Lord is a B.S.'er....plain and simple...

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

Heard the interview today and sounded like a bunch of manufactured hooey. There is no Mr. CEO. Accept it. Y2K will be and has been nothing more than an opportunity for the doom and gloomers to make money off of innocent people who are naive and genuinely concerned about the well being of their families. It is a damn shame, too. These people (North, Anderson, Yourdon, Lord, Macalvany) are guys who up until this Y2K issue were life long failures. This was and will continue to be their meal ticket. Don't you think if Y2K WAS a LEGITIMATE ISSUE, that real and well known business entities would be capitalizing off of the opportunity if there was one??? Just think about it all....

-- Paul Wilson (paul5@tynak.net), December 01, 1999

Answers

No doubt you'll be flamed for this, Paul or some moron will send a little picture of a troll to act as a response, but you've hit the nail squarely on the head with this posting. The new emphasis of the doom camp is to give itself some sort of validation before it continues onward via the oblivion express. Well put, indeed.

-- Bad Company (johnny@shootingstar.com), December 01, 1999.

Mr. Wilson, would you be so kind as to respond with the knowledge you have of the careers, wealth, status, reputation, respect in the community etc. of the people you site so we can make a proper judgement of the truth of falsity of your remark of them being life long failures. Perhaps include your own place in society for comparison.

Thank you...

-- Rancherdick (cowman@meadowmuffin.com), December 01, 1999.


Troll. This post will just attract a well meaning defense of the above named and respected individuals. The troll will make the predictable remarks, and we will be off to the races again. It will just be another pissing contest that will tarnish the reputations of each named person. With 29 days to go, who needs it.

Delete, please.

Sincerely,

-- Uhhmm.. (JFCP81A@aol.com), December 01, 1999.


"There is not Mr. CEO" - prove it please.

"...life long failures" - in whose opinion? Yours? Prove it please.

"real and well known businesses..." - come to Prince George, BC, Canada and call me at (250) 614-1172. I'll meet you and give you a guided tour of the well known businesses in my city of 80,000+ who are stocking up on extra kit for the rollover. I'll introduce you to three different store managers who'll gladly explain the concept of supply and demand to you.

Troll.

-- (Kurt.Borzel@gems8.gov.bc.ca), December 01, 1999.


Typical troll character assassination. We'll see in a month who the real BSer's were...

-- Nabi (nabi7@yahoo.com), December 01, 1999.


Mr. Wilson. (I suppose that I will have to play Dennis).

Would real and well known entities try to suck up some of the money if y2k were real? You're dang right they would. To answer your question, I'll ask one. How many remediation firms are showing a 250% increase in business? How do you suppose the REAL AND WELL KNOWN entities spent the 100 Billon that has been spent on y2k so far?? I doubt very seriously that IBM or Wells Fargo spent their funds on rice and beans. SOMEBODY made money off them. Maybe if you investigate who got rich from the remediation efforts of the Fortune 500, YOU could be famous as the one that uncovered the y2k scam.

-- obo (atthelair@yahoo.com), December 01, 1999.


Yup. You forgot to include the Senate, House, FBI, GartnerGroup, IBM, the IEEE, and countless others on your list, though. They're all lifelong losers out for a quick buck, too. Otherwise, Mr. Wilson's observations are the best damn summary of Y2k I've ever seen.

Just thinking about it all...

-- Steve (hartsman@ticon.net), December 01, 1999.


Here we go again, some cartoon character living in a fantasy world! If all the CEO's of America had just listened to Paul then they could have saved 100 Billion dollars.

If just ONE of Paul's insights could have saved the country $100 bill, then why haven't I read about his fortunes and empires in the Wallstreet Journal, pray tell?

After all, intelligence coorelates with success. (Oh, hey, I guess that answers my question...)

-- Baffled in (nn@va.com), December 01, 1999.


---

Paul Wilson you will soon find out the error of your ways.

And this post, you will regret. You are wrong.

Your clock is ticking. You don't have long to wait.

---

-- snooze button (alarmclock_2000@yahoo.com), December 01, 1999.


