We are all alive at a truly momentous time in the history of humankind. Very few individuals have the opportunity to witness a milleniam roll-over. The percentage of all people who have witnessed a CDC is incalcluably small. The fact that we continue to talk about how we all prepared and/or did not prepare for the CDC is not a mystery at all; this will be talked about for hundreds of years.

Borrowing from our friends in the east, I look at the Yin-Yang principle as a guide. I had such trouble with this when I was younger, but as I have experienced more of life, I have come to accept the paradoxes which occur all the time in life. The head and the tail of a coin coexist quite peacefully.

I have a basic theory that the greater the glory sought, the uglier the downside can be. The great Democratic experiment known as America has produced paradoxical results-while one could argue we have the most freedom of any people in the world, one could equally argue that our government is capable of the greatest atrocities. One of the greatest pitfalls along the path of spiritual growth is spiritual pride; while one may truly be aiming for spiritual perfection, there is no soul more unattractive than one that will tell you how close they have come to this state.

What the hell does this have to do with the CDC and the Polly/Doomer debate? Glad you asked. What appeared to many as the greatest possible disaster in our history, TEOTWAWKI, turned out to be one of the most inconsequential events(in terms of real damage done)-Yin-Yang at work. I think what we are all looking for is the common threads that tied together both camps.

We continue to debate precisely because of the enormity, the uniqueness of this time in history. I think we are trying to learn lessons about the human psyche that only these kind of extraordinary times can teach us. The Pollies, I think, really want to know what made the doomers tick; the doomers, those who still would classify themselves this way, can't help but wonder how the pollies really think.

This is why we have seen more people returning to this forum to find out what is going on-We are all trying to learn more about ourselves. Through all the bickering, I think this desire shines through. We are not kicking a dead horse. Those who want to move on, by all means, move on. But I believe we have so much to learn about how people think, that we, as I said before, are going to find gold in these here posts for some time.

Rambling. Rambling. Sorry if I was not clear. It is late, but I think you'all will find something of interest here.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), April 14, 2000

Answers

FS:

I absolutely agree. It's the same reason that Titanic survivors continue to meet and war buddies get together. Things that are a "BIG DEAL" in our lives tend to induce a lot of thought and introspection. We'll all get over it but, in the meantime, discussing and even arguing about what happened is how we put things back in order.

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), April 14, 2000.

I don't post much, but I wouldn't miss reading this forum for all the Rum in Jamaica. It's more entertaining than the best book, movie, or circus out there.

Not even four months into the year and the arguments about "The Great Y2K Hoax" go on and on. On and on. On and on.

Nobody--but NOBODY--seems to understand the sequence, progressivity, and ramifications of compounding data corruption. It's exponential.

Just as a year ago--on the infamous one to ten scale--I STILL stand a solid FIVE, bad enough to initialize a world-wide economic depression.

-- Wellesley (wellesley@freeport.net), April 14, 2000.

Wellesley:

I certainly don't "understand the sequence, progressivity, and ramifications of compounding data corruption." I don't even understand what you mean. Maybe you could give us some real life examples of this happening? Maybe you could also give us some of your technical background that would make us think YOU even know what you mean.

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), April 14, 2000.

The new Millennium (and Century) dies not occur until 1-1-2001.

That is a Fact, of history and calendar science.

But no one seems to care.

Not an "opinion".

Anyone who thinks or believes otherwise is just plain scientifcally and factually ignorant.

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), April 14, 2000.

and I will certainly defend that last statement (with verifiable facts, of course!)

but it might be a while, as I now should get a bit of sleep ;-)

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), April 14, 2000.

CL,

Iv'e had the same runnin' argument with that one for quite awhile now,kinda like Y2K; ) (only I was on the wrong end of right)

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), April 14, 2000.

Well Cap,

we'll have at it, eh.

I gotta get a few hrs of sleep first, and then make a few bucks....THE TAXMAN COMETH

Have a coupla guesses at who you are tho.

But both are probably wrong LOL. ;-)

-- Chicken Little (panic@forthebirds.net), April 14, 2000.

Chicken Little:

I am with you on the actual CDC, BUT, as far as mass psycology goes, this past rollover was the big one.

Jim:

You are such a pit bull :)! Jumped right on wellesley.

Wellesly:

Welcome to the board-I will not be as direct as Jim, but I too am curious as to why you maintain a 5-is this an overall sense of how unsafe you feel in today's world, or are you really saying that Y2K errors are accumulating, a la Hamaski, and we are still in the midst of a "thousand cuts"(haven't heard that one in awhile!)?

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), April 14, 2000.

Nobody--but NOBODY--seems to understand the sequence, progressivity, and ramifications of compounding data corruption. It's exponential.

Wellesley:

I'm assuming that what you're implying here is that nobody but you, and anyone who agrees with your assessment of the situation, understands the ramifications. Perhaps you would provide us with the qualifications that you have, and that we all seem to lack, to have such a keen insight.

-- abc (123@456.789), April 14, 2000.

Wellesley made perfect sense to me Jim.

