Is Y2K over?

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

The past couple of days, like most people here I guess, I've been racking my brains trying to make sense of the current Y2K situation. The US spent a total of $100 billion to deal with Y2K. The rest of the world spent several hundred billion dollars more. (One estimate I've seen for the total global cost places it at $600 billion.) However, the countries/governments/businesses that didn't spend any money on it (or very little) and started their remediation late seem to have fared as well as the countries/governments/businesses that did spend all that money and started their remediation early.

Which means either

1.) The countries/governments/businesses that spent all the money wasted it and the people in charge of remediation knew it, in which case it must be the biggest scam in history. Organised crime will no doubt be very pleased to know that it's possible to swindle US business/government out of $100 billion without even breaking the law. The problem with this scenario is that it's implausible because it overestimates the intelligence of the remediators: I just don't think they're smart enough to have pulled off a 'sting' as great as this.

or

2.) The money was wasted and the people in charge of remediation didn't know it. This scenario is implausible because it underestimates the intelligence of the remediators: Lets face it, the proportion of their number who are ex-rocket scientists is surely higher than in most other professions, and they know a bone-fide bug when they find one.

A third explanation is starting to suggest itself to me as follows:

The remediators were correct in their estimation both of the nature of the bug and it's seriousness (i.e. serious enough to result in collapsed infrastructures if not TEOTWAWKI). However, they were wrong in their prediction of the way that it will manifest itself: It is far easier to ascertain that a bug will mess up a system than it is to predict the precise way that it will do so, even for an ex-rocket scientist.

So,

Y2K is as serious as predicted but it's initial effect is latent not (as predicted) explicit. This explains the apparent similarity between remediated countries/governments/business and unremediated countries/governments/businesses. In both the bug is latent (and therefore not visible) but in the unremediated ones it is developing more quickly and dangerously.

When the effects start to become explicit they will probably be undiagnosed and/or unreported.

I hope all of this is of some help.

Regards Richard Clark

-- richard clark (richard.clark@custompc.co.uk), January 06, 2000

Answers

You sir, are what this Kook calls a 'get it' kinda guy! Brace yourselves folks, it ain't over.

ProudDoomerKook

-- Y2Kook (Y2Kook@usa.net), January 06, 2000.


Or...

4. Underdeveloped countries are not as "computer-dependent" in their infrastructure as the developed ones, therefore their lesser spending on Y2K comparative to industrialized, modern nations was appropriate to their need for remediation.

-- Pragmatist (always@another.theory), January 06, 2000.


I think points number 3 and 4 have great merit. Also, it appears that Dale Way and other were right to insist that embedded systems were not a problem; Way claims that the real problem is adminstrative and accounting systems which will begin to show corrupt data in the months ahead.

The embedded systems were the ones that would have caused dramatic disasters and infrastructure failures all over the world on New Years Eve. Didn't happen. Therefore I think it is safe to say that the embedded chip/system issue was greatly over-hyped and poorly understood as several skeptics (Flint for one) on this forum tried to tell us. Now lets wait and see if Way and Hamaski were right about enterprise systems and Admin and Accounting systems.

-- JoseMiami (caris@prodigy.net), January 06, 2000.


I thought for a second that I was talking to myself, but it didn't sound quite right. Must have been the in-between-the-lines accent. Allow me to assure you that this Richard Clark is remediated from his unrremediated remediation. By that as it may, nice meeting me, and oh yes, the Sh*t is going to hit the preverbile fan, albeit still running, it may just twack a blade.

-- Richard S. Clark (candor@mindspring.com), January 06, 2000.

Good post, Rich.

-- james hyde (hydesci@gte.net), January 06, 2000.


Pragmatist: It's not just the foreign countries that did not spend much, but a significant portion of small to medium size business in the US did absolutely nothing.

It's still very early and I don't want to draw any conclusions yet but it will be interesting to see if the current situation holds for the rest of the year. If so, a lot of people, myself included, have a lot of thinking to do on this. Was the remediation really necessary?

I was speaking the other night to an IS person who works for an organization that processes financial transactions for banks and insurance companies. Well over a billion dollars a day are transfered. He's had a very tough last six months. He was working over the 1st and said that nothing much happened - a few very minor display glitches but nothing of any consequence and nothing that could not be immediately fixed. I asked him what he thought and he is of the opinion that the consequences for his organization would have been serious had his team not been working their tails off the past 6 months. In other words, he believes that nothing much happened because the necessary work was completed.

Is he correct? I really don't know but it will be interesting to watch over the next few months. Like most subjects, the answers are probably not simple and straight forward in spite of our frequent attempts to make them so. I've been a middle of the road person on this issue for a while now. I did not expect a total meltdown nor the entire electrical grid/system collapsing but I have been surprised at the relatively low number of serious side effects that have occurred up to this early point. On the other hand, I'm sure not complaining...

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), January 06, 2000.


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