These excerps are from Dale Ways Essay regarding Compliancy:

"The Misplaced Fixation On Compliance And The Independence FALLACY of y2K"..

"When the history of Y2k has been written no single word will be seen to have had such a significant and DASTARDLY role".

"They (IT industry assc.,Commerce Dept.) hatched the concept and definition of "Y2K compliance."It sought to fulfill a legitimate need: defining a minimal standard for the treatment of dates..."

"An IT product sold to the govenment was required to be "compliant" to the Govs. definition. How that was to be accomplished was left to the vendor. This made some sense, although the coordination of POTENTIALLY INCOMPATIBLY products was IGNORED."

"This misapplication, this ABUSE of the language, happened in the usual way that characterizes much of the Y2K CRISES:uncritical thinking coupled with a tendency to see the world in well-worn ways.we did not see and appreciate how truly novel the Y2K problem is, how unlike in scale and COMPLEXITY it is from anything we have ever had to deal with before."

"We just thought,even manyof those in positions of technical LEADERSHIP and responsibility, that it was just a bigger version of something we do all the time.That is true, bu that very big-ness that entire-ness changed EVERYTHING."

"In the minds of government people, especially those with a regulatory bent, COMPLIANCE is a warm and comfortable NOTION, compiance by others to government regulations and edicts is every bureaucrat's dream".

"Others picked up on that because "being Compliant" also seemed to be a way to relieve one of responsibility. "Hey, it's not my Fault, My stuff was compliant".

""Being compliant took on a patina of "good", and the more general meaning of "safe".

"A thing that was "compliant" would not have, or cause ,a problem or failure because of Y2K, became the SLOPPY-thing and SELF-serving meaning of this concept."

Wrap up: sounds to me like once again it continues to be about profits right down to coining a name to describe a non existent technology for the sake of MO money---Mo money!!!!

BURN IN HELL!!!!

-- D.Butts (dciinc@aol.com), November 12, 1999

Answers

With just 26 Federal Days 'till the Roll, we'll soon see if it was ALL hype, or if people will DIE!

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), November 12, 1999.

Tis a wind that rips the strands of Charlotte's Web from its moorings.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), November 12, 1999.

I guess this is why I'm not in government. I have a very simple and straightforward definition of "compliance." Compliance means to me:
1) All date data includes in the data itself four digits (or coded equivalent) for the year.
2) All programs (data entry, data manipulation, reports, and information exchange, etc.) accept and transmit only date data with four digit (or coded equivalent) for the year.

As a corollary to 2), all incoming data should be examined (tested) for date data with four digit (or coded equivalent), and such data not properly formatted either rejected or converted into compliant form.

ANYTHING SHORT OF THIS IS NOT COMPLIANT. Non-compliant COULD mean Y2K "Ready" or not, depending on the availability of contingency plans (manual processing) or workarounds, whatever.

-- A (A@AisA.com), November 12, 1999.

I forgot to include HARDWARE.
3) All hardware, whether fixed or programmable, shall accept, store, and output date data with four digit (or coded equivalent) for the year.

Note that four digit year date data as mentioned in 1), 2), 3) is MANDATORY -- two digit year data is NOT an option or alternative.

-- A (A@AisA.com), November 12, 1999.

Does anyone know if the Pareto Principle Applies here?

Compliant = critical = aprox. 20% of systems? = hopefully fixed NonCompliant = noncritical = aprox. 80% of systems? = ? Compliant + NonCompliant = Oh Sh*t!!!!!!!!!

-- 80/20 (karlacalif@aol.com), November 12, 1999.