This is what I found on Michael Hyatts site as the recently discussed transscript of the New York conference. Many thanks to "applpie" who is the poster who typed all this down for us. Again thnx. >> >> >> >> applpie Member posted November 17, 1999 04:33 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- i am making a disclaimer right up front for any errors and any editorial license. i listened to both the gordon mcdonald report and the initial interview and blended the info. just wanted to pull something together that would get friends thinking during this last week before the movie. YOu may use it. sorry to post it if it makes anyone angry that i used up so much space. don't know any way around that. but at least you will have much of the content they included. ***************** November 14, 1999

Friends, Neighbors, and Family:

We now have 48 days until the rollover. We also have 7 days until the NBC Y2K movie which has people at my Government agency pretty worried because it may get the ball rolling on public panic. If their concerns turn out to be true and it causes panic, you only have six more potentially normal shopping days. If you were planning to stock up at the middle or end of January (like 70% of the American public is planning to dowhich is enough to totally wipe out the supply chain itself) and panic erupts at the beginning of December, you may not be able to purchase your normal supplies let alone stock up for the rollover. NO ONE KNOWS how the public will respond to the movie, NO ONE knows how the public will respond when the calendar rolls over to December, NO ONE knows how the rollover will ultimately affect us. Please READ THE FOLLOWING information today so that you can be informed as you make your final decision as to whether and when you will prepare. This information will not be found in the mainstream media but is found on the internet which has proven to be the only source of ALL Y2K information.

----WHAT PRESIDENT CLINTON SAYS ABOUT Y2K----

President Clinton made a brief statement this week on Y2K (he rarely speaks of it). Here is what he said:

Q: Mr. President, if you were an ordinary citizen, would you save a little food for Y2K?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, we've had so many jokes about that, about taking our pickups to Arizona and all. The answer is, no. America is -- I wouldn't, because I think America is in good shape. We have worked very, very hard on this. I want to thank the Vice President and John Koskinen, who's helped us. I want to thank all the big  the financial institutions, the utilities, the other big sectors in our economy that have gotten Y2K-ready.

The only problems left in the United States that we're aware of are with some of our small businesses who basically haven't yet made sure that they're Y2K compliant. But the United States is doing fine, and I wouldn't hoard food, and I wouldn't hide. I would be trusting, because I think we're going to make it fine.

Web site: http://www.usia.gov/cgi-bin/washfile/display.pl?p=/products/washfile/latest&f=99110902.tlt&t=/products/washfile/newsitem.shtml

----WHAT THOSE WHO ARE LEADING Y2K EFFORTS WITHIN THE GOVERNMENT, CORPORATIONS,---- AND PRIVATE SECTOR SAY ABOUT Y2K

This statement was made a few days after completion of the largest of the Y2K technical conferences, the last one before the rollover, called the Year 2000 Symposium put on by Brainstorm 2000 that was held in New York. First I heard the Presidents statement and then strangely enough, the next day, I had the opportunity to listen to two interviews with a journalist (Gordon McDonald) who attended this conference. The conference had 50 attendees who are key Y2K representatives of the major U.S. entities such as the Naval War College, other government agencies, a number of large corporations, private sector organizations, major associations such as the national retail association, and the US Information Agency (which is a division of the White House and represented the efforts being performed under John Koskinen, the Y2K Czar. What is astonishing is the words coming out of the Presidents mouth and the facts being presented at this conference vastly differ. Yet much of this information is coming from the same government.

The journalist expected that the conference was to promote Y2K awareness. However, when he got there he was surprised that the conference was actually for crisis management. Crisis management is after the fact. After failures and impact of failures are being felt. These Y2K leaders were at the conference to discuss how they should respond and what should be expected in the first 100 days of the Year 2000. In order to be expedient, I will not write a cohesive document, I will simply summarize some of the comments the journalist made about what he heard. He will likely, within the next week or so, provide additional details, but since time is short, I thought it more important to get this information shared as is so you can decide if this will affect your preparation decisions. Keep in mind that his observations do not include all the issues (i.e., nukes) but give a respresentative sampling of all that was likely discussed. This journalist has been known to be reasonable and unbiased as one can be regarding Y2K.

 There was NO SPINNING OF THE TRUTH AT THE CONFERENCE. The journalist said presenters were surprisingly candid. It was accepted by all presenters that there will be substantial disruptions through all of 2000 BOTH DOMESTICALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY.

 Thomas Barnett with Naval War College presented. NWC is a military think tank. They were commissioned by the White House to study Y2K. They are presently developing various scenarios regarding how Y2K may unfold domestically and internationally and how to respond to it. (Much of the information on their web site is rather disturbing.) They recommended that the government be transparent with the American public to inform them about Y2K and give them time to prepare realistically. Their advice, however, was NOT TAKEN. Instead, the White House (as was openly admitted in this meeting) decided two years ago that it was mandatory to prevent the public from any form of panic so they would say WHATEVER WAS NECESSARY TO AVOID THAT.

