What's really wierd is...

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

the fact the even the government's predictions of a 3 day hurricane or blizzard were overblown. Or so it seems at present. Didn't the U.S even call home their diplomats from Russia because of the liklihood of problems there? What about all the Y2K command bunkers that officials were supposedly hunkered down in? What was that all about? I wonder if they feel foolish? You think you feel silly for spending a few hundred or a few thousand dollars to prep? How about the $50,000,000 command bunker a few blocks from the White House. Maybe they can turn it into a museum or something.

It is as if the 3 day storm that the weatherman was predicting veered out to sea. I ain't buying it yet though. I think it's going to be one of those deals where the storm intensifys and does a loopty-loo and heads back toward landfall. Basically all that we know at this point is that the so-called embedded systems are okay, apparently. That was always the most controversial part of the equation anyway. The real danger awaits in the coming week when banks and financial institutions gear up for business as usual. Remember, it only takes one big financial institution to go down to drag the whole system down. Are we to believe that every bank, brokerage, and clearing house in the world has an error-free system? That is incredible. And we are not talking about ATMs here. What we are facing next week, is whether the global financial system will be able to continue to turnover the 2 trillion dollar a-day roullette wheel. Any substantial disruption for more then a few days and there will be a crash. Then the domino effect will begin. So at that point the ATM machince might have power, and it may not be spitting out money as some comedians suggested; instead, it will just say: "SORRY BUT THIS BANK NO LONGER EXISTS." But the good thing is that if that happens, people won't have to go home to sit in a cold dark house.

-- O Yeah? (worldpage@aol.com), January 01, 2000

Answers

From the techs I talked to doing embedded work at dod and nasa, there is no reason to believe that all embeddeds are ok if we don't see immediate failures at rollover. some systems may loop for days and searching for date before failing ... many have been shut down before roll and we won't have info till they are restarted ...and what about leap year? Then there's the fix on failure and not report it thing.

-- Don't (count@yourchikens.yet), January 01, 2000.

Um.... duh, but THEY didn't spend a dime for anything. You and I flipped the bill for the preparations and bunkers... remember a little thing called April 15, tax time?

You think any of them are going to feel one iota of regret spending our money?

-- (it's@all.our money), January 01, 2000.


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