There is not going to be a major Y2k problem in the business computers of America. Why? Look around. The reports so far have been insignificant. Where are all the failures that even the Gartner Group said would occur by now? They haven't happened.

I'm big time prepared but I am beginning to think we are going to have some supply chain problems from off shore and that will be about it. The rest will be not much different than normal.

Let's quit trying to convince our pessimistic selves that this is TEOTWAWKI. It an't gonna happen because of computer failures.

-- Y2k Student (cai@flash.net), December 18, 1999

Answers

I sure hope so... but remember that people are needed to solve these problems. And people make mistakes. Besides.. didn't the off shore countries buy (or steal) our old technology/software?

-- Silent Observer (cline@e-mail.com), December 18, 1999.

Troll Alert!!

But anyway, I hope you are preparing even though you make stupid posts like this.

-- Psychotic (y2k@doom&gloom.com), December 18, 1999.

Amazing...FOX disagrees with YOU now!

I saw Part 5 of FOX's Y2K series last night. The best I've seen to date. Footage of engineers searching for embedded chips in embedded systems. Looked as complex as I imagined it would be.

Between December 26 and January 2, the herd is going to wake up. When they do, every grocery store shelf in the US will be cleaned out. Empty. Nothing left.

-- GoldReal (GoldReal@aol.com), December 18, 1999.

Y2k Student, since your prepared big time, you have that part of the equation covered. But don't be in too big of a hurry to dismiss the effects of the rollover yet. There are some very good recent discussions concerning this question. At this point, it is a good time, to be patient and aware. Relax, we will all know more about how this will unwind soon enough.

If someone can remember the recent thread concerning where the rollover may go, could you post it. I think BigDog initiated it. If I weren't so sleepy (worked all night last night) I would try to find it.

-- snooze button (alarmclock_2000@yahoo.com), December 18, 1999.

Hey Psychotic. You may think it was a dumb post. Try this on. I have managed a software consulting company that has been doing business computer system remediation since July of 1996. I have been a student of this subject (probably 2,000 hours) at almost every level. How about you?

GoldReal - I said "business computer systems", not embedds. We are not going to see the "mainframe" failures that Hamasaki talks about because they haven't happened yet. They should have in big ways in every manufacturing company of $100 million and sales and larger. I know what I am talking about.

No troll my friends, just honest.

-- Y2k Student (cai@flash.net), December 18, 1999.

Y2K Student,

In some respects, I will agree with you. But if off shore supply lines are interrupted and gas goes to $3.00 a gallon then how much does bread go up? A recession like the one in 1973/74 was serious. There were gas lines and rationing. Many people lost their jobs. Businesses closed. Home loans were sold at 20% interest. This as the result of an energy crunch. (And it makes no difference if you think it was engineered or not, the results were the same.) Now take that fuel shortage and add other items that are imported, i.e. fruits and vegetables, electronics, furniture, raw materials for production of products here at home. You don't think that may change your life? If you lose your job or your source of income, you will be happy you have food. It is awfully earlier to be so sure.

-- UR2Blame (upower@jps.net), December 18, 1999.

"I'm big time prepared but I am beginning to think we are going to have some supply chain problems from off shore and that will be about it."

Whatever happened to the benefits of globalization? It works the other way, too. If you mean that "that's about it" means no big deal, consider this:

1. Imports: our imports come from (maybe) noncompliant countries-oil (Venezuela), coffee (South America), computer motherboards (Taiwan), electronics (Japan via the Far East), chocolate (Ivory Coast?), clothes (Far East), spare parts for autos and other industries (many from Far East), rubber (Malaysia?), Platinum (Russia?) and Chemicals/drugs (Germany and Switzerland). This list, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg.

2. Follow-through effects: isn't plastic made from oil; aren't tires made from rubber? How many US companies will go bankrupt because they can't get the materials they need, or export their products? What will happen to the economies of cities that are heavily dependent on foreign trade (LA, NY City, Seattle, New Orleans, etc.)?

3. Exports- Can we export next year's grain to non-compliant countries? Can they pay for it?

4. US Dollar debt- Many non-compliant countries (like Russia) have borrowed money from US banks and the IMF. What will happen to the loans if these countries have severe problems and can't pay? Will our banks fail because of it? If you consider that most of the dollars in the world are "debt dollars" instead of "cash dollars", the implications can be pretty scary.