Paul, I don't think I like you.

-- Psychotic (y2k@doom&gloom.com), December 01, 1999.


Paul, Please read the study referred to in this thread:

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

This may change your point of view.

Night train

-- jes an ol footballer (nighttr@in.lane), December 01, 1999.

I listened to Jim Lord on the radio today give an explanation of why Mr. CEO backed out. Boils down to this if I may attempt to paraphrase. 1)Too many jobs are on the line as well as stock holders to consider. 2)CEO also has some sort of non-disclosure agreement which he has signed and must abide by. 3)CEO does not own the company. 4)Last reason but not least is the fact that most people who are going to prepare have already done so. There are not that many fence sitters at this point in time to worry about. Most people have already taken a position one way or another on Y2K. It will either be significant or it will be a BITR.

I have to say, it makes cents to me. At this point, I would tell Mr. CEO to keep his mouth shut. It's too late in the game. Smoke? Does anybody smell smoke? Hey, psst, don't tell anybody but this place is on fire. I'm heading for the exit.

-- S. David Bays (SDBAYS@prodigy.net), December 01, 1999.


"life long failures"

OK, we all know that Gary North has always been a little wacky. I respect him for one reason only, his links. I don't know much about the history of the other folks that you mentioned. But I do know a little about Ed Yourdon. Maybe you should check out his bio before you post this crap.

None of the above have $.01 of my money. I'm concerned about Y2K because I've been programming computers for 31+ years. I'm a tech support guy, and I deal with screwed up programs just about every day of my life. I know what the result of a failed production run can be. I don't know, and haven't dealt with, Y2K yet.

I don't give a shit about Mr. CEO. I care about my CEO, the guy that signs my paycheck. He is also very concerned about Y2K. I can't blame him.

Tick... Tock... <:00=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), December 01, 1999.


Mr. CEO may very well be real. But until such time as as more information becomes available, we can't really treat him as real - at least with respect to ongoing risk analysis.

Gary North has provided those who are interested with one hell of a Y2K research library. He has put a tremendous amount of time and effort into this resource. He doesn't charge a fee for access, at least not a monetary fee. What Gary does do is add his own commentary. You are not required to read his commentary - you can simply click through and go read the information for yourself.

Sometimes the links that Gary provides take you to important and useful information. Sometimes these links take you blind alleys and dead ends. Gary is a collector and interpretter of this information. He is not an investigative journalist.

For the time being anyway, this link has brought us to a dead end. We need to move on to other things.

While I respect what Gary North has done in terms of ringing the alarm bells and providing a research starting point, I do not always agree with his interpretation on the information he provides nor do I share his vision of a perfect future. But I suspect that neither one of us loose much sleep over that fact.

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), December 02, 1999.


Paul --

Don't know about any of the others, but Ed Yourdon can *hardly* be characterized as a 'life-long failure' whose meal-ticket was Y2K. Mr. Yourdon is a *HIGHLY* respected software engineering pioneer, who has published a number of excellent works on software engineering.

Having given the lie to one aspect of your post, I will now point out that the issue is software. Broken software. Software which will not work after the first of the year.

Software, which moreover, has been altered, extensively, and not been tested.

Now, I suspect, from your lack of knowledge of Mr. Yourdon's background, that you are *not* a software engineer, but in the profession, there is a term for what is going to happen on Jan. 1. When you develop a system, or make massive changes to an existing system, (which is what Y2K remediation looks like), and you then do a modicum of unit testing, mostly the 'normal' branches, and then you hook up the whole system and cut it loose, this is called (are you ready for a 'technical term'?), a "Smoke Test". It is called this because the first 4 or 5 tries mainly produces a lot of smoke as you burn stuff up. (Actually, this is sometimes used as a debugging technique, as in: 'See where the most smoke comes from and assume that this is the first priority fix.').

Well, Jan. 1, 2000 is going to be the single *BIGGEST* 'Smoke Test' that we have ever done. Largest scale, largest gamble.

-- just another (another@engineer.com), December 02, 1999.



Please delete this troll!

-- (brett@miklos.org), December 02, 1999.

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