 It was a given that there will be disruptions in the domestic infrastructure (i.e., oil, power, water, gas, sewer). Although they dont expect the entire grid to go down there will be local and regional outages (depending on where they are with great impacts on business and manufacturing, the supply chain (getting goods from the raw material state through production to a finished product and to you) which will cause social chaos in areas. They believe even moderate failures in some of these systems will cause failures in other types of systems. They admitted a greater probability within several major metro areas resulting in social impacts. (Personal note: The potential for this may be seen in that the military is currently conducting training exercises in civil disorder and urban warfare and has plans for dealing with such in 120 cities nationwide. Also, note that although John Koskinen is only telling the public to prepare for 3 days of outages, he told American business in August to prepare for 3 weeks of power outages.)

 There is a general misperception among the public that the fear of embedded systems failures is overrated. Current statistics indicate that 1% should fail. 1% is 1000 more than the normal failure level. At the current failure rate of normal we are able to fix problems and recover in a reasonable period of time. The seriousness of the problem is not only the failure itself but because of the 1000 times greater failure rate, recovery time will be exponentially increased. Organizations are not staffed/equipped to deal with this level of failure and it is causing a great deal of concern and planning on the part of the organizations represented at the conference.

 Key concern: tens of thousands of small to mid sized chemical companies are self-admittedly not ready. 65 million Americans live within 1-5 miles of these plants.

 NWC stated that the oil shortages of 1974 represented a 4% decrease in the flow of oil. NWC proposed that we will see a 10-15% reduction in oil in 2000 because of the combined failures and will see immediate dramatic effects. The impacts to the US will last between 12-18 mos. International failures will reverberate for a long time. The impact of this to manufacturing and global economy is of great concern. Three of our primary oil suppliers will not be ready: Venezeula #1 supplier, Columbia # 7, Nigeria #5. This coupled with the maritime industry and the port authorities being way behind is very alarming. 10 ports in the world handle 95% of all shipping traffic. NONE of those ports have stated they are Y2K ready. (Note: if you do not understand the implications of import/export disruptions to our daily existence, research a little and you will see that we import a huge amount of the goods we use daily.)

 The participants agree that the full affect of Y2K will last between 12-18 mos. and that the first quarter of 2000 will be a big one. They believe there will be immediate impacts in the supply chain. They also admitted that supply chain disruptions, economic failures, and financial failures will lead to serious longer term problems, being felt significantly in the summer and fall of 2000.

 In an offline comment from the NWC representative, he admitted that the FBI expects that at midnight over 200,000 computer viruses will be released. They have received 40,000 notices already of this. Agencies and corporations are not staffed to handle these. Added to this is the fact that US systems are currently already under attack by several foreign countries. (Note: some of these viruses may be your garden variety intended for PCs but will likely also be more sophisticated and intended for any type of facility or infrastructure that uses computers to control processes such as nuclear plants, chemical plants, oil refineries, power stations.) Participants are also very concerned that terrorism can cause first and second quarter problems.

 Of more than 2,700 emergency call centers (911) surveyed as of Oct. 1, only 50% were Y2K-compliant. An additional several thousand call centers in the US did not even respond to the survey.

 Gas pipelines that feed Western Europe are greatly at risk of failure of embedded systems and pumping systems. Those same possibilities are resident in the US.

 School districts and universities (only 36% are ready). Participants expressed severe concern that the whole educational system will be turned upside down. Example: schools include environmental control systems that may fail. Kids would not be safe to be at school. (Note: At least 8 university financial systems have failed causing disruption in financial aid and forcing students to drop out.)

 Participant prognosis:  Only 90% of MISSION CRITICAL SYSTEMS will get fixed.  25% of international trade will be lost.  10% failure of businesses.  Unemployment will rise to 8% nationally.  2000-3000 point drop in Dow Jones.  The surplus that the president is attempting to spend will go away very quickly.  Over = of fortune 1000 companies are not ready. There are a number of large corporations that stated they had so much exposure for Y2K risks/failures domestically and internationally, that it may cause the failure of their company.

 The IRS is not ready. The Commissioner of IRS has admitted they havent even finished their inventory. There will be disruptions within the IRS through March of 2000. The IRS is planning to do returns on PCs and starting with the returns of those who make the least amount of money and working upward.

 The State Department is pulling their embassy staffs out of 4 republics of the old Soviet Union because they cannot guarantee their safety. This is likely the only first wave of disclosures from the State Department.

