This is a continuation of the "Who is Andy Ray" thread, which has gotten too long.

Mr. Poole has explained that I have been clueless because in spite of all my argumentation, he predicted the outcome of rollover better than I did.

The bare fact as I have just stated is perfectly true. I am going to try to explain my cluelessness as against his prediction.

More or less in mid '99, Mr. Poole let us know that Y2K remediation was no more than a "piece of cake". Clueless me at that time had personal knowledge of two efforts in the federal government which were in terrible Y2K trouble. All I can still tell you at this time was that one of them was one of the many Treasury systems and one (much bigger) was not. The non-Treasury one had Kosky visiting every week without fail.

Well, everything came thru OK, so Poole thinks my cluelessness, vs. his brilliance, is now established. You be the judge.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 13, 2000

Answers

HEY DOOM ZOMBIE ERRINGTON,

If you just want "attention", go flash old ladies in the park.

YOU ARE A TOTAL ***BORE***.

................ see: http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0038rj

-- Peter Errington writes and I insert:

It is absolutely true that the dumbest polly who ever posted anything did predict what came to pass better than I did.

AND WHAT DOES THAT IMPLY ABOUT YOUR MENTAL ABILITIES?

POOLE, CPR AND ANDY-RAY (ALONG WITH 99.99999% OF THE WORLD'S POPULATION) WERE CORRECT ABOUT Y2K.

ATTEMPTS TO CLAIM THAT IT WAS "VAST IGNORANCE" BY THE BULK OF THE POPULATION ARE SPURIOUS. Y2K "AWARENESS" WAS WELL OVER 90% BY EVERY POLL EVER TAKEN FROM 1998 ON IN THE USA.

IF THERE WERE "TRUE POLLIES" THEY WERE IN LORD JIMBO DUMBO'S DOT TO DOMAIN CELEBRATING WITH THEIR KING WHEN THE SUN ROSE ON 1/1/2000 AND LAUGHING AT THE AMERICAN EXTREMIST ASSHOLES.

THE DOOM ZOMBIES AND FELLOW TRAVELLERS LIKE YOU, WERE WRONG.

WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO "GET IT"?????????

THE WORLD IS NOW COMPOSED OF NON-DOOMERS AND ALL OTHERS.

THE TERM "POLLIES" WAS ***ALWAYS** A SET UP FOR THE DOOM CULT YOU THINK HAS THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF CREDIBILITY.

THERE WERE DOOMERS AND "NON-DOOMERS" (AKA: THE DE-BUNKERS) WITH THE MODERATES AND OTHERS WERE SMEARED OVER AND OVER AS "POLLIES".

WHERE IS YOUR STUDY THAT THE Y2K REMEDIATORS FORCED THE COMPANIES TO SPEND TOO MUCH MONEY?

YOU SWING FROM ISSUE TO ISSUE WITHOUT FACTS AND THEN TRY TO ACCUSE ANYONE WHO POINTS THAT OUT WITH *SMEARS*.

YOU "HAZARD A GUESS" AND THEN SMEAR ANYONE WHO POINTS OUT WHAT A DUMB DOOMER YOU ARE.

-- Peter Errington writes and I insert:

It is absolutely true that the dumbest polly who ever posted anything did predict what came to pass better than I did.

AND WHAT DOES THAT IMPLY ABOUT YOUR MENTAL ABILITIES?

That does not vindicate such a person's reasoning.

WHY NOT?

It does not vindicate after the fact nonsense, such as: "Well, those countries really weren't dependent on computers" or assuming that some country did nothing and therefore the United States didn't have to make a big effort.

YOU HAVE TO BE THE DUMBEST DOOMER IN THE DUNCE CORNER. YOU CONTRADICT YOUR OWN STATEMENTS.

MOST OF THE "PREDICTIONS" OF THOSE "DUMB" POLLIES WERE MADE **BEF0RE** THE CDC.

THAT.....IS WHY.......THEY ARE CALLED "PREDICTIONS".

AS USUAL, YOU BRING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO THE TABLE EXCEPT **BLANKET AND SWEEPING STATEMENTS"......SUCH AS:

"willingness to make blanket statements about areas about which he knows nothing"

WHEN IN POINT OF FACT YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHETHER OR NOT, POOLE OR ANDY RAY OR CPR OR ALAN SIMPSON OR de JAGER OR **ANY**....NON-DOOMER HAD ANY INFORMATION ABOUT FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND THE STATE OF THE COMPUTER SYSTEMS THEY MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN USING.

QUESTION FOR ERRING-BOY:

WHEN................ARE YOU FINALLY GOING TO "GET IT"????????? .

-- The Shadow Knows (Shadow@knows.con), May 13, 2000.

ERRING-BOY:

WHERE IS YOUR STUDY THAT THE Y2K REMEDIATORS FORCED THE COMPANIES TO SPEND TOO MUCH MONEY?

OR....is it too much to ask that you ever support one single "thought" that comes to you about Y2k with something beside your own conclusions and a priori BS????

PUT UP OR SHUT THE F**K UP.

-- The Shadow Knows (Shadow@knows.con), May 13, 2000.

If Stephen Poole chooses to reply here, we'll see if he disagrees with this 'doomer's' account of y2k history....

Link

. . . .There is general agreement that the Year 2000 rollover went more smoothly than expected. The incredible success of the transition has prompted a number of questions about the effort and the results it produced.

Was Y2K an insignificant, over-hyped problem?

In the weeks since the rollover, some have expressed doubt about the magnitude of the Y2K problem and whether or not the significant investment of time and money to avoid disruptions was necessary. However, it has been difficult to find executives who worked on Y2K in a major bank, financial institution, telephone company, electric power company or airline who believe that they did not confront -- and avoid -- a major risk of systemic failure. . . .

And

. . . .The mechanics involved in making any one of these systems capable of correctly processing the Year 2000 date were fairly straightforward, but the scope of the work -- identifying, fixing, and testing millions of systems and data exchange points in a global economy -- was daunting.

Since no one knew with certainty the true extent of the problem or had any experience in dealing with anything like it, initial cost estimates for Y2K-related repairs varied widely. The range was illustrated by a frequently cited estimate of $300 to $600 billion for the worldwide cost. Many predicted that the final price tag for the United States Government alone would top $30 billion. Given the relatively unknown size of the task and the ballooning cost estimates, it is easy to understand why many serious people in the mid- and late-1990s who had looked at the situation maintained there was no way the work could be finished in time.

Several obstacles appeared to support the view of those who said it was too late to avoid disaster. There was the natural tendency to procrastinate. In the mid-1990s, with several years until the millennium and the possibility that someone would invent a "magic bullet," some were comfortable putting the work off into the future. There was also the perception that Y2K was solely an information technology issue, not a core management problem. As a result, in many organizations, Y2K was just another project battling for scarce financial and management resources on the IT side of the ledger.

In the private sector, information bottlenecks were widespread. Anti- trust issues and a natural tendency to compete for advantage made working together on Y2K difficult, if not inconceivable, for many companies. Moreover, the threat of lawsuits had companies worried that they would be held liable for anything they said about the Y2K compliance of products or devices they used, or their test processes and results. Legal considerations also prevented companies from saying anything about their own readiness for the date change. Thus, their business partners -- as well as the general public -- assumed the worst.

When the Council began its work in early 1998, the Federal Government was struggling to fix its systems. The consensus among many was that the Government wouldn't make it. In particular, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Health Care Financing Administration, and the Defense Department had an extraordinary amount of work to do in a relatively short period of time. Some people were predicting that government agency failures alone would send the U.S. economy into a deep recession.

Internationally, much of the world seemed to be paying little attention to making sure that information systems would be ready for the date change. A 1998 World Bank study found that three-fourths of the world's countries lacked even basic plans for addressing the Y2K problem. In some cases, countries were aware of Y2K but lacked the resources and technical expertise to deal with it. Furthermore, information sharing among nations was limited, hampering the efforts of those who might have benefited from a neighbor's advice on remediating systems. . . .

-- (doom@or.prudence), May 13, 2000.

ACHTUNG to -- (doom@or.prudence), May 13, 2000.

HINT: *******THE SENATE SPENT A TON ON Y2K****

NOTHING HAPPENED.

SECOND HINT: THEY WERE MISLEAD BY THE "Y2K AWARENESS COMMUNITY".

NOTHING HAPPENED AND NOW, THE SENATE AND THE DOOM ZOMBIES HAVE TO JUSTIFY THEIR BEING MISLEAD. THE DOOM ZOMBIE LEADERS SHOULD ANSWER AS TO WHY THEY, THEMSELVES, FELT SO FREE TO MISLEAD OTHERS AND THEN ALLOW THE MISLEAD TO CONTINUE THE "DAISY CHAIN".

3rd HINT: *********** NOTHING SIGNIFICANT HAPPENED BECAUSE OF Y2K COMPUTER PROBLEMS THAT COULD NOT BE FIXED *****

4th HINT: THE MONEY SPENT ON MAJOR SYSTEMS WHETHER PRIVATE OR PUBLIC WAS MONEY WELL SPENT.

BY FALL, 1998, IT WAS CLEAR TO MOST I.T. PROFESSIONALS EXCEPT THE "SENATE", THAT Y2K WOULD NOT BE A CRISIS.

THE ONLY QUESTION THEN WAS "HOW BAD MIGHT IT BE". IN SPRING, 1999, THE SENATE SAID: "3 DAY STORM".

THE DOOM ZOMBIES DENIED.

EAT YOUR PREPS NOW.

-- The Shadow Knows (Shadow@knows.con), May 13, 2000.

Shadow = CPR

The caps and profanity give him away

-- CPR is a former "10" doomer dolt (@ .), May 13, 2000.

Once again we see the true colors of this board.

The New DeBunkie's House o' Trolls

You people just keep proving why an "uncensored" forum is just for the kiddies.

(snicker)

-- Yeah Right (Ahhh@haaa.haaa.haaa), May 13, 2000.

Oh, wonderful, another chance to spoonfeed CPR. Definitely my lucky day.

When Poole described remediation as a "piece of cake" he was actually making two predictions: (1) that we would make it OK, and (2) that it would be easy. The first prediction of course is what I meant when I said that all the pollies predicted better than I did. The second prediction I knew was false at the time because of my knowledge of the two federal government efforts which were in deep trouble.

That is why I said that being right with regard to the outcome did not vindicate his reasoning.

About the after the fact nonsense, CPR (the Shadow) writes "YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHETHER OR NOT POOLE OR ANDY RAY OR CPR OR ALAN SIMPSON...HAD ANY INFORMATION ABOUT FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND THE STATE OF THE COMPUTER SYSTEMS THEY MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN USING"

I don't know about Alan Simpson, but for Andy Ray, Poole, and CPR I sure as hell do know about their knowledge of underdeveloped countries because of all the sweeping incorrect statements they have made. Like Andy Ray telling us that remediation wasn't done in underdeveloped countries because there was no money for it, and this shows little we really needed to do.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 13, 2000.

