It was what I expected. Bennett says things are much better than they were. Nearly everything has been fixed. Only 2/10 of a percent of embeddeds will fail. Koskinen has done a wonderful job. Later, in a segment unrelated to Y2K, the hosts asked him about the economy. He discussed the business cycle, but said absolutely nothing about any effects from Y2K. I guess there won't be any.

What a crew of turds.

-- Pearlie Sweetcake (storestuff@home.now), December 11, 1999

Answers

Punch line coming in 3 weeks

-- only 20 days (r@u.ready?), December 11, 1999.

I would REALLY like to believe the computer thing will be a "bump in the road" but no matter how much I close my eyes and wish it wasn't so, the facts of the matter point closer to a 10 than a 1. I guess they probably have an end of the year campaign in progress to prevent massive panic.

How will these people ever be able to live with themselves.

-- Psychotic (y2k@doom&gloom.com), December 11, 1999.

Bennett also said that Chairman Greenspan wants all Congressmen to have iridium phones on New Year's eve in case the government has to get in touch with them for something heroic. Then they broke for commercial and did not follow that one up.

-- aerie (eagles@nest.com), December 11, 1999.

psychotic, according to the Y2K Scale at: http://www.wdcy2k.org/survey/survey99/

We're already at a level 2. It would be more correct to say that the facts point more to a 10 than a 2. :-)

-- Clyde (clydeblalock@hotmail.com), December 11, 1999.

Hi, Psychotic, I recall a thread 2 weeks ago which stated we are already in the BITR phase. With the arrest of 2 alleged terrorists here in Sacramento, I realized we were already edging into "4" territory at the beginning of December. Hate to see what the end of next month will look like. I am still hoping for a mere 5 or 6 outcome, but with less confidence now and am continuing to stock up on water. Yikes.

-- Margaret J (janssm@aol.com), December 11, 1999.

Just finished watching Sen. Bob "Doubletalking" Bennett on CNN's Evans & Novak this eve. This guy doesn't realize it but his attempts to "calm the waters" through his clueless Logical Disconnects is inadvertently shocking. The 2nd last paragraph is most interesting (and frightening).

Here are some of his gems (paraphrased):

On imbedded chips: "We only think no more then .5 % will fail. But not to worry since even if the chips fail due to date failure, the hardware they control will probably work OK."

On where he will be spending New Years Eve: " With the Utah Gov. at his Command Center." (AKA Bunker).

On what he will be doing there: " Fed Reserve Chairman Greenspan has given me an Irridium Sat. phone so he can keep in touch with me (and others) in case the Fed Reserve has to take emergency "heroic" measures."

This completly confirms what so many have suspected....that the PRIMARY concern of the Fed Govt is to protect the Banking System - not prepare the general population.
flw

-- csy2k (csy2k@csy2k.csy2k), December 11, 1999.

Another mind-blower was his remarks about russia. I mean if it wasnt enough to convey the rest of the world is hurting and not to admit the effect on the good ole US of A.

Bennett says Russia will go down completely, but they are already down completely so they wont even notice.

Did I really hear a Senator of the United States make this comment? When he is sorely aware that if GAZPROM goes down people will freeze to death!!

Beyond surreal!!!

-- d----- (dciinc@aol.com), December 11, 1999.

"Bennett says Russia will go down completely, but they are already down completely so they wont even notice".

I'm not really anxious to hear a lot of this talk coming from Washington at this point in time. If the Russians believe that we believe their world will crumble, some of the old guard hard-liners in the military may just decide they want company at the bottom of the heap. Not a good move to antagonize the bears...

-- Don Kulha (dkulha@vom.com), December 11, 1999.

Hmmm. Do you love him or hate him? Bennett, the oft quoted Senator, is now panned because he has seemingly softened his stance. This was true of DeJager before him. Folks, you are becoming too predictable.

