THE Year 2000 Hoax

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

Time for me now to speak. Miss Cherri, you have a lot to be grateful for to those IT professionals who have been trying to help you and many other people like you. Y2k is not a non-event, a con or a hoax, it was a real life-threatening situation, your media needs to do more serious homework. It is bearing false witness to tell people that y2k was all but an expensive hoax, that is a big lie, we are now starting to have computer problems because of y2k. Do people still insist to say to us that it dosen't exist?

Here's where the mockings stops and the facts come in. We are not out of the woods not by a long shot. We still got many date rollerovers to go through,1 Jan 2000 is not the only beast to tackle. We're not even halfway through January yet and already its starting to be a bad month. We've got a WHOLE YEAR ahead of us before we can even think of claiming we've had a smooth transition into the year 2000. I wish people would do their homework before they claim the light is green.

-- Brent Nichols (b-nichol@ihug.co.nz), January 07, 2000

Answers

Brent:

Real, yes. Life-threatening, no. There is and will be a lot of y2k fallout. It won't affect you. There will be millions of y2k bugs striking us, spread out over millions of companies. They'll be addressed - they ARE being addressed. The worst is over, but Jack is right that y2k cannot be fixed, and date bugs will continue to crop up for the rest of your life. You won't know about any of them after a few months, but they'll be there.

Your "homework" consisted of picking out all the dire speculations you could find, assuming they would all come true, and projecting them across all the good news you refused to credit. You've done an inadvertent con job on yourself, and now you need to understand how and why you did that. The answers must come from your own soul -- nobody else can help you, and you can't help yourself until you admit what you've done. But take your time, there's tommorrow and tomorrow.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 07, 2000.


Flint -

This idea that we, 'doomers' have conned ourselves is seductive. I could just lash myself. It's all *my* fault, etc.

I have not spent much time deliberately analyzing what went on in my own mind, but here's a very brief snapshot of what I think happened.

There were simply too many factors pointing in *both* directions. Take the embeddeds for example, there is some woman named Cherri, I believe, who may have known a lot about embeddeds. I don't know her, but by the time I joined the 'conversation' here, she wrote in such a way as to be somewhat unbearable. In aposition to her (the other extreme) was Jim Lord a la "Mr. CEO". Rightly or wrongly, I trusted Jim Lord as a man of great integrity. "Mr. CEO" was vouched for by Jim and Victor Porlier(sp?). I tended to reside in the middle. Is that reasonable? I thought so. But the middle was still worrisome (what's half of TEOTWAWKI?)

Now, as someone with *zero* technical understanding, all of these folks had me at a disadvantage. How could I know? Especially considering that gov't seemed to be weighing in on the side of "Mr. CEO". People joke about my 'bunker' (a lakeshore cabin), but recall the Prime Minister of Japan was *literally* in an underground bunker for the rollover. Who has access to more information - me or the PM of Japan? Then there is the State Dept, "flee Russia, you might not survive" statements. Sure had me convinced! And, I could cite many more examples of people who *should* have access to excellent information *acting* like they believed TEOTWAWKI was a legitimate concern.

Now that it's 'over' - all those who predicted nada claim that I should have heeded their wisdom. It *seems* like there was so much information around that it would have been *easy* to deduce this outcome. But that, of course, is only because one 'side' of the information spectrum has disappeared.

Before the event, there were qualified opinions favoring and evidence to support each position.

The hardest thing about y2k apologetics is explaining to the 'pollies' who never studied the issue at all that there was in fact a rational basis for my concern.

-- Me (me@me.me), January 07, 2000.


Brent, Y2k was no hoax, it was a real problem, but nowhere near a true life threatening event as hurricanes, floods, etc. that have already taken lives this year.

The Y2K "problem" as hyped by many out for a quick buck, a change in the world they already wanted, now THIS Y2K WAS A HOAX. Gary North's vision of Y2K was a hoax. Paula Gordon's vision of Y2K was a Hoax (and by default so was Frautshi's, since this is where Paula derived most of her work). The BEACH BUG was a Hoax.