Inquiring minds have always wanted to know, was Cap Slockman denied the caps lock key to the Qwerty kingdom?

-- (Still laughing@flamefest.com), May 13, 2000.

Errorington:

Quit flogging a dead horse. You couldn't have been more wrong about Y2K than you were. Instead of probing the minutae of others errors, perhaps you should examine how and when you were infected by the meme.let's face it:

You were a fool - you are a fool - and it appears you will be a fool in future.

-- Savage (blah@blah.com), May 13, 2000.

You are not worth the time and bother of a lengthy reply. This is one is too long as it is. My position was clearly explained at my Web site and in the Debunking forums over a period of several months.

You obviously have a reading comprehension problem, because you keep making statements that PROOVE that you have not read what I've actually written, but have merely scanned through it until something appeared that pinged your bell, at which point you erected a strawman and began pummelling.

For 'zample:

More or less in mid '99, Mr. Poole let us know that Y2K remediation was no more than a "piece of cake".

I never said that directly; I was quoting a programmer with a large British corporation. The point I was trying to make (and succeeded in making to many others, judging from my email) was that Y2K was not the first programming problem to come along, nor would it be the last. Nor was it the worst.

I also made the point -- CLEARLY -- that Doomers were misleading people with fancy-sounding arguments which, in fact, had very little basis in Big Picture reality.

When the CNA insurance companies must change their rates in all regions around the world, at the same time as they're changing their employee payroll to reflect the latest laws in all 50 states, at the same time as they're implementing SAP, or upgrading their hardware, or whatever ... now, THAT'S *BIG*.

Things like this happen all the time. They *ECLIPSE* Y2K problems, regardless of what you want to believe. Peter, that's not just my opinion; that is borne out by the metrics, which, EVEN AFTER THE FACT, have clearly shown that TOTAL IT/IS spending for Y2K amounted to about 10-20% (TEN TO TWENTY PERCENT) of the overall IT/IS budgets in most corporations.

EVEN LEON KAPPELMAN has admitted this.

Clueless me at that time had personal knowledge of two efforts in the federal government which were in terrible Y2K trouble.

Are you even interested to know WHY you were wrong about Y2K? Or do you wish to remain bitter, mumbling about sour grapes and "lucky pollies?"

There's one good reason why: you had a handful of stories (which were anecdotal to start with, but let's leave that aside) of projects going bad and EXTRAPOLATED that to the Big Picture. Peter, what you never realized was that, for every project that WAS struggling, there were many others which were going FINE.

There was PROOF of this. This was not a guess on my part. Not only were the corporations announcing their readiness right and left (which announcements the Doomers would immediately dismiss), we had contacts all over the place, in industry, in utilities, in government -- you name it.

Yes, there were some projects that were foundering here and there, but OVERALL, Y2K remediation was going fine IN THOSE AREAS WHERE IT MATTERED.

I also stated -- and stand by -- that the little AS400 and PC systems in most "units" of large corporations are NOT "critical systems," regardless of what the IS/IT people at those "units" think. To the worker bee IS type in a factory out in Podunk, his little NT server and dozen workstations are a Big Deal. If it blows up, he gets hollered at.

But in the overall picture, Corporate headquarters considers them about a 1 or 2 in a scale of 1-10. This was another reason for the confusion: Corp HQ would say, "we've remediated all of our important systems," and some flunky down in Blinktown would cry, "how can they say that? MY systems haven't even been looked at yet!?!?"

Do you have any idea how tired I am of repeating the same argument over and over? It was valid to start with; if you can't understand it, I can't help that. I'm not going to continue repeating it. I was proven RIGHT in January. My position was NOT based on guesses and luck.

I *KNEW* I was right and that the great Peter Errington, Programmer Of Fertilizer And Other Critical Systems, was WRONG. *KNEW.* Not "guess," not "hope." I *KNEW*.

There are other reasons why you were wrong, but that's the biggest one. You deliberately blinded yourself. And now, you're simply trying to get back at those who WERE right because your pride can't accept plain facts. Deal with it.

Of course, the biggest reason why you were wrong, AND WOULD HAVE BEEN WRONG EVEN IF THESE BUSTED PROJECTS *HADN'T* MANAGED TO PULL A RABBIT OUT OF THE HAT, is because you -- like most doomers -- VASTLY overestimated the importance of computers in general (particularly in embedded/control applications -- my area of speciality).

Like most doomers, you just automatically assumed that, if computers had problems on the large scale, things would begin collapsing everywhere.

You had CLEAR EVIDENCE that this was wrong, too -- more evidence that you REFUSED to see. The Win95.CIH "Chernobyl" virus attack in Asia; hurricane Floyd, which cause FAR more damage than every computer in that region could have caused if they had failed AT THE SAME INSTANT; and so on.

You REFUSED to see it. How can I *possibly* be blamed for THAT?

And yes, I'll add (as an aside) that STATING this automatically wins me the label "arrogant." I can't help that, either. Just for the record, I didn't start this: YOU did. :)

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 13, 2000.

More tedium; these two points were omitted from the above.

Doomers overestimated the importance of computers in general, and in particular, OUR ABILITY TO WORK AROUND THEM WHEN THEY FAIL.

Another free clue (which I repeated as many times as I could all through 1999): When Doomers pointed to a piece of equipment and said, "if this fails, bad things could happen." I would immediately ask, "OK, so what do they do if it fails NOW? Or do you assume that this could ONLY fail due to a Y2K bug?"

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 13, 2000.

To Stephen Poole:

The main problem I have with your response is that you attribute views to me that I have never had. I was always a Yardenite who was afraid Y2K would prick our bubble economy and cause a recession. That is not the same as a doomer infected with the meme.

(One of my posts was entitled "But What About a Recession, Mr. Decker". In the thread, Ken and I agreed that a recession caused by Y2K was not out of the question, altho we looked at the situation somewhat differently.)

On another post, I acknowledged that a great many organizations were going to finish on time, but that I was afraid the faiures would be enough to lead to the Yardeni recession.

I never read your Website. I got the piece of cake remark, as I recall, from csy2k.

And you, CPR, and Andy Ray don't know squat about computers in underdeveloped countries, so you shouldn't make observations about them.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 13, 2000.

And you, CPR, and Andy Ray don't know squat about computers in underdeveloped countries, so you shouldn't make observations about them.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 13, 2000.

And you, Peter Errington, don't know squat about the compliance of computers and embeddeds, so you shouldn't make observations about them.

(because if you did know, you would not have been wrong about the outcome of Y2K.

-- Gorky`s Zygotic Glove Puppet (sams@brigadoon.com), May 13, 2000.

You're certainly right about my ignorance of embeddeds, which is why I've never commented on them.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 13, 2000.

ERRingman, you continue to disassemble.

The main problem I have with your response is that you attribute views to me that I have never had.

Talk about the pot calling kettle black ... but anyway: I haven't really attributed any specific views to you, save to note that you were, in general, a Doomer (and if you try to deny that, someone here will start dragging up the old posts, and then Deedah and the other nice people here will say, "let sleeping dogs lie," and it'll get tedious).

The precise flavor or extent of your Doomism didn't interest me. I noted that you didn't seem a Paul Milne type (not that there's too many of THOSE, thank the Lord), but left it at that.

I never read your Website.

Believe me, I can tell. Here's just one example ...

And you, CPR, and Andy Ray don't know squat about computers in underdeveloped countries, so you shouldn't make observations about them.

We obviously knew enough about their implementation in these nations to CORRECTLY predict what would happen on January 1st. Right?

But you have managed to puzzle me here; I wonder why you are flogging this tangent. I certainly never made developing nations the focus of my argument. There just aren't that many computers in developing nations to start with.

In fact, this is HOW I addressed those Doomlits who trotted out the old saw about, "even if we get OUR stuff fixed, these little third world nations might kill us ..."

I would respond: "HOW will this kill us, when they don't rely on computers to anything resembling the extent that we do?" In the typical developing nation, once you get outside the one or two major cities, you're lucky to find a paved road, much less a telephone, a working radio, or (least of all) a computer. The very concept was ludicrous.

Now, if you're speaking of my comments about nations which didn't do a great deal of remediation and yet appeared to make it through the transition relatively unscathed, I was speaking of cases like Russia and Italy, NOT Zimbabwe or Tibet or Afghanistan.

(This should have been clear, too ... at least to anyone who'd actually bothered to read what I'd written.)

An afterthought.

Incidentally, when your alter-ego, Cory Hamasaki, would wax apocalyptic about old legacy mainframe setups, I would use a most similar argument: in the grand scheme of things, they represented only a tiny fraction of all enterprise systems. Besides, the problem could be addressed in many cases with simple REPLACEMENT: new computers, new off-the-shelf software. Cory was making a mountain range out of an anthill, too.

I saw that particular disconnect time and again, especially in CSY2K. Perfect example: the Doomers there were mostly hard-core mainframers who were so biased against the PC, they didn't even KNOW that off-the-shelf PC-based solutions existed for the trucking industry.

Right up to the bitter end, the hardest of the hard core there insisted that transportation would grind to a halt when scheduling and routing software crashed -- *PROOF* that *THEY*, and not *I*, didn't have the FOGGIEST notion of what they were talking about.

And remember: these were people with a WHOLE lot more enterprise experience than yours truly. So, the question you SHOULD be asking yourself is, "HOW could Poole have been right?"

Therein would lie epiphany, Feybana. Trust me. :)

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 13, 2000.

ACHTUNG to -- (doom@or.prudence), May 13, 2000.

HINT: *******THE SENATE SPENT A TON ON Y2K****

NOTHING HAPPENED.

Let's be thankful the government addressed this issue. The reason for spending money to fix y2k was so that hopefully nothing would happen.

SECOND HINT: THEY WERE MISLEAD BY THE "Y2K AWARENESS COMMUNITY".

NOTHING HAPPENED AND NOW, THE SENATE AND THE DOOM ZOMBIES HAVE TO JUSTIFY THEIR BEING MISLEAD. THE DOOM ZOMBIE LEADERS SHOULD ANSWER AS TO WHY THEY, THEMSELVES, FELT SO FREE TO MISLEAD OTHERS AND THEN ALLOW THE MISLEAD TO CONTINUE THE "DAISY CHAIN".

You should have taken the time to actually look at the Link. If you had, you would have seen that it's not to the Senate but to the final report by John Koskinen's group -- not a 'doom' organization last year by any stretch of the imagination.

