Somewhere on a thread, I read that TimeBomb wasn't going to discuss what happened until this summmer...

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Somebody said that Chuck said it, and I can't find that thread now.

If this is true, that can only mean two things:

1) They really are waiting for evidence that accumulated glitches will have an impact on the economy.

2) They are keeping their posters around for (?) purpose???

How many books can Yourdon sell to those relatively few folks? Is he getting paid for hits? For the life of me, I can't figure out why Yourdon is keeping this up. Can somebody enlighten me, please?

~*~

-- Laura (Ladylogic@aol.com), March 14, 2000

Answers

I'm sorry, I meant to say "EZBoard", not "TimeBomb".

~*~

-- Laura (Ladylogic@...), March 14, 2000.


You are a crazy bitch that should be locked up to keep the rest of society safe. I have read on the other forums about you threatening children.

-- Manny (No@dip.com), March 14, 2000.

Russ BigDog said it here. I believe he was just referring to when he personally will be interested in discussing it, not when the forum as a whole will discuss it.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), March 14, 2000.

Dearest Laura,

Why are you so interested in something you consider a non-event? But, you may be the "fake" LadyLogic, so I won't waste any more time here. Let's all let bygones be bygones. You should be very, very thankful that they gave you a new start here - so far, so good - please don't blow it!

You have gotten far more attention than you deserve. You have contributed very little of value to this forum. You are a sick individual. If you have anything of value to say, you should straighten up, assume a new name, and start contributing something of value. Cut the excuses and get with the program!

-- Village Idiot (ladylogic@is.sick), March 14, 2000.


Yep. I'll second that. Assuming a new name and remaining calm would solve many of your problems.

-- (link@work.too), March 14, 2000.


The "wait for all returns to come in" philosophy has had an interesting history. As rollover approached, it became clear even to some of the more rabid doomers that nothing was happening, and that y2k effects were as likely to be subtle as spectacular. So the "overnight collapse" theory yielded a lot of ground to the "grinding inefficiency" theory.

The idea became more popular, that date bugs wouldn't kill many embedded systems, but would throw a lot of sand in the gears of IT operations, creating error rates that would exceed our ability to keep up with them. And that repairs being postponed for lack of resources in organization A (and a lower priority to A) would unfortunately be of much greater significance to organization B (customer, vendor, regulator, etc.), who didn't "own" the problem, but suffered from it.

The result would be "slow dominoes". In the worst case, these downstream impacts would be harder to correct or work around, so the errors would flow into the tub faster than we could drain them. After some number of months (3-6 was common), it would be evident that the tub was out of control and would overflow. And even if we could drain the old errors faster than new ones happened, this would be a slow process, impacts would be felt throughout an unstable and overheated economy, and the ultimate costs would be immense.

In real life, however, y2k didn't cooperate. Instead, bugs were almost entirely minor and trivial, easily within our capacity to handle adequately, and therefore there were no downstream effects at all. Y2k was a total no-show. Yes, there were hundreds or thousands of minor and temporary glitches, since the bugs were quite real. But these were more a matter of amusement than inconvenience.

So the doomer philosophy needed to change once again. The "wait for later" contingent now seems most interested in waiting until everyone forgets about y2k entirely, so that they can slink off without ever having to confront or admit the magnitude of their error. This is easy to calibrate -- if anyone still remembers y2k and asks them about it, then by definition it's "still too early to tell".

In the meantime, those who "see" y2k lurking behind every misfortune of daily life (which is being covered up, of course) are much more entertaining.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 14, 2000.


Thanks, hmm. I never go read that board, so your direction helped.

"In real life, however, y2k didn't cooperate. Instead, bugs were almost entirely minor and trivial, easily within our capacity to handle adequately, and therefore there were no downstream effects at all. Y2k was a total no-show. Yes, there were hundreds or thousands of minor and temporary glitches, since the bugs were quite real."

Yeah, I know! I have a story to tell you about that in a couple a days when my little finger feels better. Suffice it to say now, I think more than a few I.T. personnel are scrambling to cover their rear-hind quarters. I personally know one in the government who made a big boo-boo by spending a lot of money he shouldn't have, and it's going to be interesting to see how he handles this.

~*~

-- Laura (Ladylogic@...), March 14, 2000.


Flint:

That appears to me to be a fair representation of the Y2K view that is favored by the faithful remnant. In my opinion, the available evidence tends to refute this argument. This scenario requires a progressively rising rate of inefficiency that should visibly affect organizations long before it destroys them. No such erosion of efficiency is evident. Not in banking. Not in utilities. Not in communications. Not in transportation. Not in JIT practices. Nowhere.

The available evidence shows that almost all the Y2K problems that remained after remediation were trivial. The remainder were fixed "on failure". IT departments are turning their attention to other problems. Y2K, as a computer problem, is fully behind us.

A few macro effects of Y2K preparation, such as the actions of the Federal Reserve to inject liquidity ahead of Y2K, have not played out entirely. But this was a secondary or tertiary effect, not a primary effect of Y2K.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), March 14, 2000.


y2k? What's that? It sounds vaguely familiar but also irrelevant (except for all that bottled water in my master closet).

Anyone have something stimulating to say about trends in technology?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), March 14, 2000.


Brian and Flint,

Agreed. I saw the argument creep start last year as we began zooming through "critical" dates. Does anyone remember the "JoAnne Effect?" (chuckle) Personally, I think folks like Russ Lipton are going to push "judgement day" as far into the future as possible. In the interim, if they are problems they can always try to find a linkage back to Y2K.

Were we experiencing some level of Y2K failures, one might argue a potential cumulative effect. Fortunately, we are experiencing no marked failures... though I see Paula Gordon sifting through the silver lining to find a cloud.

With every passing month, we'll see more revisionist history by the Y2K pessimists. This is one of the primary reasons I think EZB is a "protected" site. They want to weed out anyone with a decent memory of 1999.

-- Ken Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), March 14, 2000.



LOL, Ken.

"They want to weed out anyone with a decent memory of 1999."

This could very well explain why they allow me to post.

-- Anita (notgiving@anymore.thingee), March 14, 2000.


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