 Securities Exchange Commission filingsthe most recent disclosures have been brutally honest with news that is not good.

 Conference participants gave the advice to stop Y2K fixes and focus on crisis management and positioning resources now to deal with failures when they happen. (Note: Gartner group expects 25% of failures to occur by the end of 1999many are happening now and have been publicized at least on the internet.)

 Participants reported that the banking system is only 95% ready. Very concerned about the last 5%. If 1% failure rate is 1000 times the failure rate that is currently happening under normal, then 5% is 5000 times the normal rate.

 DoD is only 70% ready. They have had huge bureaucratic problems and management issues.

 Although Social Security was just a few months ago considered the shining star of government readiness, recent revelations have shown otherwise. At the conference it was revealed that SS is still not ready yet. The VA is also not ready and will continue to process November checks into the future until things are fixed. One health agency will write hand checks (8 million a month) to its recipients. This is an ambitious undertaking from the sheer labor required and the fact that they cant find a printer that has the capability to print enough checks fast enough.

 General perception of overseas problems is they will be HUGE. Rep. Horns office said at last years UN Y2K meeting, only 100 of 300 countries came to the conference. When asked whythe primary reason was those countries could not afford the airplane ticket to New York. Therefore, there is little hope for countries like that to be able to address Y2K issues: only those countries that can afford it will fix anything. (Note: This will affect us because we get products/resources from many of these countries plus their instability leads to instability in their regions or globally.)

 There was a discussion regarding the whole issue of fixing only mission critical systems. Mission critical systems are those that are essential to performing the mission of the organization. Early on the government and corporations determined to only fix systems that were defined to be mission critical. Since the whole definition of mission critical was a moving target, it was stated that many systems that were categorized as non-mission critical may actually prove to be mission critical. Mission critical systems reflect ONLY 3% of the organizations total systems and applications. All those millions of dollars have been spent to fix only 3% of this countrys systems. The other 97% may have gotten some attention but for the most part have been left alone to survive or not survive. There is great concern among presenters about thisthat the failure of these non-mission critical system will constitute a source for disruption and confusion. They estimated that individual failure of non-mission critical systems or their links together (even just 2-3% of the overall number) could actually cause a grinding halt to the mission of that organization. Plus the work that is currently automated in the non-mission critical systems may have to revert to manual processes if they fail.

 China and Japan will have significant failures. China, because it is NOT technology oriented will have great difficulty adapting/recovering.

It was generally agreed that the TIME FOR AWARENESS IN THE GENERAL PUBLIC IS OVER. They believe that there is such a short period of time for preparation, that to awaken the American public to the facts of potential failures will actually be detrimental to the public. If it was done a year or so ago, we could have prepared physically. However, we only have 50 days left. They believe the public will not have time or resources to do much of anything. They believe this will bring about panic. They are following the course of ENSURING NO PANIC that was set by the Clinton Administration two years ago.

To hear the interviews for yourself, here are the links. http://www.audiocentral.com/rshows/mir/default.html http://www.audiocentral.com/rshows/mir/ram/mir991108.ram

----NOW WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT Y2K?----

IP: Logged

-- Rainbow (Rainbow@123easy.net), November 21, 1999

Answers

And this is what "applpie" posted as Ed Yourdon's answer to some questions raising in this thread on Micheal Hyatts site. Again Thnx. ********************************************************************** ************************************

applpie Member posted November 19, 1999 05:29 AM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Someone on TB2000 asked Ed Yourdon to "say what he heard" at the conference. Here is his reply FYI. "Arewyn, thought of this several days ago and requested Ed's input. I hope Ed will not mind me reposting his email response. Thanks for your mail...

Okay, I've listened to the audio file ... and I'm not quite sure how to respond. I spent some time chatting with Gordon MacDonald, but I didn't sit through all of the sessions for all three days -- so perhaps he got a slightly different perspective than I did.

It's certainly true that most, if not all, of the speakers and panelists have a much more pessimistic view than the official government party line -- but that's been true all along, certainly in the case of the speakers at these Brainstorm Y2K conferences. Most of us are consultants, researchers, academics, or other forms of more- or-less independent people, so I don't think you could say that anyone speaking at the conference -- with the possible exception of Dr. Tom Barnett, of the Naval War College -- really represents the "official" position of the government on any of this stuff.

In any case, it seemed to me that in the audio file, Gordon was presenting the pessimistic outlook as if it had been stated by all of the speakers as a "factual assertion," whereas I believe that the speakers were still qualifying their remarks with caveats like "I think..." or "I believe ..." or "my interpretation of the situation is ..." In particular, Dr. Barnett emphasized several times in his talk that he was not trying to present us with THE outcome of Y2K, but rather a spectrum of POSSIBLE outcomes, in order to see whether they fall into any interesting patterns. His objective, as he told us, was to make sure that all of the military commanders have at least been exposed to as many of the possibilities as one could reasonably imagine happening, so that when Y2K does hit us, none of them will be able to say, "OmyGod, no one ever told me that THIS could happen, or that THAT could happen..."