Stephen Poole and 'The Shadow' are asking us to become believers in a conspiracy theory of sorts. They seem to believe fixing y2k wasn't important and that fix-on-failure was an adequate solution for organizations. The new 'meme' with them is that if it wasn't for Ed Yourdon and others like him, the business world and the government would not have been tricked into believing that y2k was something that had to be addressed before the rollover.

However, Koskinen doesn't believe this, Peter de Jager doesn't believe this, and I see no reason to take the word of a couple of relative unknowns like Stephen Poole and The Shadow on this matter....

-- (doom@or.prudence), May 14, 2000.

To Stephen Poole:

I think calling someone like me a Doomer is stupid as hell. You drag up any of my old posts that you want to. Fine reading then, fine reading now.

I have no idea whether my views correspond with Cory Hamasaki's or not.

You say you knew enough about computers in underdeveloped countries "to CORRECTLY predict what would happen on January 1st, right?"

Pure 100% luck considering your ignorance.

There are a lot more computers in developing countries than you realize. (As you point out, in the only halfway intelligent remark you have made on the subject, they are mainly to be found in the very large cities, especiall the capital city.)

You then argue, well why should we care. Have you any idea how much money some of these countries like Indonesia owe us?

You talk about countries like Italy. It is my contention that we don't know what happened in Italy. I dimly recall that a British woman in the field (Heather Winward?) claimed on TV that the Italians had spent a great deal more on remediation than people realize. Flint had an excellent thread awhile back speculating about what really happened in Italy. That's all we can do right now, speculate.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 14, 2000.

January 8, 2000

Experts Puzzled by Scarcity of Y2K Failures

By BARNABY J. FEDER

Whether it is with scorn, anger or resignation, most computer experts and Year 2000 program managers brush off suggestions that they overreacted to the Y2K threat, taken in by computer companies and consultants positioned to profit from fear.

Still, like the skeptics, many wonder: How did countries that started so late -- and appeared to do so little -- manage to enter 2000 as smoothly as nations like the United States and Britain that got an early jump?

"That question is plaguing all of us, although some people won't admit it," said Maggie Parent, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's representative to Global 2000, an international banking group formed to coordinate and stimulate Year 2000 work. "We expected there to be some significant blowouts."

A World Bank survey published last January concluded that just 54 of 139 developing countries had national Year 2000 programs outlined and only 21 were actually taking concrete steps to prepare.

Japan, China, Italy and Venezuela showed up as high-profile question marks in various studies. Paraguay's Year 2000 coordinator was quoted last summer saying the country would experience so many disruptions its government would have to impose martial law. Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova were seen as so risky that the State Department issued travel advisories in November and called nonessential personnel home over New Year's.

So what accounts for the surprisingly quiet rollover? Computer experts cite several factors. Even they may have underestimated how hard many countries worked in the last few months, when the problems were better understood, and how much help came from others that started early. And in many cases, assessments of overseas readiness were based on scarce or vague data.

But the simplest if most embarrassing explanation is that the some public and private analysts who testified before Congress and were widely quoted overestimated the world's dependence on computer technology. Most countries had much less to do to prepare because they are far less computerized than the United States. The computers they do have are much less likely to be tied together in complex systems and are often so old that they run much simpler software, according to Louis Marcoccio, Year 2000 research director for the Gartner Group, a technology consulting firm.

At a briefing last week on why Pentagon analysts overestimated the risks in many countries, Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre said, "If we had a failing, it may be that we extrapolated to the rest of the world the kind of business practices that we have developed here."

Once adjustments are made for technology dependence, some analysts say, the investment of the United States and other pacesetters in Year 2000 preparations was not that far out of line with those that started late. But the figures from many countries are so unreliable that it is hard to be sure. Russia, for example, is estimated to have spent anywhere from $200 million to $1 billion.

Mr. Marcoccio suspects the lower figures are closest to the truth but he adds that based on the government's estimate that the United States spent $100 billion, "If Russia spent $400 million, they spent proportionally more than the United States, because the United States is 300 times more reliant on computers."

Such assessments lead down a pathway that only a statistician could love. Use Gartner's estimate that the United States spent $150 billion to $225 billion, and the comparable Russia investment jumps to a minimum of $500 million. Tamper with Gartner's guess that the United States is 300 times as computer-dependent, and figures dance another direction.

But nearly everyone agrees that the figures for the United States include substantial sums toward preparations abroad by American multinationals. Motorola said its $225 million Year 2000 budget included not just repairs at its overseas factories but, for example, helping its Asian suppliers pinpoint potential Year 2000 flaws. It also paid overtime for support that helped paging and radio networks in Italy function flawlessly over New Year's.

The federal government picked up part of the tab for foreign nations. To jump-start lagging nations, the government paid for many of them to send representatives to the first United Nations meeting on Year 2000 in late 1998. It distributed hundreds of thousands of CD's in 10 languages providing background and suggestions for how to organize Year 2000 projects. More recently, the Defense Department provided $8 million to set up a joint observation post in Colorado as insurance against miscommunication that could lead to missiles' being launched.

"We got a lot of free consulting from the United States and agencies like the Inter-American Development Bank," said Rodrigo Martin, a Chilean who headed a regional Year 2000 committee in South America.

Such aid played a bigger role in helping late starters to catch up than most people realize, some computer experts say. As John Koskinen, chairman of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, sees it, hype about the magnitude of the problem misled fewer people than hype about the impossibility of getting it fixed.

"This was a process that could move faster than the preparedness surveys," Mr. Koskinen said, noting that alarming press releases and testimony frequently relied on research that was obsolete within weeks.

Del Clark, who led the Year 2000 program at Phillips Petroleum, concurred, saying: "China was the big question mark for us. Part of what happened was that they were working hard late in 1999 and the status information was out of date."

It helped that repair efforts became less expensive toward the end because of the experience gained by those who did the work early and the tools developed for them, according to Brian Robbins, senior vice president in charge of the Year 2000 project at Chase. In addition, Mr. Robbins said, it turned out that some countries like Italy had done more work than reported.

By 1998, the pacesetters were far enough along for a sense to develop that others were lagging, and fears about the consequences began building. There were extenuating circumstances in some cases, like the economic slump in Asia, and many realized the problems would not be as daunting as in the United States. But with time short, industry groups like Global 2000 and a few countries began trying a variety of tactics to accelerate Year 2000 preparations.

"People outside of information technology don't realize how incredibly mobilized the world became," Ms. Parent said.

Still, many of those most familiar with the relative preparedness and spending levels in many foreign countries wonder whether it will be possible to figure out why things ended up going so smoothly.

Information was always hard to come by and hard to compare since sources varied so widely in what costs they attributed to Year 2000 work. In general, foreign countries have not included labor costs in their Year 2000 figures while the United States and Britain have, but practices have varied widely.

Now that Year 2000 has arrived, the pressure to sort out such data is disappearing rapidly.

Still, questions about the transition will not go away. What actually happened might figure in insurance lawsuits because if courts were to decide insurers were liable for the money companies spent to avoid problems, the insurers would undoubtedly cite the success of laggards and low spenders as a sign that budgets for American companies were needlessly bloated.

Click for more

-- (NY@Times.article), May 14, 2000.

But the simplest if most embarrassing explanation is that the some public and private analysts who testified before Congress and were widely quoted overestimated the world's dependence on computer technology

Bingo! They got it, if they'll add the line: "and UNDERestimated our ability to work around them when they go bonkers."

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 14, 2000.

ERRingman,

I think calling someone like me a Doomer is stupid as hell.

Uh ... ok. If you say so.

You say you knew enough about computers in underdeveloped countries "to CORRECTLY predict what would happen on January 1st, right?" Pure 100% luck considering your ignorance.

Let me guess: you think that, if you repeat this enough, it'll magically become true and you'll feel better?

"Poole was ignorant. CPR was ignorant. Brad Sherman was ignorant. Paul Davis was ignorant. Cherri Stewart was ignorant. They were lucky. *I* was not ignorant. *I* knew more than them. But I was UNlucky. It's not fair."

With unassailable logic like that, you wonder why I don't take you seriously?

There are a lot more computers in developing countries than you realize.

You REALLY want to keep flogging this one, don't you? Why? You think you've found something about which the Lucky Pollies were uninformed and can feed your damaged ego by pummeling strawmen erected on that premise?

ERRingman, I am perfectly capable of referring to published statistics about this. First, the numbers ARE fractional when compared to the west; if you deny that, you're a moron. But second (and more importantly), the DEPENDENCE (that's the key word!) on computers is much, much lower in developing countries.

Those two factoids alone, to anyone with a functioning brain, were enough to counter the stupid, "even if we get our stuff fixed, these little itty bitty developing countries could drag us down!"

Have you any idea how much money some of these countries like Indonesia owe us?

Since these are statistics which are widely-published, yes. Indonesia has been in trouble for years now. In late 1997/early 1998, their currency effectively collapsed. In 1999, they were struggling to get various Pacific Rim banks to work with them on $80 billion in debt ... need I go on?

It is my contention that we don't know what happened in Italy.

Of COURSE that's your contention. The IT/IS Doomsters have GOT to hold positions like these, because they cannot face the alternative: that while their work is admittedly useful, beneficial, and even very important in a few cases, it is *NOT* nearly as vital to the "infrastructure" as they so badly want to believe.

Which is why I said (several times) before the transition: you could take 20% of all computer systems selected at random, smash them with hammers, and we would work around it in due course. The world wouldn't end.

See, I have never claimed for a moment that there were no problems whatsoever due to Y2K bugs. Not only would that be ludicrous on its face, I am perfectly aware that some companies have had problems which they were able to work around and even -- *gasp!* -- "cover up."

(Not nearly so many as the Doomlits think, but a few, here and there.)

This merely PROVES my original contention, already stated: computers aren't as critical as people like you think, and we CAN work around them in most cases. People are surprisingly resilient, especially when their livelihoods are on the line ...

And we DO know what happened in Italy, as far as Y2K-related problems go: very little. If you don't know this, you aren't quite as well-informed as you think.

ERRingman, stop this. I don't know WHY it is so important to your fragile ego to demonstrate that the Evil Pollies were "uninformed" or "guessing." We weren't, but hey; if it makes you feel better, have at it.

(I'm feeling generous again.)

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 14, 2000.

To Stephen Poole:

I think it's time to hang this discussion up. We both judge each other the very same way, as someone who is going to hang on to suspect arguments no matter what. I don't think you've made your case at all and you don't think I've made my case at all, even tho we've been arguing at length, so it's time to drop it.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 14, 2000.

Stephen Poole may have been confident about Y2K internationally but others weren't so sure. A part in the New York Times story above showed some uncertainty on The World Bank's part. The State Department wasn't so sure either.