But there is no escaping the above concerns about Mother Russia. I wonder how many systems they had up and running, anyway, but I don't doubt the Russian hardliners, with people like Zherenovsky, weren't oo happy with the way the Russian Government was going anyway what with the mob in charge, a splintered empire, mass ecnomic problems and the like. Indeed, if they are already a shambles, what do they have to lose by pushing the political, economic and militarial envelope to advance their cause?

-- Bad Company (johnny@shootingstar.com), December 11, 1999.

Credibility is a stepping stone to viability.

-- Cloud William (ours@gain.com), December 12, 1999.

Bad Company. No, most of us do not 'hate' or 'like' people like Bennett. The distaste I have for the man at this time is that for all the time he was tooting the grim scenario horn, he HAD THE FIGURES. Now that he has 'softened' his scenarios, they don't release any data to back up the justification for downgrading the risk. The GAO still hasn't softened their interpretation of the potential problems. I do believe that the 'spin' is in place. "Listen, Bob. You DO want to have a country left after this, don't you? Then spout the company line or you're out in the cold".

20 days and we will have some concrete knowledge at least.

-- Lobo (atthelair@yahoo.com), December 12, 1999.

I'm not saying that I AGREE with Senator Bennett's current stance, but I think I understand. By now, anything Bennett says that remotely smacks of negativity would be promptly followed by mass panic or opportunistic terrorist attacks. It's really too late at this point for personal preparation, for the most part. Admitting US weakness to the world is like giving Saddam a green light into Saudi Arabia and giving hundreds of psycho, Tim McVeigh types a free ticket to the revolution. If everbody decided to run the stores today, the amount of food now available per person (post new years) would be less than what would be available at a public shelter or GI family member's house. So Bennett is clealy in panic prevention mode not y2k planning mode.

-- coprolith (coprolith@fakemail.com), December 12, 1999.

"Only 2/10 of a percent of embeddeds will fail."

That's worse than I expected. If we take the low estimate of 25 billion existing chips, and 2/10 of a percent fail, that is 50 million failures. Sheeesh. How did he arrive at that percentage? Are there really that many date-sensitive chips?

Don,

Yeltsin is a big fat drunk idiot. The New World Order probably won't even have to take him out because his own staff is undoubtedly already giving it serious consideration. I say he is dead meat within 3 months.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), December 12, 1999.

LMAO !!!!! Who gives a flying fuck what Bennety says.... or anyone as far as that goes !!!! The chips don't care, and the software don't care, and that is the rub..... We have done what could be done in the small amount of time we gave ourselves, and we will live the results of our short sightedness.... end of story.... or maybe the beginning of a new one.

-- CT (ct@no.yr), December 12, 1999.

19 days and it starts for real.

coprolith, you're right. It doesn't matter at this point except causing panic may well cost more lives than the news would save. Or it could be that WJC just wants everybody to have a nice Christmas and doesn't want to ruin it for us.8>) Yeah, I know. Fat chance.

I guess I'm just a bit cranky about all this. The government started spinning to me in 1960 and hasn't stopped. Sometimes worse than others and sometimes very little at all. I guess I'm like most Americans that read, I'm just tired of the bull. I wish they would tell us the truth BEFORE it jumped up and smacked us in the butt. (like the C3 structure in VN and the way the field guys had to guess all the time).

-- Lobo (atthelair@yahoo.com), December 12, 1999.

coprolith,

I also agree with you. Way too late for telling the truth.

--- 19 days, 15 hours, 23 minutes Eastern Standard Time

-- the Virginian (1@1.com), December 12, 1999.

I was fence sitting about going to COSTCO today, thanks beenett, you helped me decide to brave the "holiday shopping" mess, and strike out on a dangerous and perilous journey for supplies.

;-)

-- gotmilk? (karlacalif@aol.com), December 12, 1999.

It is obvious that both parties and all branches of the government have decided to present a unified position on y2k. Thats really all they can do at this point. Next year they will be concentrating their efforts on making excuses and blaming y2k problems on factors which they could not forsee, such at hackers, terrorists, etc. They may even accuse programmers of deliberately planting defective code.

-- Dave (dannco@hotmail.com), December 12, 1999.