Y2K "the greatest con trick that was ever foisted upon business" says Aussie small-business spokesman

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

AAP -- The Y2K bug had been exposed as a con with business as usual today, the Small Business Association of Australia (SBAA) said today.

Despite predictions of computer problems as businesses returned from the New Year long weekend, nothing had eventuated, SBAA national spokesman Jon Fowler said.

A survey of small businesses this morning had failed to find a single glitch, he said.

"It's working A1," Mr Fowler told AAP.

"The Y2K as I've been saying for the last six months is the greatest con trick that was ever foisted upon business, full stop.

"That's been proved today because no-one's having any problems at all.

"The amount of money spent on the Y2K and all the bloody money that the government was conned into paying is a bloody disgrace.

"The computer industry has stuffed itself and shot itself in the foot over the stupidity of Y2K."

Y2K experts had identified small business as a sector at high risk of Y2K-bug disruption because of relatively low levels of remediation work done.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) had identified minor problems such as fax malfunctions.

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WELL, I guess these really computer-savvy people were smarter than all of us, eh?

Isn't it bloody AMAZING how quickly everybody and his dog assumes it's all over and that it never existed? Sheesh!

-- David Harvey (vk2dmh@hotmail.com), January 04, 2000

Answers

Let the lawsuits begin!

Hey...who wants to go in with me on a class action? Anyone? Huh?

Mike

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-- Mike Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), January 04, 2000.


Well, I'm an Aussie who has spent the last two and a half years of my life working on Y2K in the mainframe arena, and let me tell this moron Fowler, and anybody else who cares to listen that it works *BECAUSE* *WE* *FIXED* *IT*.

It was broken, make no mistake about that, but you just can't win, if we had failed to fix it we would have got sh*t piled upon us, "spending all that money and it's still broken blah blah".

Somehow we managed it, (don't ask me how, I'm as surprised as the next man) and now we get sh*t anyway, with idiots like this pretending that the problem did not exist.

I never expected any credit out of this, I knew this scenario would occur, but it does sort of crap one off!

And don't let them tell you that countries like Italy and Russia did nothing, of course they did, the executives of companies in those countries want their jobs to be there tomorrow just as much as we do, maybe they were just a bit more low key about it. I don't buy this "they did nothing and they're ok" crap whatsoever. If it was true taht they did nothing they'd be toast, I know for a certainty that at least one in four of the programs at our site needed some remediation.

Ah well, rant off.

RonD

-- Ron Davis (rdavis@ozemail.com.au), January 04, 2000.


Ron, get off your high horse. There are many countries that did nothing and nothing happened. All you programmers thought the date after 99 would go to 00 and that would confuse the computers. But all you programmers were wrong. The date changed to 100 and many website dates show 19100 as the present date. This did not confuse the computers, so that is why nothing happened!!!! You programmers scammed the whole world!

-- ... (...@...com), January 04, 2000.

HERE IS ANOTHER POST THAT PROVES IT!

My Amoco credit card receipt shows date 1/3/100

When I got gasoline today at the local Amoco station, the pump printed out a receipt with a date of 01/03/100. Just wondering if this date will cause accounting problems for (1) the pump itself; (2) the gas station owners (a SME owning numerous stations in the region) and (3) Amoco itself -- will the year "100" reconcile okay with whatever data Amoco compiles to send me my bill at the end of the month.

As you can tell from my post, I am one of the "unwashed masses" who doesn't understand this stuff technically. But I have a lot of common sense and I did prepare our large family well for y2k. I feel like Noah, only it didn't rain! (Yet.)

But no regrets. I remain convinced it's far from over. Just wondering about this possible glitch.

-- J Wheel (motherof5@wellprepared.noregrets), January 03, 2000

Answers

This and many others like it. Sounds to me like a lost sale, JW. Wondering how many of these your station owner can handle; Amoco can handle, etc. before they have to put up the "CASH ONLY" signs.

-- SH (squirrel@huntr.com), January 03, 2000.

Thanks for the alert, J. Wheel. This receipt will cause the downfall of Western Civilization. Hope your preps are in order!

-- Dan (fu@bar.com), January 03, 2000.

ANd will the IRS accept that as a receipt for purchases in 2000! :-0

-- Sheri (wncy2k@nccn.net), January 03, 2000.

-- ... (...@...com), January 04, 2000.


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