State outlines response plan for world Y2K glitches

http://208.201.97.5/pubs/fcw/1999/1018/fcw-newsstatey2k-10-18-99.html

State Department: Y2K failures 'inevitable'

http://cnn.com/TECH/computing/9907/26/inevitable.y2k.idg/index.html

-- How it would play out was (uncertain@last.year), May 14, 2000.

I don't think you've made your case at all and you don't think I've made my case at all, even tho we've been arguing at length, so it's time to drop it.

Hmmm. Strangely reminiscent of the Heller/Hoffmeister debate.

-- CD (costavike@hotmail.com), May 14, 2000.

Mr. Erringman, do you have any flesh left? Must hurt like hell to get eaten alive like that. Are you a masochist? Mr. Poole is so far out of your league that you embarrass yourself by verbally sparring with him. See the doctor.

-- Idiot (savant@eaten.alive), May 14, 2000.

A think it was over a year ago that I asked a "banks are toast" dude on csy2k just what evidence of a healthy banking system he would accept. I said he was free to dream up whatever evidence he chose, however unlikely (or hopelessly impractical) it might be, just so long as he'd find it convincing.

He replied that, after much thought, he COULD NOT dream of any such evidence that he wouldn't find SOME reason to reject. But, he went on, since banks were toast anyway, it didn't matter that God Himself couldn't persuade him otherwise. He KNEW better.

Errington goes this dude one step further -- even *after the fact*, when he and everyone else can SEE than nothing happened, he rejects that reality has "made a good case"! At some point, denial passes from pathology to farce. Errington has passed that point.

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

"I never read your Website."

That explains a lot, a hell of a lot.

-- Buddy (buddydc@go.com), May 15, 2000.

Buddy,

It sure does. It explains a GREAT deal. :)

And someone else in this thread said,

Stephen Poole may have been confident about Y2K internationally but others weren't so sure.

Sure. But just for the record, the Y2K "doom" viewpoint was ALWAYS in the minority. This is an important -- and oft-overlooked -- point, and one which could easily have been confirmed by any Doomlit seeking the truth.

At no time during the entire Y2K debacle did a majority of working computer professionals EVER believe that Y2K could even approach Yourdon's scenarios (much less Infomagic's and Milne's).

Those surveys which SEEMED (the operative word is, "seemed") to indicate otherwise were done among heavily-biased groups (ex., Y2K remediation consultants).

Just wanted to set the record straight there, too.

-- Stephen M. Poole, TTMHMIY2K (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 15, 2000.

One elementary point, which if I make it often enough, some of you might possibly comprehend:

I did not agree with the Yourdon scenario. I specifically posted my disagreement when he left the forum and wrote his farewell address paper, in which he stated that at that point there was not time left for us, the U.S., to save ourselves.

In other posts, I argued that my fear was for a recession, not a depression, and certainly not TEOTWAWKI.

One of your strawmen is that everyone who disagrees with you is a Yourdonite. You just keep going back to that no matter what, as if, like a small child, you believe that saying something makes it so. I believe that solipsism is the technical name for your approach.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 15, 2000.

What's motivating you, Peter? You seem to be harboring a LOT of resentment toward Stephen, yet state that you've never read his website. I've read everything on Stephen's website 2 or 3 times. Stephen put a lot of time into getting facts from folks actually working on Y2k and spent more time formatting those facts into something that would both amuse and inform folks.

Misinformation ran rampant regarding Y2k on the internet. Stephen entered the picture somewhat late in the game [compared to some others] in an effort to correct misinformation and warn folks of the inconsistencies and errors in the words of some of the "messengers."

I entered TB2000 in June of 1999, and although I was aware of your presence, I considered you a minor player [much like myself there.] I never saw you at any other fora or newsgroup prior to MY entering TB2000. Were you somewhere else, or did you limit yourself to TB2000?

Why was it that you chose to single out Stephen as your guess on Andy Ray? I have more questions, and we can take this to E-mail if you'd like, but right now I see Stephen's contribution in rebuttal of Y2k misinformation on the internet FAR EXCEEDING any contribution of yours.

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

Anita, I'm singling out Stephen because he insists on making erroneous statements about underdeveloped countries and their importance to us, and he doesn't know what he is talking about. I worked in A.I.D. for eighteen years, and trust me, when he pontificates about underdeveloped counties, he's just babbling.

Also, we got to arguing about other things, and I must say I'm not terribly impressed with his arguments.

Now as to who made the greatest contribution to the great debate during say 1999, I would say that the answer would have to be Poole, if only because of the embeddeds issue, which is his field and where I think the pollies really did have it all over their opposition.

I certainly was a bit player in the great debate, I'll confirm that in a New York second.

But reread the debate on this thread between Poole and myself, from the standpoint of intellectual honesty. Regardless of his greater contribution to the public welfare last year, I frankly think he disgraced himself on this thread.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 15, 2000.

Yes Peter you were and still are a bit player and an annoying asshole to boot. What is your continuing bullshit about under developed countries? Who fucking cares? Those people are eating each other and you are harping about their lack of information systems? Give us thinking folks a rest and take a vacation. Come back when you are lucid, OK.

-- Shut (the@fuck.up), May 15, 2000.

Peter:

You're throwing the cart before the horse. I asked why you singled out Stephen and you responded with your appraisal of what Stephen said on the various threads initiated by YOU.

I've read the threads several times, Peter. I even took breaks inbetween reads to allow for digestion. Stephen moved on in perhaps February. It was only your conjuring that brought him to the surface on the Y2k issue again. My question revolves around why you would conjure him, NOT his defense thereafter.

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

Funny Peter would mention A.I.D.

I don't have the specifics at my fingertips, but A.I.D. was in the same boat with Dept. of State when Rep. Horn's Y2K report cards were coming out. They both consistently got F's until very late in the game. Then all of a sudden the State Dept. was being quoted about their fears of Y2K problems in other countries. I always wondered how they made the transition from clueless to Y2K expert so quickly.

-- Buddy (buddydc@go.com), May 15, 2000.

ERRingman,

It might also be more "intellectually honest" for YOU to, say, quote some specific statements made by me about third world/developing nations which you believe have emitted from "ignorance."

-- Stephen M. Poole, TTMHMIY2K (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 15, 2000.

To Stephen Poole:

OK, first always remember and never forget that I was not a Yourdonite doomlit, not even a mild one. Recession was my worry, for which your total certitude supposedly should have provided reassurance.

Now your typical underdeveloped country (forgetting about the basket cases where war has wrecked everything) will have a very fragile economy and certainly enough dependence on computers for the modern sector of the economy to take a huge hit should they go out of operation for any length of time.

Before this thread, you were basically arguing that these countries' dependence on computers was so small as not to be a worry. And that their importance to us was not large either, forgetting totally about the enormous sums owed to Western banks. (Remember, triggering a recession was what I was really afraid of).

Now remember the total 100% gold-plated certainty which resulted from your analysis. There was never need for any doubt, any doubt at all, that a bad outcome would be averted. Based on such statements of yours as "the numbers ARE fractional when compared to the west... But second (and more importantly), the DEPENDENCE (that's the key word!) on computers is much, much lower in developing countries. Those two factoids alone, to anyone with a functioning brain, were enough to counter the stupid 'even if we get our stuff fixed, these itty bitty developing countries could drag us down!' "

I wouldn't give two cents for the amount of certitude that kind of analysis provided.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 15, 2000.

Peter:

We're not really talking about certitude here. Consider -- these small countries aren't very computerized at all. What they do have tends to be down a LOT, and obsolete, so the reliance on them isn't there. It's not at all like a highly automated and computerized organization where if the computer is down, so is the organization. Manual operations are the order of the day in these countries you're talking about.

One thing I know from having lived in third world countries is that it ain't like the US where you get upset if power goes out. In those countries, you're delighted when it comes up, and take advantage of it while it lasts, which is never very long. Everything is broken down, second hand, cobbled together. Date bugs in sophisticated software is WAY lost in the noise.

Further, the loan payback record in these countries is lousy. Industries get nationalized, they fall behind on the interest (forget the principal) until they're loaned enough to pay the interest. Corruption is rampant. Computer date bugs? You gotta laugh!

In retrospect (for me, not for everyone), knowing the normal daily status of *Italy* tells you a lot more than knowing the status of y2k remediation in Italian organizations. Remember, we aren't looking for certainty that there will be no date bugs. AT ALL. We're looking for likely impact levels from date bugs, relative to normal operational reliability. Accurate prediction involves knowing where to look, knowing the situation being affected, moreso than knowing potential effects.

Bottom line: If you know that every computer in a given country could vanish in a puff of smoke and not much would change in that country, then you know that date bugs in those computers are irrelevant. Hell, if 50% of them vanished and it wouldn't make much difference, date bugs are STILL irrelevant.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 15, 2000.

Peter, after reading everything you have written of late, I don't think anything would have convinced you of anything you weren't already predisposed to believing. And I think you know that, which is why this is all so puzzling.

You start thread after thread that amounts to nothing more than "My brain is bigger than yours" arrogance and then whine when you are proven incorrect. You consistently make sweeping "polly" generalizations (which is what started this 15 minutes of fame) and then bitch when you perceive someone is doing the same to you. As Anita stated, you called Stephen "out"; you have repeatedly accused him of calling you a "Yourdonite", but I have yet to see a specific instance of that. Why do you insist on perpetuating this? What purpose does it serve? I asked you on another thread if you had a point to make (and you used the same "we're getting nowhere" on me as you did with Stephen); you didn't have one then and it appears you don't have one now. What gives?

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), May 15, 2000.

ERRingman,

You didn't really answer the question, you merely posted another multi-paragraph diatribe containing your opinion and a reiteration of the (obviously, to you) self-evident "fact" that I *have* made such statements and that you DO know more about this than me.

Post a specific statement made by me about developing nations which you believe emitted from ignorance. Pull from my Web site, Debunkers, Biffy or the old TB2000, since that's the context in which we're discussing this (ie, "what Poole could have said that would have reassured me before the transition.").

Remember, I didn't start this. If you're going to call me out, you should be able to back it up. Evidence of my rampant ignorance should be dripping from the web like the morning dew. Right?

So either give specific examples, or admit that *YOU* are the one who is operating from a priori assumptions -- namely, that Poole didn't know as much as you, or was operating from ignorance, etc., ad nauseum.

(Consider this a freebie.)

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 15, 2000.

To Poole: My last post contained a direct quote from you (enclosed in quotes) in case you didn't notice.

To Patricia: You say "you have repeatedly accuseded him of calling you a 'Yourdonite' but I have yet to see a specific instance of that."

Well, he didn't actually use the word "Yourdonite", that word is probably mine. What happened (up on this thread if you want to take a look) is that after he went on about Yourdon and doomerism, I posted a reply carefully explaining in detail how I wasn't one of those. The response I got back from Poole (exact quote again): "The precise flavor or extent of your Doomerism didn't interest me. I noted that you didn't seem a Paul Milne type (not too many of those, thank the Lord), but left it at that".

