The Analogy:

I was in the oil industry in the 70s when the oil shortage happened. At the time ALL of the experts were predicting a continual and deepening crisis with oil prices escalating to $90 a barrel etc. Instead the price dropped to $10 a barrel and there was an oil glut. The reason this happened was that companies all over the world drilled every hole in the ground they possible could. Engineers worked on secondary and tertiary recovery. Pipeline companies built pipelines. And so for the and so on.

We know an enormous effort went into fixing the y2k problem. Maybe it got fixed. Maybe the answer is that simple.

-- billy d (billyd@aol.com), January 08, 2000

Answers

Except it doesn't explain why all those third world countries that did virtually nothing to prepare for y2k had no problems. The only logical conclusion from this fact is that the y2k problem was greatly exagerated. There was no reason to spend all the money the US did. We were suckers in a great hoax.

-- Ronnie Mayfield (rrmayfield@aol.com), January 08, 2000.

Ronnie,

I think most of the computers in third world countries belong to multinational corporations.

-- billy d (billyd@home.com), January 08, 2000.

To me, the Y2K problem was not so much the computers as the people-- an overdependence on technology and a mentality that "they" will fix whatever goes wrong. No need to take care of yourself, "they'll" take care of you. They'll tell you what you need to know and what to think and what to buy. In this sense, the nonevent of 1-1-2000 has made the problem worse. Polly friends and relatives are now convinced that nothing could ever shake this system. I think they're wrong.

By the way, notice how Brent gets flamed for thinking that large failures may still be coming, but nobody flames Hal Walker, mushroom, or others. Brent, you're just a lightning rod, dude.

-- amnesia (foo@bar.com), January 08, 2000.

amesia,

Sometimes a lot of people working really hard can fix things. Programmers are pretty smart people. Maybe that's all that happened here. No conspiracy, no hoax, just hard work. Not very entertaining though.

-- billy d (billyd@aol.com), January 08, 2000.

Another thought, there may be a lot of labor-intensive, manual workarounds in use right now, too. IOW, the remediation was temporarily side-stepped and still needs to be done. Workarounds may have time limits in some cases. Or they may have to hire and train more people (this brain drain will be especially hard on Burger King and McDonalds).

-- snooze button (alarmclock_2000@yahoo.com), January 08, 2000.

I think both POVs are right. A lot of major remediation was done. Plus there will be nasty surprises down the line. But what do I know? I'm eating canned turkey.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), January 08, 2000.

Wealth, gold, money, fortunes untold. These are the reason of the HOAXE that we have been duped with. All those billions of billions that I keep hearing about are not in any pockets here. They are safely salted away in secret accounts, never ever to be seen again. The only reference will be when your are forced through taxes to pay them back

-- Notforlong (Fsur439@aol.com), January 08, 2000.

Just a little food for thought, but when we say "What about those countries, that did nothing?", we're referring to countries where there was little or no concerted GOVERNMENT effort. We really have no idea what was done by private individuals, organizations and companies, in those same countries.

Perhaps the gov'ts that spent billions over-reacted a tad, and spent some unnecessary cash (Gee, we've never seen THAT happen before, have we?), but that's far from solid proof that the whole thing was a hoax.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), January 08, 2000.