Just food for thought. These scenarios scare me more than local problems. Learn to connect the dots.

-- impala (impala@wild.com), December 18, 1999.

Looks like some of you y2k crazies are beginning to recover your sanity. Empty shelves on Dec. 26? Can't wait to see yet another prediction bite the big one. We'll be back to laugh at you on 12/27.

-- weare (laughing@you.com), December 18, 1999.

It hurts that anyone would be this callous. Here we are with just literally days until our society is about to implode, and we see comments like this. It's not going to look so easy when people are dying by the thousands due to lack of heat, water, and food. May God help those who manage to survive, and I hope we don't envy those who didn't.

-- MaryBeth (preparefor@theworst.com), December 18, 1999.

"Student"

Wait till about mid-March and then repost this particular pearl of wisdom of yours...if you can.

-- Ludi (ludi@rollin.com), December 18, 1999.

Y2k Student,

Failures *have* been increasing it's just you don't know about it because companies don't issue press releases saying "We had a catastrophic computer failure today due to our Y2K remediation or lack thereof". They try and handle it as best they can before it becomes obvious to the outside world.

What Gartner did say recently was that companies are just about at the saturation point in terms of their ability to handle the increased load. Beginning in January that load will increase *substantially* when all that 'fixed' code runs for the FIRST time with the REAL date in the REAL world.

It would take an actual and literal "Act Of God" to make all that code work first time out of the gate...

-TECH32-

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), December 18, 1999.

Goldreal, That 5 part FOX report was taped in mid-December of '98. It originally aired in January of '99. It is not based on current info.

-- for real (for@real.com), December 18, 1999.

"Here we are with just literally days until our society is about to implode, and we see comments like this. It's not going to look so easy when people are dying by the thousands due to lack of heat, water, and food."

Dear MaryBeth:

Society will implode? People dying by the thousands?

You seem 100% certain that this will happen. Why? What inside knowledge do you have that I don't?

Because the worldwide y2k problem is so complex, I believe that nobody knows exactly what will happen, and that includes you. It's your doomer mentality of certainty that gives the rest of us rational people a bad name.

-- impala (impala@wild.com), December 18, 1999.

"Let's quit trying to convince our pessimistic selves that this is TEOTWAWKI. It an't gonna happen because of computer failures"

Your problem is that you don't recognize the steps that lie between BITR and TEOTWAWKI. How many people here do you find who are convinced of TEOTWAWKI?

Supply problems -- yes. Do you wear clothes? Clothes made where? Do you drive? Where is the raw crude produced? Where are the refineries?

student, we live in an analog -- non-digital -- world. There are shades of grey, not just balck and white, not just BITR and TEOTWAWKI. We can suffer a lot of hurt without seeing TEOTWAWKI. Many can die as a result of Y2K failures before we reach that stage.

This a poor student who doesn't know his subject.

-- (4@5.6), December 18, 1999.

Y2k Student,

I couldn't agree more.

Doug

-- Doug (Doug@itsover.com), December 18, 1999.

for real,

As the first reports of power and telcom failures from around the world begin to pour into the US on December 31, the herd will bolt for the stores.

It's going to happen.

You can't stop it.

-- GoldReal (GoldReal@aol.com), December 18, 1999.

Y2K Student, thanks for the sane posting and the rendering of your background. I am not sure that y2k will be anything more than glitches and inconveniences, but it never ceases to amaze me that the doomlits love making predictions:

--panic in the stores beginning on December 26 --pandemonium by mid-March.

Haven't you folks had enough? Your track record would've gotten you fired at any corporation that relies on forecasts and the like.

Get over it.

-- Bad Company (johnny@shootingstar.com), December 18, 1999.

This is my kind of thread. Congrats Student. Deserved or not I offer kudos for your framing an opinion that didn't invite our resident disrupters. Me, I'm in the UR2Blame/TECH32 camp.

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), December 18, 1999.

...problems from offshore and that will be about it". I love it! Reminds me of the 1st beer I ordered in Bermuda."what kind of imported beer you got there bartender?" Reply given (dryly) "It is ALL imported sir, what kind would you like". I never forgot the lesson. Got "Made in the U.S.A." labels to stick on everything?

on de rock

-- Walter (on de rock@northrock.bm), December 18, 1999.