To Flint: Of course everything you say about less developed countries (LDCs) is true (Oh Lord don't I know it) but I think you're pushing your points too hard.

There are computer centers where the down time is startling, where if they didn't have UPSs (Uninterruptable Power Supply Units) and generators they'd be dead. Yet the output they are able to manage is extremely important. And they don't need any more problems like an poorly treated Y2K mess, to say the least!

Likewise, those huge loans are generally quite shakey. Criminal stupidity for the Western world to let its banks get in so deep, but there we are. And these economies didn't need a poorly treated Y2K mess, to say the least!

(It is my belief, quite different from the outlook of the Pooles of the world, that dependence on Western software suppliers which sent Y2K fixes is what saved the day.)

What really rankles me is talk like "well they got away with doing nothing, fix-on-failure...therefore this proves how little we in the U.S. needed to worry"

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 15, 2000.

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/01/biztech/articles/09year .html?AltaVistaRefId=LmY_WEFnnnnuntly_W

The computers they [foreign countries] do have are much less likely to be tied together in complex systems. . . .

http://www.y2k.gov/docs/LASTREP3.htm

However, it has been difficult to find executives who worked on Y2K in a major bank, financial institution, telephone company, electric power company or airline who believe that they did not confront -- and avoid -- a major risk of systemic failure.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/daily/feb99/y2k24.htm

The interdependent nature of technology systems makes the severity of possible disruptions difficult to predict.

http://www.year2000.com/y2kitaly.html

If we decide to fix on failure, are we certain that when a failure occurs we can fix it before the failure impacts our business? The honest answer to that question is 'No, we are not certain.'

-- (Summ@rizing.quotes), May 16, 2000.

My droll and sarcastic sense of 'yumor didn't help, nor did my basic attitude: there is no way that computers could cause the damage ascribed to them by the Doomers, not even under a worst-case scenario. (See my discussion of the so-called "Domino Effect" for more: they discount the fact that people are actually very good at working around problems.)

Repeat: I just flat didn't believe this, and still don't. Only geeks and nerds with their heads symbiotically attached to monitor screens could believe something that ludicrous; normal people certainly don't.

I soon found that this attitude was intolerable, even to some "Pollys" (by now, I was learning the lingo). I was supposed to say things like, "well, yes, Y2K could be really bad, but I'm encouraged by the remediation percentages in the financial sector, yortle, chortle ... "

In other words, it was OK to play the Compliance Percentage game; at least that way, you were still acknowledging the Importance Of Computers. But dismiss the whole thing as a tempest in a teacup? That simply didn't go over very well. (end quote)

http://www.jediknight.com/~smpoole/fix0100a.html#Final

Link

-- Still (another@expert's.opinion), May 16, 2000.

Peetah, Peetah.

Flint's analysis was dead on. If you won't listen to me, go re-read what he said.

Anyway. I requested:

Post a specific statement made by me about developing nations which you believe emitted from ignorance. Pull from my Web site, Debunkers, Biffy or the old TB2000, since that's the context in which we're discussing this (ie, "what Poole could have said that would have reassured me before the transition.").

You STILL haven't done this. Not that I'm surprised, of course ...

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 16, 2000.

'Fix on failure' is a strategy that would not have worked for every organization.

-- (in@one.sentence), May 16, 2000.

'Fix on failure' is a strategy that would not have worked for every organization. -- (in@one.sentence), May 16, 2000.

REALLY??

NAME ONE.

-- CPR (buytexas@swbell.net), May 16, 2000.

Summ@rizing.quotes wrote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/daily/feb99/y2k24. htm

The interdependent nature of technology systems makes the severity of possible disruptions difficult to predict.

You have GOT to be kidding, right? FIRST of all, this "quote" is taken from a *DRAFT* of a report (you should read these things before you post 'em). SECOND of all (and I'm STILL waiting for someone, ANYONE to answer me here), is this the EVIL DOT GOV you believe, or the one the LIES, SPINS, COVERS-UP, blah, blah, blah? THIRD, doesn't the FACT that **NOTHING HAPPENED** kinda sorta PROVE that it's NOT in fact "interconnected"? (And we tried to tell ya that, but ya just wouldn't listen.)

And then there's this little gem:

http://www.y2k.gov/docs/LASTREP3.htm

However, it has been difficult to find executives who worked on Y2K in a major bank, financial institution, telephone company, electric power company or airline who believe that they did not confront -- and avoid -- a major risk of systemic failure.

Uh, same questions as before. And a bonus -- find me ONE EXECUTIVE who ACTUALLY WORKED ON Y2K -- PERIOD.

Additionally, as to all of the anonymous "news stories" that seem to magically appear on these threads (especially the Barney Feder/NY Times article), I ask the same question: Is this the EVIL MEDIA that LIES, SPINS, COVERS-UP, is run by the freaking Bilderbergers, caters to Klinton and the NWO, and is now covering up all the Y2K glitches, etc.?

You really don't see the disconnect here, do you? This is truly pathetic. If you can't even see the lack of common sense in these statements, and in your so-called "reasoning", how can you expect to correctly assess anything -- especially a *technical issue*? And you you still believe that you did the right thing based on this?

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), May 16, 2000.

Patricia:

[doesn't the FACT that **NOTHING HAPPENED** kinda sorta PROVE that it's NOT in fact "interconnected"? (And we tried to tell ya that, but ya just wouldn't listen.)]

On the contrary, the fact that nothing happened kinda sorta proves that things are far more interconnected than the simple doomer model described. All of the doomer "interconnect" scenarios involved linear chains. The real world economy is an incredibly multiconnected, N- dimensional, adaptive and dynamic network. We've seen huge holes blown in it (natural disasters, wars, etc.) and it chugs right along, repairing, replacing and regenerating constantly. So it wasn't hard at all to predict that disruptions would be both local and temporary at worst.

[However, it has been difficult to find executives...who believe that they did not confront -- and avoid -- a major risk of systemic failure.]

Not easy to interpret this, but I doubt the best interpretation is that all executives are bone ignorant. There were very real bugs, which if not fixed would have caused very real problems. Systemic failure would have been very common -- even more common than it is today, where systems go sometimes weeks between failures.

Maybe a distinction is being drawn here between a major risk of failure and a risk of major failure? Even if not, what is a "major" failure? Hershey was the worst one -- didn't they become unprofitable for a quarter or two? That's major! Without remediation, this could have happened to dozens of corporations. The economy writ large may not have noticed, but the stockholders of those corporations sure would have. To an executive, that's as major as it gets.

To sum it up: The quotes are fine and they're accurate. The *context* the doomers fabricated was fantasy. And you're absolutely correct about the techniques used to create that context.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 16, 2000.

Flint:

Why do I have this feeling of "deja vu"? :-)

We disagree on much of this. While I do agree the "system" is "interconnected" in your sense, the most overlooked facts have been the built-in resiliency and redundancy, as is borne out by the massive problems experienced by Hershey and Samsonite and Royal Doulton and Deutsche Bank and power going out during storms or because of frying squirrels and the WIN95/Chernobyl virus that hit Asia and however-many-unnamed-others. But remember: the "doomers" were never concerned about the "stockholders"; they were concerned for THEMSELVES. Those problems alone should have shown at least the resiliency; this should have been more than enough to quell any/most "Y2K fears" based on their very own "arguments". But they weren't, which probably proves at least part of The Great Disconnect.

(Why anyone had to stockpile two years' or more than a month's worth of food because of a possible disruption is beyond my scope of comprehension. And I STILL don't know what one does with "canned wheat" either. One of The Greatest Mysteries of Y2K.)

I don't find that "the quotes are fine and they're accurate"; I find them to be misleading at best. And all they served to do was feed those predisposed to doom. (That would be the same people screaming for good news and subsequently blowing off same as "so much P.R. nonsense". I find this laughable when you consider that many of the statements that they did "believe" were deliberately "doom-slanted" for CYA/legal purposes; not entirely unlike "so much P.R. nonsense". ROTFL...)

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), May 17, 2000.

If you can't even see the lack of common sense in these statements, and in your so-called "reasoning", how can you expect to correctly assess anything -- especially a *technical issue*? And you you still believe that you did the right thing based on this?

Do you know what I did to prepare for y2k? Sorry to disappoint you, Patricia, but I did not have a bunker in Montana...

I did have bottled water, a "well-stocked pantry," a kerosene heater -- and most importantly, I stayed out of debt. I also stayed in the city. These quotes don't prove a "doom" point of view, but they do show credible sources pre-rollover thought y2k could have turned out to have been something more than a bump in the road.

There's a strong implication running through this thread that y2k would have been a non-event regardless of how much or how little was spent on it. That's an easy thing to say in 2000, but that wasn't a widely held view in 1999.

Perhaps their reasoning on technical issues was faulty, but the following group of firms weren't sure either. More than just statements were involved.

http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/CWFlash/990628B142

06/28/99 Mary Livens is working hard to make New Year's Eve as boring as possible. Livens, year 2000 project leader at Medical Mutual of Ohio in Cleveland, is helping assemble a Y2K command center that can react quickly to any disruptions that might occur at the date rollover.

Many corporations are apparently doing the same. A survey of Fortune 500 firms released last month by Cap Gemini America LLC in New York found 85% of the companies surveyed plan to build Y2K command centers or crisis-management centers  up from 40% just five months earlier.

-- (Summ@rizing.quotes), May 17, 2000.

Summ@rizing.quotes:

Do you know what I did to prepare for y2k? Sorry to disappoint you, Patricia, but I did not have a bunker in Montana...

No reason I *could* know because I don't even know who you are (which is the problem with posting anonymously [g]).

snip

There's a strong implication running through this thread that y2k would have been a non-event regardless of how much or how little was spent on it. That's an easy thing to say in 2000, but that wasn't a widely held view in 1999.

Yes, it is very easy to say now, except many of "us" were saying it last year as well (in one form or another). Trouble was one of "perception". "We" were perceived as "pollies". No matter what information we posted (or where we posted it), "doomers" weren't going to believe us. I really believe it had alot to do with whether or not one was predisposed to a particular line of thinking (i.e., "doom"). There are way too many possible reasons for that; no need to go into it here.

Perhaps their reasoning on technical issues was faulty, but the following group of firms weren't sure either. More than just statements were involved.

We are kind of in agreement here, but you're leaving out the most common (and prevalent) possible "reasoning": CYA/legal. That had alot (if not everything) to do with any statements that were released. (This is also covered on the thread, Y2k Retrospectives from Power Insiders Chapter 5: Experiences with Message Boards.) As I stated there, I have a real problem with any survey.

