"The sky is the limit when it comes to what might happen," said Peter de Jager, a Canadian computer consultant who was among the first to sound the Y2K alarm. "There will be a handful of what can only be described as catastrophic problems around the world."

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGI9T6GGT2C.html

Covering the bases there Peter?

-- C (c@c.com), December 29, 1999

Answers

Sounds like he's circling all the bases... backwards doing the Curly shuffle all the way around.

-- Curly Shuffle (CurlyShuffling@incircles.gom), December 29, 1999.

He gives

SLIMEY TOADS

a bad name!!!

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), December 29, 1999.

Hummmm...

Hey Peter, how many catastrophic failures can you fit in a hand?

Or, how many feet in one mouth?

-- C (c@c.com), December 29, 1999.

And this is coming from the guy who almost singlehandly stopped the prep movement this spring with his "Y2K Back is Broken" essay.

Sold your site for a cool million yet? Blasted Gary North for his web site, which was free and never carried an single ad for his newsletter.

Infomagic was right all along,....it's going to be a "10."

-- Sure M. Worried (SureMWorried@bout.Y2K.coming), December 29, 1999.

I believe I heard on Y2K News Radio that this turkey, deJager, was going to be in the air on a trans-Atlantic flight to Europe at midnight 12/31/99 going into the rollover supposedly sipping champaign. Then after a five hour layover, he'll return to North America.

Well, it sounds to me like he is going first class. I wonder who is paying him to do this?

-- Lurkess (Lurkess@Lurking.Net), December 29, 1999.

My, the viciousness of attacks against those who have wavered in the One True Faith.

Just how *do* you go about describing a situation of very many mostly manageable problems, with notable exceptions? And how do you explain that this is what you consider most likely, within a fairly wide range since (as Ed Yourdon puts it) there are so many unknown unknowns?

Gotta give Yourdon some credit here. In all his writings, he has strongly implied that most things will work correctly, but he's been careful never to come right out and say this. And at least this audience cannot see those implications, although they're excellent at reading catastrophe between the lines, *no matter what* those lines actually say.

And if we *do* have mostly manageable problems with notable exceptions, *exactly* as deJager has predicted, I fully expect those here will compile a list of the exceptions to "prove" that deJager and all of the other heathens were wrong.

There's no doubt we've made a huge dent in the problem, nor is there any doubt that we didn't come all that close to solving it either. We've turned a paraplegic into someone who can walk on crutches, slowly.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 29, 1999.

mmmm...de Jager waffles, yummy!

-- Nahan (nospam@all.com), December 29, 1999.

"We've turned a paraplegic into someone who can walk on crutches, slowly."

Sound almost doomer there Flint :)

I think the offense myself and many others have taken with the presentations of de Jagers spin, is that his change in atitude was taken by the polly prone as an all clear signal, and resulted in many people choosing not to prep for the possibility that one of the catastrophic failures from that handful would happen in their backyards.

Yes, we've taken the paraplegic and gotten him up on crutches, but he's still standing in the middle of the train track, and the trains a coming. Better to have rolled him off the tracks in his wheelchair first, then worried about physical therapy, don't you think?

-- C (c@c.com), December 29, 1999.