I does seem odd that we could reach this late date and everything still be so normal and placid. Even Ed Yourdon has been a bit equivocal about his "indicator dates" of Jan 1 1999, April 1, July 1, etc. He hasn't gone quite so far as to say (as many here have) that if bad things had happened at those times, it indicated bad times in 2000, whereas if nothing happened then those dates were meaningless. Ed has said, well, maybe they *really were* indicators, and *really did* indicate the problem was overblown. But nahhh, not likely.

So why no problems to speak of? We have several theories:

1) The problems are happening, but so far they have (barely) been kept hidden. Another straw and the camel's back will break.

2) The problems aren't happening because it's the wrong year, and lookahead code is both rare and noncritical. A corrolary to this one is that new implementations aren't a big deal, and remediated code either isn't being returned to production, or has not encountered the important dates yet (which remediation missed, which was never tested to discover this, etc.)

3) The real problems are in embedded systems, which don't look ahead and have very short time horizons. January 1 will be a doozy.

4) Problems are happening which have been corrupting data surreptitiously, and we'll suffer the results later.

It seems clear that public behavior hasn't changed (no panic) much because there have been no celebrity failures to trigger any mass attitude change. Hence no ancillary issues like bank runs, price increases, shortages, etc. And the millions of geeks being paid these hundreds of billions of remediation dollars are simply not acting in enough concert to create any visible changes.

Clearly, for Big Problems to happen, Gartner Group and others (who mapped errors across a long timespan, and estimated only a bit more than half would be encountered after rollover) must have missed the boat completely, for reasons unknown.

Whatever the case, it's clear the pessimistic camp has had to continually repaint their picture of this calamity, since reality has been so damnably uncooperative so far.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 18, 1999.

Quoting Y2K student, "There is not going to be a major Y2k problem in the business computers of America."

That's generalizing the situation. That shouldn't be done. Maybe you mean large corporations will be relatively unaffected? Small business has a range of computers as well.

There are too many bubbas out there that maintain a philosophy of, "If it ain't broken, then don't fix it." Also there are a HUMONGOUS group of people out there that believe Y2K is a hoax of which a sizeable number of these people are small to intermediate business owners with computers.

Tell me, Y2K student if you can't agree with the preceding paragraph. Then ask yourself again, is your above highlighted statement valid? The largest employer in the U.S. are small businesses. Perhaps employment will go even lower because so many businesses have to resort to a manual method?

-- Guy Daley (guydaley@bwn.net), December 18, 1999.

Okay. It's about 6 hours later and having had lots of time to think it over, I still think you're wierd. Plus I guess I would think a student would know that the word is spelled "ain't" not "an't." Are you really a student?

-- Psychotic (y2k@doom&gloom.com), December 18, 1999.

El student

"I'm big time prepared but I am beginning to think we are going to have some supply chain problems from off shore and that will be about it."

"...but I am begining to think"

We're all happy you could share this touching personal moment with us. But those of us with enough grey matter to sneeze can see that this is about as transparent a statement as most of the trolls who come in relating their personal metamorphosis.

Are you really lady logic? Do you reconize the following statement?

"Fossil fuels are really fossil fuels."

-- gary (a@a.com), December 18, 1999.

Is that a chicken or an egg your counting?

-- PD (PaulDMaher@att.worldnet.com), December 18, 1999.

Nothing is going to happen. Period.

-- this is a load of (bs@bs.org), December 18, 1999.

LL:

You aren't being teased for saying something silly. You're being teased for saying something silly *and* holding the "wrong" opinion. If you were to start wailing about how the world is about to come crashing down around us, you could make as many stupid statements as you could type, and nobody would mention it.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 18, 1999.

Cherri, Sorry, I am seeing the economic "thing" happening. Gas prices going up, just like in the 70's. Food prices, are souring. Maybe you have more expendable cash than most of the work force. It is happening, go into the trenches, the low price food stores, the Dollar Stores. It is going on. And it is "BIG" and it is "UGLY".And if one hungry person comes to your gate, and you turn them away, Heaven Help yourself.

-- Outside Trenches (Sumpin@happeninghere.com), December 18, 1999.

LL: In the spirit of Christmas I will refrain from repeating that quote.

Flint: You misrepresent me (perhaps resent me (g)) sir.

I was not teasing because someone held the wrong opinion. I was teasing because the post of Y2K Student reminded me of other laughable transformations we are made to witness on this forum.

Y2K Student entitles his post "Wake up everyone - Its not happening." Then he goes on and offers up this jem "I'm begining to think." Begining to think, heck. He concluded!!!