Bottom line is that this was never about prudent preparations (which everyone should reasonably have all of the time -- and yes, "we've" said that any number of times), despite certain "doomers'" claims to the contrary. It was about the "head for the hills" nonsense based on nothing more than "anecdotal evidence" (and I use the word "evidence" very loosely here); it's about people like Peter Errington who simply cannot accept the fact of being "wrong"; it's about a "great disconnect" that was the basis for almost all of the "doom beliefs"; and it's about the treatment many people received simply because they held a different view. In many ways that "treatment" continues today (on both sides of this stupid "issue"), but the ones who SHOULD be here debating have placed themselves in Protective Custody over at EZB. A shame, really; I would love to get some of those viewpoints (as well as make a few of my own). I'd also like to know how anyone can "cover up massive Y2K failures". Another of The Greatest Mysteries of Y2K.

But to tell you the truth, I've just about had it with Y2K. I think we're all (both sides) kind of tired of saying the same thing over and over; and we can debate the "whys" and "wheretofors" from now until the proverbial cows come home. No one is going to change anyone else's mind; it's all a matter of perception.

(Do *you* know what one does with "canned wheat"? I swear, I saw some people post that they were stockpiling it last year and no one's been able to tell me what one does with it.)

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), May 17, 2000.

Patricia:

"(Do *you* know what one does with "canned wheat"? I swear, I saw some people post that they were stockpiling it last year and no one's been able to tell me what one does with it.)"

You know I'm a culinary cripple, but I heard quite a bit about this last year and my understanding is that the canned wheat lasts a long time. One needs a wheat "grinder", which Stan helped sell last year to folks who had purchased the canned wheat. I think [although do not KNOW] that one puts the wheat through the wheat "grinder" and the output resembles flour. If there are more steps, I don't know of them.

It's my understanding that bread made from freshly ground wheat is superior to bread made from store-bought flour. Connoisseurs of coffee would say the same about freshly ground coffee beans. It's also my understanding that some folks enjoy the "process." I've made bread from store-bought flour, and felt the product preferable in taste to bread off the shelf. It's all in one's definition of "made from scratch."

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 17, 2000.

Trish,

First, my bread recipe:

Items Needed:

One (1) Five Dollar Bill One (1) Motor Vehicle and license to drive same One (1) suitable grocer, baker or similar marketer of foodstuffs

Instructions:

Use motor vehicle to drive to grocer/baker/market. Go to the bread aisle. Pick up a loaf a bread. Hand the $5 bill to the person at the checkout counter. Be sure to wait for your change.

Use the motor vehicle to drive back home. Eat the bread.

Looking back over this thread, so much is obvious: ERRingman has never bothered to actually READ what I've written, particularly at my Web site.

He's not alone in that, of course, nor am I the only one of our little group who has suffered from this. (You should know that yourself.[g])

Boy, you brought back memories with the old "preparation" thing -- "you Evil Pollies(tm) want people to die!" and stuff like that. Anytime anyone EVER said that to me, I knew INSTANTLY that I was dealing with someone who (a) had a reading comprehension problem or (b) had never read what I'd written or (c) was simply deluded and/or lying for some unfathomable reason.

Likewise with most of what ERRingman has said of me here. He obviously hasn't really read what I've written about Y2K. What makes this so ironic is that HE accuses me of the same thing (and of calling him -- *GASP* -- a "Yourdonite").

I don't miss Y2K, either, but I do credit it for one thing: I'll never have irony-poor blood again. :)

So with some of the comments made by others here. I never said there were no Y2K bugs to be fixed. I never said that there wouldn't be problems if Y2K wasn't addressed (in fact, I said the opposite).

No, I didn't think that, even if it hadn't been addressed, that we would EVER have seen anything like a Yourdon scenario (much less an Infomagic), but that comes from years of watching computers blow up spectacularly and watching people work around them -- even the very people who, just prior to the disaster, had insisted that they COULDN'T work around them; that they were indispensible ...

When generals and admirals are directed to destroy a nation's "infrastructure," they generally use things like bombs and stuff. I've never known one to seriously propose that the job could be done entirely by simply buggering the computers. :)

-- Stephen M. Poole, TTMHMIY2K (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 17, 2000.

Patricia:

We're getting into an area where my ignornace of IT systems was a serious handicap. The following claims were made and (IMO) well supported:

1) Companies don't carry excess maintenance staff "just in case". They had downsized away most of their most knowledgeable (and therefore expensive) people in the early 90's, retaining a skeleton and fairly inexperienced staff barely sufficient to handle *normal* error rates.

2) Normal error rates could be expected to continue, since this is business as usual. Any y2k remediation/FOF would constitute an effort above and beyond the normal rates for which staff was barely sufficient as it was.

3) Some sizeable percentage of date problems represented far more than trivial coding workarounds. Examples cited were field expansions in databases (along with hardcoded record offsets buried in PICTURE statements); soon-to-be-ambiguous dates embedded in filenames requiring large amounts of file renaming and redesign and rewriting ALL of the modules that read and wrote those files (AND all programs that used files where dates had been expanded); interface redefinition issues between the windowers and the expanders; code updates necessitating OS upgrades which in turn required hardware upgrades, etc. In other words, BIG issues NOT addressable quickly with 1-line patches.

4) Widespread problems with documentation (and its lack), combined with lack of source code from now-defunct 3rd party vendors, etc. represented a challenge often difficult to address. Autocoder, anyone?

5) The general high density and universality of date manipulation by IT software meant that not only was a repair effort (before or after the fact) tedious, but the chance of missing something important or screwing up one function when fixing another somewhere else was quite high. Large-scale stirring of metastable, spaghetti-type code bases written (and kludged and patched) by borderline-competent programmers now long gone is a plain flat SCARY prospect, extremely error prone.

Combine all this, mix well, think about the ramifications for a while.

THEN read the optimists' claim that "Hey, we have problems and deal with them all the time. Y2k is nothing special." But the very scope (and cost) of the remediation effort indicated that this WAS something special and unique. Poole's argument that the CIH virus (for which there WAS a silver bullet) "proved" y2k wouldn't hurt was kinda hard to swallow.

Sure, after the fact, we can point to "vested interests" like Hamasaki's newsletter, but this is a bit self-serving as well. NOW we divide those who actually remediated into two groups, those who expected big problems and those who didn't. Those who didn't had "been there and done it and knew whereof they spoke", while those who did "were in the business and had a vested interest in exaggeration". Uh, right. Back THEN, they all looked like experienced people telling us that *some* organizations were in real trouble.

As I said at the top, the claims and explanations looked persuasive, at least to someone like me without IT experience. Persuasive enough that at least a few Hershey-like cases seemed most likely.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 17, 2000.

To Stephen Poole:

No, I haven't visited your Web site. I have read very little of what you have ever written. But that little is enough to convince anyone who really knows about underdeveloped countries that you are clueless regarding the situation there.

If you have ever written anything on underdeveloped countries that is more intelligent than your response to this thread (which I quoted above), let's have it.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 17, 2000.

To Stephen Poole, again:

The term you used describing me which I object to is "doomlit".

Are you even aware of the existence of the hot money problem, for national economies? Keynes worried about it a great deal, and it has never realy been solved. Go ahead and call Keynes a doomlit while you're at it. (It was very important in the Mexico peso crisis, the problems with the Asian economies in 98, etc.)

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 17, 2000.

WARNING!! Verbosity Ahead. Proceed At Your Own Risk.

Anita, thanks for that. I've actually made bread from scratch a couple of times (used to be a culinary cripple as well; in fact, even burned water once, but let's not go there, OK?). Finally taught myself to cook (being Italian, it's a religion thing, I think). The bread came out great, but was too much work to do it regularly. Now I just follow Stephen Poole's "recipe" :-)

Stephen, yes, that's a familiar "recipe" to me. Agreement on all points here; and you know I have a lot to be thankful for, Y2K-wise. But even setting "that" aside, I learned alot about myself and my abilities and my failings. It was a good experience, but one I don't know if I'd care to repeat anytime soon. Like I said somewhere else, I also learned alot about others (in general), some of which I didn't really need or want to know. As to your last comment, no I don't recall that ever having been at the top of the "attack" list, but (and call me a Prophetess if you must) I'm sure it's down the road somewhere.

Flint (deja vu all over again [g]),

I have stated a number of times that I am not a programmer and only have a "big picture" view of systems (C/S and MF; not much knowledge of mid-range). But I did work with programmers and project managers, etc. on a number of Y2K projects. While it wasn't completely necessary that I know their jobs, I felt the need to know as much as I could. So I learned what I could and I understood as much as was possible. (i.e., Disclaimer, Disclaimer, Disclaimer...)

Having said that, I'll just list this by number:

1. No arguments here; and my own office was a prime example of that. But I think the only area in which it became a "problem" was "budgeting". Again, take a look at what has been listed as "total Y2K spending" vs. "total IT budget". There is a veritable chasm there. I worked for an IT consulting firm; there were points in time we couldn't GIVE Y2K people away. I know this to be a fact in many of the small to mid-size IT consulting firms in the NYC area. Why do you suppose that was? (Alot of Y2K work was being kept in-house; "Y2K tools" were prevalent in many of our larger clients.)

2. Yes.....and no. It's amazing to watch what can happen when something goes wrong "above and beyond the norm". One of the things that I believe was a problem with the "doom scenario" was this assumption (and you mentioned it) that everything was "linear". It's not. And most IT people (not necessarily programmers, but systems people) react in non-linear fashion. It's hard to explain, but I think you might know what I mean. It's not like you have Problem A, Problem B and Problem C and you can ONLY work on one at a time (though that does happen sometimes). They can be tackled all at once and usually were/are.

3. Again, yes.....and no. I don't know about "sizeable"; my experience (with regards to the projects of which I had first-hand knowledge and speaking with others about their projects) told me that these types of errors were less prevalent than was believed. And I even specifically asked about stuff like this because I kept seeing it used as an "argument" in places like de Jager's mail list. Again, I have to emphasize that this was only my experience, I hate surveys and sampling, etc. BUT.....the people I spoke with and my own projects did cover a range of industries. It's also been my experience that systems are pretty much the same within a particular industry. Yes, you have the customization per entity, and that would be where the bulk of your problems are going to show up, but the overall "big picture" is pretty much constant. And of course that helps alot.

4. No argument here on documentation (I had to find and/or do some of it). And while this was pretty widespread, I didn't see it become as much of a problem by 1998/1999 as was being indicated in places like de Jager's mail list and web fora, or nearly the problem it was perceived to be in 1996/1997. What some shops found was that no, there was no documentation per se; and there was some oddball stuff out there, but it wasn't nearly the "mish-mash" people were painting it to be. Again, though, that was just my experience as stated above.