-- Pat (-@still.here), April 14, 2000.

Pat-

Maybe you could answer the questions directed at Wellesly? He does not seem to be here. Maybe he is in a different part of the world? I would really be interested in your response.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), April 14, 2000.

Polly/Doomer. I've long had the notion that each of us stands in the middle of our central thesis about life. That's our core belief about "how it is." And we spend all of our time gathering information that supports and proves our thesis.

DeJager was a jerk, wasn't he, when he said before 1/1/00 that not much would happen? Even the entire city council and the mayor where I live HAD to be in on the cover-up of the true facts about Y2K.

I was (am?) a community organizer/doomer and the facts I found supported a catastrophe. Those who said otherwise were obviously misinformed.

Yet what is to come? Creepy future as shown in this book by Nick Begich. When does the next Great Depression start? What happened to the acts of terrorism the FBI warned us about? Oh, next week?

My personal dystopian take: TomPepsi in GMTown or, the future be here today.

-- johno (jobriy2k@yahoo.com), April 14, 2000.

FS:

I wouldn't be a pit bull to someone new. Wellesley has posted here before always with the same semitechnical doomer claptrap of cross cascading failures that haven't showed up yet but will sometime, just wait, you'll see.......At this point, at least, he can post something that shows any of this actually happening.

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), April 14, 2000.

Jim:

I was paying you a compliment! I sometimes have that ironic voice. I have not seen much of Wellesly on the new board. As always, we all have our different experiences of each other.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), April 14, 2000.

All I can say is that the old -

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"

- refrain that we saw so much of last year certainly has a fascinating ring to it these days.

-- flora (***@__._), April 14, 2000.

I have escaped from the old board/forum. I had been absorbed into a group consciousness (Borg Collective?)and I watched other individual organisms being assimilated. They (the Borg) were tough to fight as they quickly learned how to defend against their opponent's "weapons!

-- 8 of 9 (firstcontact@trek.ed), April 14, 2000.

8 of 9:

Are you one of the first wave of refugees from SLEZ board to arrive on our shores?? Is censorship they way they dealt with their enemies?

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), April 14, 2000.

I cannot say more at this time....they may be watching.

FREE...FREE at last!

-- 8 of 9 (trek@firstcontact.ed), April 14, 2000.

I'm not in the techical field so computer failures were only 10% of my concern. The way people would react to an infrastructure breakdown was what I was most worried about. Still is, if a major event were to cause a major disruption in society.

-- brock gannon (brockgannon@gnc.net), April 14, 2000.

Hey brock,

guess what , the big dogs' concerns were the same as yours!

-- flora (***@__._), April 14, 2000.

Great analysis, Wellesley. That's close to the way I see it.

Before 1/1/00 we had a simple standard: a two-digit year date being the end-determinant.

After 1/1/00 we no longer had standards. We had back-dating, some pre-1980 - old mainframes - and post-1980 - PC's. We had windowing patches with all kinds of different pivots. We had the forced meshing of four-digit year dates with this hodge-podge of two-digit windowing dates. We had year date stripping, to extend the life of some applications another 99 days to buy more time for some other kind of phoney, put-off-the-inevitable fix. Then, to top off all this lunacy, we've had a long string of patches from such major vendors as Cisco and Microsoft, which never seem to end.

The way I see it, this new standardless mess is much like setting up a new raiload network, with each RR company contributng trackage with a slightly different gauge. Because the dfferece is slight, the train will probably run smoothly through the first switch, maybe even through several switches. But, eventually, after slowig down some, somewhere along the line, the train will derail - run clean off the tracks.

When this happens, I don't agree that the worst we will suffer is a depression. I think it will be the disaster that Infomagic predicted.

I'm still a nine.

-- Uncle Fred (dogboy45@bigfoot.com), April 15, 2000.

Uncle Fred:

Can you provide some evidence of the date stripping you refer to? Exactly how would that be done from a programming standpoint? You do have some programming experience, don't you? If not, how do you know if any of these theories you're propounding has any merit?

There were many programs with different date standards long before Y2K. I was writing programs with four digit date fields in 1989. I had to contend with the huge numbers of ways that dates are handled worldwide and still make them work together. Dates are not a new programming problem and Y2K is just one of a number of ongoing challenges.

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), April 15, 2000.

Thanks, Jim.

Fred seems to think that windowing and the different formats of dates are something new this past year. I'd go so far as to suggest that windowing was popular because it was ALREADY in place in so many systems. My retirement date certainly wasn't calculated by tossing a '19' in front of a two-digit year. If someone started working in 1985 at the age of 20, I DO believe the retirement date would be 2030. If someone started working in 1965 at the age of 20, the retirement date would be 2010. THESE dates [just to use ONE example of many] have been windowed, or consisted of 4 digits for a VERY long time.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), April 15, 2000.

Anita-You are right.

Somehow we muddle through. I am amazed that the interconnectivity of the world works as well as it does; that an ATM has never made a mistake in my account. Amazing.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), April 16, 2000.