The reason that the presentations all focused on crisis management and "outcomes" of Y2K is that at this point, with only a few weeks remaining, it's obviously too late to give a presentation about remediation and testing strategies. Indeed, it's even too late to talk about contingency plans for dealing with the so-called "known known" or "known unknown" problems; all of that work should have been finished by now. We are, quite literally, in the end-game now, and most of the speakers were trying to talk about what it's going to be like on the "other side" of Y2K, and how we'll manage to work our way out of it.

The comment about corporate acknowledgements of Y2K problems in their SEC statements was pretty accurate; that was mostly discussed in Steve Hock's presentation. He showed us several examples where corporations are now -- finally, after two or three years of obfuscation -- acknowledging that they have not get gotten any credible assurances of Y2K compliance from several hundred of their mission-critical suppliers. What's staggering to me about all of this is that Wall Street resolutely ignores this information, preferring to simply "trust" that everyone will be good little boys and girls and somehow get the remediation work done at the last minute.

Bottom line: there were not any really new "bombshells" and there was no presentation of a "smoking gun" form of "proof" that Y2K is going to be bad. It was more of a reconfirmation, on everyone's part, that the news still looks as gloomy today, in Oct/Nov 1999, as it did a year or two ago. As such, most of us considered the conference to be a farewell party, as we won't have a chance to get together again until after the Big Day.

Not sure if this answers your questions...

Ed

-- K Golden (kgolden@solar.stanford.edu), November 18, 1999."

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-- Rainbow (Rainbow@123easy.net), November 21, 1999.

Great job Rainbow...Here's a link to an "aftershock" presentation made at gwu. It explains a "middle of the road" prediction made by one of the New York presenters. http://www.systemtransformation.com/artaftersho.htm

-- Brian Bretzke (bretzke@tir.com), November 21, 1999.

Wow! Nice way to get my heart started at 6:00 am on a Sunday morning! Thanks, Rainbow, that was a lot of work. I appreciate seeing both the Gordon McDonald narration and Ed's "yes,but" comments as a sanity check.

I nominate this thread for the most hits by the end of today. The only way out of this is through it. Thanks again...

-- Nancy (wellsnl@hotmail.com), November 21, 1999.

ooooooops. didn't expect this to travel. just so its CLEAR. THIS ISN'T A TRANSCRIPT. only my taking notes on what Gordon said (or what I heard him say) in his weekly airing and the interview in the McAlvaney report. plus of course, a little teeny weeny bit of my "other" info thrown in. i just wanted something to share with friends in my last minute attempt to get them to think about this.

-- tt (applpie@aol.com), November 21, 1999.

tt;

That was pretty clear in the opening. AND THANK YOU for the effort. Nothing that large is as easy as it looks.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), November 21, 1999.

----OK, I have a question, those 200 THOUSAND puter virii, where the heck does this come from, and what does it mean? there are credible estimates of 200 thousand DIFFERENT virii residing and lurking on zillions of puters and systems all over, or is the estimate that about 200 thousand puters are infected, or what? seems to me 200,000 unknown virii all over and undetected would be staggeringly worse than any possible y2k related failures. so what's the scoop there?

thanks in advance

zog the wondering

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), November 21, 1999.

VERY interesting!!!!! thanks.

only one thing left to say

LAST ONE TO WAL_MART IS A ROTTEN EGG!!!

-- bob brock (bb@myhouse.com), November 21, 1999.

Rainbow and tt, Thank you thank you for going to such lengths to bring this report to us.

The remarks about the non-mission critical systems were of particular interest to me. Spending billions of dollars to remediate approximately 3% of systems defined as mission critical has always seemed like it left a potentially disasterous wildcard. Either the remaining 97% have received sufficient remediation, or they were not needed in the first place, or there are manual workarounds (and the trained staffing necessary)to replace them for the forseeable future. It seems to me that IF enough mission criticals perform with enough reliability to sustain our global system, completing the 97% non-mission critical remediation could still precipitate an economic meltdown. How much will it cost to actually complete the remediation? That may be a best-case scenario that relies on the assumption that a high percentage of those non-criticals have been categorized correctly.

Also, I was surprised by the comment that the IRS would be going to PC's to process returns. I have read that they would be going manual to process refunds. As bad as that sounded, it is still a horse of a different color. Is this information about the processing of returns correct, or is it new information?

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), November 21, 1999.