Those working on y2k worked on the real problems, not the hoax, and some continue to do so. No crisis here, life goes on.

Regards,

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.com), January 07, 2000.


Me:

You're quite right, there was a lot of information pointing in all directions, most of it unwelcome on this forum, since it didn't point in the "officially endorsed" direction. And Jim Lord, man of high ingegrity, ended up making a bundle off of y2k, but that information wasn't posted here, since it might have created the wrong impression.

I know I wrote at great length trying to defuse fears of embedded systems, since this is my profession. But who am I compared to Paula ("Give me a grant to study this crisis") Gordon?

Face it. While speculations were rampant, the indications simply weren't there. Only a few companies were struggling, the market wasn't reacting, IT managers and geeks weren't leaving, the market for remediation had dried up, there was such a vast flood of positive reports that some even penetrated to this forum (and were attacked). Nearly all reports from the government were reassuring, leading to a mindlessly ferocious attack against "government spin". Pessimistic opinion leaders like Yourdon and Cowles had already cut and run.

I know I'm repeating myself, and the reason for that is to emphasize that a balanced evaluation of ALL the evidence has always been possible. Hindsight is not necessary.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 07, 2000.


...and soon all of these opinions will be forced to give way to the actual answer:)

That bad data is still silently accumulating...

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), January 07, 2000.



Off, bad bold!

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), January 07, 2000.

Flint.

Yet, you still preped :-)

-- Netghost (ng@no.yr), January 08, 2000.


Flint; still predictable as a stone. NTL, You are absolutly correct the 'problem' is a distribuited problem, thank our lucky stars. Were it not, it would most certainly overwhelm whatever agency/organization had it and sink them outright. The questions that remain are:

1) How evenly distribuited is the problem?

2) Is the distribution of the people who can solve the problems distribuited across the problem set in such a way that portions of the distribution will not be solved?

3) Will the unsolved portions of the problem have a significant impact on the economic system? What form will that impact take?

4) Will someone who is admittedly knowledgable about one facette of the problem (embeddeds) be particularly reliable in their predictions about other facettes of the problem... namely 'cross cascading defaults'. Given the fact that so many Computer Scientists and Software Engineers erred in their prognostications of lights out (because it was not their area of expertise) are you now prepared to make the same type of error (because it is not your area of expertise) and eat the same humble crow you have been serving up?

Flint, only Biblical prophets are required to be 100% correct. Are you as confident as a Biblical prophet? You are batting about 75% so far, at least it LOOKS like you are. Are you really foolish enough to believe you are 100% correct or will you be patient another short while?

Serve up your crow on the things which you appear to have been correct and (wisely) refrain from taking the risk of looking foolish in a few weeks or months.

Waiting for a trend analysis.

-- Michael Erskine (Osiris@urbanna.net), January 08, 2000.


Couldn' have said it better , Michael E. ! However, this seems to me like two baseball teams , before they get to the park ( pre Y2K : " You guys don't stand a chance of beating us ! " " We'll let you default now , before you embarass yourself ." )

Then the game starts ; pollies in the field , doomers up , two out on same. Pollies ; " That's it ! Wanna quit now ? Can't win if you can't hit . Then a couple of singles , but thrown out at home plate .

" Now you guys better quit . We'er up ." Two runs score . Then three outs.

Question . Who quits after the first inning ? NOT ME !!! Eagle

-- Hal Walker (e999eagle@freewwweb.com), January 08, 2000.


Hal; :-) Nawww, what you are seeing is more like two little boys standing across the street from each other saying, "An.. an... an... You better never come into my yard again!" It is the height of childishness. It is a seeking to be correct before anyone can fully know who is correct. It is patently foolish.

Ain't it fun :)

-- Michael Erskine (Osiris@urbanna.net), January 08, 2000.



Moderation questions? read the FAQ