5. Yes, but this was caught during testing. Testing, I might add, that was discounted by way too many self-appointed so- called "experts". That's where we caught our problems; found 'em, fixed 'em, problem solved. If I had to guess (and I do), I'd say that was pretty constant throughout IT.

Just because you found something "kinda hard to swallow" doesn't make it any less factual, or any less worthy an analogy. Again, if one is predisposed to a certain way of thinking, nothing is going to change one's mind. I'm not saying you are or were predisposed to "doom", but, the doubt was there, probably because the solution seemed way too simple. Had a similar problem myself when I began in Y2K in early 1996 -- I was about an "8" on the Doom-O-Meter. Living in NYC didn't help. But then living in NYC was the bulk of what helped to change my mind -- drastically (I looked at the skyline one night and said, "This is all going away? Bulls*&t It's not going anywhere."). My own office was another factor (our network was going down at the rate of almost once a week; yet we never lost a client or a dime or an opportunity because of it). Our clients were still other factors (same deal). And on and on.....

I don't recall mentioning anything in this thread about "vested interests" (though there were many to be found). And frankly, IMO, Hamasaki is nothing more than a bit of a dinosaur who let technology pass him by and who is now bitching and moaning about it. I've read some of his stuff; yeah, he can toss around the requisite "buzzwords", but when you try to search for the "meat", you find there ain't much.

Again, so what if there HAD BEEN "a few Hershey-like cases"? There HAVE BEEN more than "a few Hershey-like cases". Where's the doom? This is what I Don't Get; as so many have said.....it DOES happen all the time. According to the "doom scenario", that shouldn't be possible. But it's not only possible, it's actually BAU. That's why humans back up computers and computers back up humans. One or the other is going to screw up; sometimes both at the same time. But no doom. Go figure.

I doubt this answers your concerns, but hey, I tried.

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), May 17, 2000.

This has gone on since May 12th when Peter began the "Who is Andy Ray?" thread, wherein he suggested that it may be Stephen Poole due to what Stephen said about foreign countries.

I summarized their conversation and threw it into a file, but it's not worth posting. Basically, it seems that Peter caught a one-liner on csy2k wherein Stephen stated that Y2k would be a piece of cake. Stephen explained the context of that statement. Any other quote is from this thread.

This has come full-circle, IMO. Peter accused Stephen of discussing foreign countries somewhere BEFORE he posted the original "Where is Andy Ray" thread on May 12th, yet Peter then stated he'd read little of what Stephen said before these two threads. Now he's asking STEPHEN to search out what Stephen said about foreign countries. Again I ask, "If you don't know what he said, how is it you singled him out?"

I've engaged in a few of this type of thread with Heller. He'd say something and I'd say something. He'd say something again, but ALWAYS add something like "It's apparent to ANYONE with any common sense that you don't know of what you speak." I saw this as an emotional appeal for support of what he said. How could anyone disagree with HIS argument after he'd just implied that any one who would had no common sense?

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 17, 2000.

Anita, if I read one, yes just one, really dumb thing that someone says, I feel that I can comment on it. I am not obligated to paw through everything else the person has written to see if he's really that dumb.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 17, 2000.

Anita, maybe I didn't make myself clear. Before this thread, I had read dummheit from Poole on underdeveloped countries (eg the grand total of two computers in Afghanistan)

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 17, 2000.

Patricia:

Yes, this answers my concerns. Does an excellent job, matter of fact. I don't think anyone here considered me predisposed to doom, but I'd like to give you a few reactions here. And forgive my verbosity as well, but a different perspective is easy to dismiss but very hard to make realistic.

Your concerns were the same as mine back in 1996-1997, which is when I did most of my worrying and the vast bulk of my preparing. Back then, programmers were talking about the worst cases they could recall seeing, and nobody had any idea how prevalent any of this was.

Your real-life experience was vastly superior to mine in the IT area. I knew embedded systems well enough to recognize and dismiss the Paula Gordon types, and by early last year had no more worries about power, water and the like. I didn't know if railroad switching code handled dates, but I knew that any such handling sure wasn't in the switches. (As one of a zillion possible illustrations).

What you're telling me is that while all of these technical concerns were valid, what remediators *actually found* was that the bad problems weren't common and the common problems weren't bad. Your job sounds very unusual in that you were exposed to fairly constant, fairly detailed, fairly broad-based feedback from the field.

From my outsider's perspective, what I saw was a swearing contest, whereby those with experience similar to yours were swearing the problem was very serious/easily manageable (pick one) based on their many years of experience in IT and the direct remediation they were doing/familiar with.

Someone not even distantly part of the remediation process and not conversant in the details of IT really had no *useful* basis for picking one assessment over another at first. And a predisposition to be either fearful or oblivious might lead one to pick one side or another and defend it vigorously, but of course arbitrarily and baselessly, either way.

As time went on, *useful* means of assessment, at least to me, were all necessarily indirect. Over time, my evaluation evolved toward optimism, not based on what was really being found or done (since I had no direct way to decide who to believe), but on the basis of what did NOT happen combined with an analysis of the inherent logic and consistency of any position.

For example, while some geeks were very concerned, they were in the tiny minority and their ranks *never grew*. If things had been even half as bad as the doomers claimed, an awful lot of these geeks would be saying and doing things they were NOT saying and doing. Nobody was bailing, nobody was selling out of the market, nobody was draining their bank account, nobody was heading for the hills. Nothing happened on any critical lookahead dates.

Also, doomer interpretations were inconsistent. As one of dozens of examples I've cited, if a company reported underspending their remediation budget, it was hailed as "proof" companies were way behind and couldn't finish before they "failed". If another company reported OVERspending, this was "proof" that the problem was much harder than originally thought, so they would "fail" as well. And this kind of "heads I win, tails you lose" interpretation was not only the norm, it was often justified as valid!

And of course, as you've always said, there was the "meme" issue, another way of saying that doomers assumed their conclusions as their axioms.

My point (yes, I was leading up to one[g]) was that I was operating in a partial vacuum of useful information, at least before last year. What made it so very difficult was that those in the best position to issue (at least) semi-official reassurances weren't doing so. We saw a certain amount of legal-sounding "We have no current reason to believe we'll have problems" statements, without any good way to discern what the hell the lawyers were really trying to tell us.

And as a footnote, about that CIH virus. I doubt Stephen would claim that a single virus, exterminated by a single silver bullet antivirus program (in 3 days), was technically analogous to the incredibly multifaceted y2k issue. I realize what he was trying to illustrate there was the idea that *computers themselves* aren't the sine qua non of economic activity. And I'll agree this is true for a short time. But those redesign, new-database-and-everything-along-with-it fixes weren't short term problems, and if anyone knew early on how common those big ones were, I didn't see them saying it.

Anyway, bottom line: All else being equal, if your information is a lot better, so are your conclusions. But those without that information aren't necessarily meme-ridden dodos victimized by con artists.

Peter:

I read Poole as saying that computers play a very very minor role in 3rd world economies. If true, computer *errors* play a minor role as well. Are you saying computers play a *major* role in those economies, or are you just clinging to something, anything, to salve your ego?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 17, 2000.

Peter:

It's my personal opinion that smart people sometimes say stupid things. I'd even take that further and say that smart people sometimes DO stupid things. Sometimes smart people say smart things and folks who disagree think they said a stupid thing. Sometimes smart people DO smart things and folks who disagree think they DID a stupid thing.

Since this whole thing began with an assertion that Andy Ray might be Stephen Poole, I might note that I haven't seen anyone from the polly camp [either decent or indecent] assert something like "I think E. Lane Core, Jr. could be Steve Heller. They both thought the same thing in 1999, and I read a few of their words somewhere that sounded really stupid to me." This assertion would then be followed by someone E-mailing Steve, who would feel obliged to come over and defend his good name. Then, when Steve got here, the polly would say, "Well, I really didn't read your stuff much, but the little bit I did read led me to believe you were stupid." Then Steve would say, "Oh? What did I actually say to lead you to believe this?" Then the polly would say something like "Well, you said on csy2k that Y2k would cause 'C' applications to fail. You don't know what you're talking about. I've worked with 'C' for 18 years and I KNOW better." Then Steve would say, "I was referencing applications at a firm in Detroit. I wasn't at all talking about applications in Chicago. Have you followed my website? I gave full explanations for my opinions on my website." Then the polly would say, "I never read your website. I never read much of ANYTHING you said. I only need to look at one comment from someone to know whether or not they have a clue. If you don't want me to believe you're clueless, prove to me that you said something intelligent about 'C' applications." Steve would then reply, "The link to my website has been provided by another poster."

Sorry, Peter, but the logic of all this escapes me.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 17, 2000.

Flint,

I don't know about "vastly superior", but I did have some pretty good "insiders" and I did speak with them as much as I could. If I didn't know what they were talking about, I *made* them explain it to me (kinda feeds their ego too, if you think about it -- there is a method to my madness, as it were).

"Your job sounds very unusual in that you were exposed to fairly constant, fairly detailed, fairly broad-based feedback from the field."

Uh, at the risk of "tooting my own horn", when *I* was involved in the project, I *demanded* the details and the feedback. There would be *no excuses* as to why that information wasn't complete, understandable, etc. (Hell, I did that when I wasn't involved in the project; I had a habit of reading all the documentation. They hated me at times.) We were doing a job for a client; they were *paying* us for this information and I made damn sure it was the best there was. But that's the way I work. I know everyone doesn't work that way, but most of the people I've come across are similar in their work ethic. I was even worse when it came to our in-house Y2K project. I had at least a half-dozen people at any given point in time who would simply run when they saw me coming. Not something to be proud of, but I got the job done, on-time and under-budget.

Too bad I wasn't around to see it all work at the rollover [g].

I saw the "swearing contests" as well. But I would not permit it on *my* teams. If there was a problem, it got fixed. Period. Check your ego at the door. What I did notice was that alot of the "doomer-geeks" were the ones with the biggest egos (and usually the least amount of talent). Don't think I need to explain that any further.

Something else struck me as I was reading your response: "interpretation". Back when I started in the IT world, I was putting together a "dictionary of IT terms" for the recruiters to use (might be nice if they actually knew what they were recruiting, right?). I asked ten different "geeks" in my office for a definition of "client/server". Got ten different definitions -- not similar; completely different. That stupid little episode, to me anyway, spoke volumes about the IT world in general (and geeks and their egos in particular). The more I got into Y2K, the more I couldn't get that out of my mind. I really can't explain the train of thought. I realize this probably makes no sense at all, and I wish I could explain it better.....

You wrote: "Anyway, bottom line: All else being equal, if your information is a lot better, so are your conclusions. But those without that information aren't necessarily meme-ridden dodos victimized by con artists."