His original premise is "There is not going to be a major Y2k problem in the business computers of America." That's alot of computers that won't be having a major problem. Did he inspect them all or cause them to be inspected.

Later on in the thread Y2K Student declares "I have managed a software consulting company". Well move over Mr. CEO here comes Mr. Software Consulting Manager who is now "begining to think."

This guy is obviously "role playing" or has flights of fancy on the internet. If some one wants to believe that Y2K is a BITR fine. This is the USA. You get to say what you think. And, when you post that same opinion on an internet forum devoted to Y2K preparedness, etc. be prepared to recieve some flak. Don't just scold people like Gomer Pile "shame, shame, shame."

Make it worth the price my ISP is chargin' for Heaven's sake.

-- gary (a@a.com), December 18, 1999.

gary:

Maybe he is just beginning to think. But nearly everyone here appears to form their conclusions before they start to think, and their thinking consists largely of justifications for those conclusions. Why should y2k student be any different?

In any case, he's right that nothing much is happening. I wrote about that in some detail above, but bottom line is he's right. Efforts to find impacts so far are just grasping at straws. Food prices going up? Haven't seen that here. Gasoline prices went up 25 cents a gallon here a while back, now they've dropped 5 cents.

But hell, grab any random newspaper, anytime in the last 50 years. Before you read it, claim extraordinary problems were happening at that time. THEN read the newspaper. Amazing! you were right! Isn't it curious how your convictions determine your perceptions?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 18, 1999.

Flint: I agree with you on the convictions / perceptions part (very insightful!!). I don't believe Y2K is going precipitate like an Arnold action movie with burning cities and stock brokers leaping to their death. If it does I live far enough out (in the country) to have a repectable chance!!

I won't bore you with the details but I subsrcibe to the Yardeni (sp) scenario - recession followed by a return to "irrational exuberence".

Merry Christmas!! And may I be the first on this forum to wish you a Happy New Year.

LL: "Thanks" will do fine.

-- gary (a@a.com), December 18, 1999.

Bad compny: You are an idiot. All of the predictions made concerning pre-1/1/2000 were based on how we expected people( sheeple) to react to news of y2k failures. Becasue of the actions of that traitor, Klintoon, who has sold all of our trechnology and secrets to our enemies, as well as handed over the panama canal, to the communist chineese, as well as the lies perpetrated by the corperation-controlled-un-free press, any chance for truth and honesty is now gone, which makes the resulting panic several orders of magnitude worse than in needed to be. Y2k plays into the hands of our enemies, who know that our stock market, and most of our government are based on frauds that must eventually collapse. Of corse you belive that the dow should be at 36,000 or 100,000 or whatever, and that companies don't need to really turn a profit in order to be a good investment, and that the chinesse are our friends, and that lies about sex don't matter becase Sick-Slick has kept the dow high and it's all about the economy,stupid; honor doesn't matter, and the people at waco were waccos, and they deserved what they got for trying to live free, and blah blah blah blah, Klintoon is our god, come to save us from the "vast right wing conspiracy", blah blah. People like you are the reason that this country is doomed, that it can't be saved. You've let us be sold out to our enimies and turned a blind eye so that you could have a good stock market, and a "prosperous economy", in which we are stripping ourselves bare in order to pay for our current happiness. YOU ARE A FOOL, and you will soon reap what you sow!

-- Crono (Crono@timesend.com), December 19, 1999.

The "reports so far" aren't insignificant to anyone who's ill or on welfare. Or are those people insignificant?

Besides, there's no investigative reporting. All that we are hearing is PR spin and some reluctant admissions. No one's going to report failure until it's impossible to cover it up.

-- Servant (public_service@yahoo.com), December 20, 1999.

Hey student,

Since YOU have done this, and YOU have done that, it's good that YOUR little psrt of the computer world is going to be OK.

I'm a bit to a student myself. Programming has been my job, and my hobby for almost 32 years. MY little part isn't going so well. We are in deep stuff just trying to get a MINIMUM system up and running on "new technology." There will be quite a few features not on the new system that were on the old, when it goes production. These will be added over the next year. All a direct result of Y2K.

As for what has and hasn't happened already, only a tiny percentage of the total number of programs that have a date problem, do any sort of look ahead processing, and we have seen some failures, in just that tiny part.

It ain't Y2K yet...

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

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), December 20, 1999.