympatico.ca)

-- Anonymous, October 31, 1999

Answers

Links to this excellent piece were posted at the Yourdon forum yesterday, and there is now quite a lot of commentary.

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

I don't do hot links, so you will have to paste the url into your address bar.

dave

-- Anonymous, October 31, 1999

Didn't sleep that well. I read it in its entirety and fairly slowly, a number of interesting points and possible areas of further clarification are addressed. My understanding is that the Chairman of the IEEE's Y2K investigation committee basicaly holds that because "compliance" was never practical in established systems within the current IT environment it is basically a meaningless term. His conclusion "If an organization goes off half-cocked, without complete, detailed knowledge of how its system of systems works altogether in all normal and possible abnormal situations, as the vast majority of remediators have done, yet make wholesale changes as if it did have that knowledge, they are doomed to failure unless it had many more years than the three of four most organizations have been at it." is sobering considering the source.

-- Anonymous, October 31, 1999

The original paper is at:

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roleigh_martin/end_game_criti que.htm

My original postings are at:

http://www.egroups.com/group/roleigh_for_web/1515.html?

http://www.egroups.com/group/roleigh_for_web/1515.html?

However, as stated, the feedback is at the TB 2000 forum, which is

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

Sorry, you'll have to use copy and paste techniques to use these links in a browser.

Roleigh Martin

-- Anonymous, October 31, 1999

Yow!

Double Yow!

This is a heck of a piece by Mr. Way. In some ways (no pun intended), he discounts the immediate effects of the century date rollover. But more importantly, he focuses on the longer term implications of the problem.

I have not read the entire article yet, but it is quite an eye opener from an extremely respectable source. I'll comment further when I've thoroughly read (and re-read) it.

I agree with the G-man: this paper is so chock full of implications, it might be hard to sleep tonight.

Here's a hyperlink to Dale Way's response to Ed Your

-- Anonymous, November 01, 1999