Yes, a mistake I know I made on a number of occasions, and tried to correct each time I made it, because I started out the exact same way -- an almost-full-blown "doomer". I never claimed to "know all", but when I didn't know something, I asked. I placed my trust (there's that word again) in people whom I knew to "know their jobs". I saw a lot of that lacking in the "doom" community. Most of what I believed was also based on common sense and logic; which probably explains why stupid things drive me insane (i.e., directions on shampoo; the sign in the jewelry store that reads "Ears Pierced While You Wait"; there are too many to list).

Hey, I'm just trying to give you a run for your "verbosity" :-)

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), May 17, 2000.

Mr. Errington,

I object to your statements indicating that I do not know what I'm talking about when I refer to under-developed or "third-world" nations. The reason for my objection is you have no basis for making such a claim regarding my qualifications, and you have at least one reason for believing I do (I was right about Y2k). For this reason (and at least one other), I place you in the same category with doomers - a category I refer to (when engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed person) as "wrong."

You are remarkably "doomer-ish" in your arguments, however, because you obtain or imagine some small smattering of information, make several sweeping assumptions about it (beginning with "it must be true"), and then proceed across a bridge you perceive to be logical - with a host of asserted premises supporting you.

You may feel wonderful about yourself, Mr. Errington, for having mounted such a powerful argument based upon your (perceived, then asserted) premises, but you are neglecting at least one of the rules of mathematical logic and critical thinking: namely, one cannot assert a premise.

I'm not certain of your motivation, and really don't care. Your argument seems predicated upon the Milnish argument: "I was wrong, but so were the pollies!" Balderdash.

As for me, I do of what I type. I knew prior to the non-event that little would occur, if anything, and what would occur would be noticed by no one. I stated as much at the Hysterium. And, I was right. It wasn't luck, Mr. Errington, as I've explained before - it was an examination of the facts combined with the application of some critical thinking. And now it's an historical fact.

The thing about being right or wrong about an historical event is simply this: One will remain right or wrong about it forever. I wish you well in finding a way to deal with your frustrations at being proven incorrect.

Vindicated Regards,
Andy Ray

-- Andy Ray (andyman633@hotmail.com), May 17, 2000.

Flint:

"I read Poole as saying that computers play a very very minor role in 3rd world economies"

That's what hes been saying alright, and that is where he is flat out ignorant wrong. They are damned important in the modern sectors of these economies.

I thought I said that.

You talk about all the problems they have, all quite true. You pile something additional on top of all these problems (Y2K mess) and it could precipitate something really nasty, for us. Like for example a mess that would cause hot money to pile out of there and result in tens of billions of dollars worth of loans held by our banks having to be put in the non-performing category. This sad turn of events may happen anyway, but a Y2K mess would have been "most unhelpful."

Anita, I never really thought that Andy Ray was Stephen Poole. I just wanted to dump on them both, for their stupidity. They were sort of similar.

Andy Ray, if I wanted any more of this Poole-type crap, I'd go to the master.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 17, 2000.

ERRingman,

You have just demonstrated that which has been pretty evident to me for some time: you don't have much of a sense of humor regarding Y2K.

My statement about "two computers" in a typical third-world nation was obvious hyperbole, an exaggeration that conveyed a point in a humorous manner.

Do you watch someone like Dennis Miller with a stone face, wondering why everyone else is laughing? Here's a free clue: "Embeddeds" And The IT Mindset. Even though the discussion is about embedded/control issues, you should see yourself in there.

(Then again, you probably won't. You will scratch your head and wonder why I sent you there.)

(Call me a prophet.)

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 17, 2000.

"I just wanted to dump on them both."

That's what it looked like from the beginning [to me], Peter. If you manage to find one of the thousands of stupid statements I'VE made in my last 5 years on the internet, I'll state right now that you've missed thousands of statements I've made in real life. I'm only referencing STATEMENTS there. One could spend a lifetime capturing all the stupid stuff I've DONE. If I can live with that, I would think YOU could as well.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 17, 2000.

Anita oh Anita: Read Flint's latest. Poole really believes in this shit.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 17, 2000.

Peter:

So ya think Andy Ray is really Flint?

I just can't fault the polly logic, Peter. I SAW the remediation get done. I saw the folks get laid off......and they're STILL laid off...after the work was done. There never WAS a shortage of IT help, and I DO think Cory was simply trying to fatten the purse in suggesting there was.

Did *I* know anything about foreign countries? No. Then again, I didn't know anything about embedded systems either.

Could all have gone well WITHOUT remediation? In MOST instances, I'd say, "Yes." I say this having worked at NUMEROUS sites on remediation. There would have been SCRAMBLES, for SURE, but I've rarely worked a contract that WASN'T a scramble [for SOME reason.]

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 17, 2000.

Peter:

You should at least be willing to notice that the "shit" Poole believes in has been borne out unambiguously. How many third world countries do you think really remediated a damn thing? And how many failed loans resulted? Earth to Peter...come in, please.

Patricia:

What your response makes clear is that you had numerous people to badger and browbeat into *telling* you what was going on in terms you could understand. Yes, it took a lot of effort on your part, and a lot of patience on the part of the geeks, and you may not have won many friends, but you had the opportunity to learn and you took it.

I confess I've never actually met an IT type in person. I know LOTS of EE types, and designed and developed lots of embedded systems. I know nearly all there is to be known about the inside of a PC (except the software, of course). But I've never even SEEN a COBOL program, much less a real person who could read or write one. Like nearly all of us here, I had nobody to ask, only handles of unknown pedigree on the net. At least Yourdon had written a bunch of published books.

So most of us had nothing more solid to go on than our own personal notion of "reasonable plausibility". Utterly uninformed by knowledge of or experience with IT systems, so how the hell could we know what was plausible?

Unlike Peter, though, I can recognize that someone whose idea of plausible was more fully and properly informed than mine, was more than just lucky in making superior interpretations.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 17, 2000.

Peter,

Your purpose in posting origionally was to attempt to degrade others. You have only managed to make yourself look foolish.

I agree it must be related to your ego, you demad perfection of others then make incorrect statements yourself which you quickly gloss over.

More or less in mid '99, Mr. Poole let us know that Y2K remediation was no more than a "piece of cake".

*******

When Poole described remediation as a "piece of cake" he was actually making two predictions: (1) that we would make it OK, and (2) that it would be easy

*******

for Andy Ray, Poole, and CPR I sure as hell do know about their knowledge of underdeveloped countries because of all the sweeping incorrect statements they have made.

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To Stephen Poole:

The main problem I have with your response is that you attribute views to me that I have never had.

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And you, CPR, and Andy Ray don't know squat about computers in underdeveloped countries, so you shouldn't make observations about them.

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You say you knew enough about computers in underdeveloped countries "to CORRECTLY predict what would happen on January 1st, right?"

Pure 100% luck considering your ignorance.

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There are a lot more computers in developing countries than you realize.

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You talk about countries like Italy. It is my contention that we don't know what happened in Italy.

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That's all we can do right now, speculate.

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I think it's time to hang this discussion up.

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One of your strawmen is that everyone who disagrees with you is a Yourdonite. You just keep going back to that no matter what, as if, like a small child, you believe that saying something makes it so.

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Anita, I'm singling out Stephen because he insists on making erroneous statements about underdeveloped countries and their importance to us, and he doesn't know what he is talking about. I worked in A.I.D. for eighteen years, and trust me, when he pontificates about underdeveloped counties, he's just babbling.

Also, we got to arguing about other things, and I must say I'm not terribly impressed with his arguments.

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But reread the debate on this thread between Poole and myself, from the standpoint of intellectual honesty. Regardless of his greater contribution to the public welfare last year, I frankly think he disgraced himself on this thread.

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To Stephen Poole:

OK, first always remember and never forget that I was not a Yourdonite doomlit, not even a mild one. Recession was my worry, for which your total certitude supposedly should have provided reassurance.

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Before this thread, you were basically arguing that these countries' dependence on computers was so small as not to be a worry. (Remember, triggering a recession was what I was really afraid of). Now remember the total 100% .....

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Those two factoids alone, to anyone with a functioning brain, were enough to counter the stupid 'even if we get our stuff fixed, these itty bitty developing countries could drag us down!' "

I wouldn't give two cents for the amount of certitude that kind of analysis provided.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 15, 2000.

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To Patricia: You say "you have repeatedly accuseded him of calling you a 'Yourdonite' but I have yet to see a specific instance of that."

Well, he didn't actually use the word "Yourdonite", that word is probably mine. What happened (up on this thread if you want to take a look) is that after he went on about Yourdon and doomerism, I posted a reply carefully explaining in detail how I wasn't one of those.

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To Stephen Poole:

No, I haven't visited your Web site. I have read very little of what you have ever written. But that little is enough to convince anyone who really knows about underdeveloped countries that you are clueless regarding the situation there.

If you have ever written anything on underdeveloped countries that is more intelligent than your response to this thread (which I quoted above), let's have it.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 17, 2000.

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To Stephen Poole, again:

The term you used describing me which I object to is "doomlit". Are you even aware of the existence of the hot money problem, for national economies?

and to think you spent most of this thread complaining that he had called you a yourdonite, now that you admit you were wrong about what he said you start up on anothr word, as if nsulted by it, yet you insult others with impunity.

Yep you do have a BIG ego problem, and I would hate to explain to you what THAT shows about you, you would not like it either:o)

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Anita, if I read one, yes just one, really dumb thing that someone says, I feel that I can comment on it.

And we feel WE can do the same about you, although you are doing a pretty good job on your own without our having to point the "dumb things" you say.

I am not obligated to paw through everything else the person has written to see if he's really that dumb.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 17, 2000.

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Anita, maybe I didn't make myself clear. Before this thread, I had read dummheit from Poole on underdeveloped countries (eg the grand total of two computers in Afghanistan)

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 17, 2000.

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Peter you seem to think that what you think and your evaluation of anything is of any importance to anyone other than yourself. Your opinions do not matter to anyone, no one is taking your word as to the intelligence of others or anything else that you say as correct. You demand others prove what they say to you, but why should they? Who are you that anyone has to prove anything to you? You have shown that you cannot even tell the truth, you accuse another of saying something about you which he had not said, which shows you are not credible in what you say.

Get over it, you are a nobody. No one has any respect for your opinions. And "that" is all your own fault.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), May 17, 2000.

I hate it when I forget to close those things....This was supposed to be in black-from me.

Peter you seem to think that what you think and your evaluation of anything is of any importance to anyone other than yourself. Your opinions do not matter to anyone, no one is taking your word as to the intelligence of others or anything else that you say as correct. You demand others prove what they say to you, but why should they? Who are you that anyone has to prove anything to you? You have shown that you cannot even tell the truth, you accuse another of saying something about you which he had not said, which shows you are not credible in what you say. Get over it, you are a nobody. No one has any respect for your opinions. And "that" is all your own fault.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), May 17, 2000.

Until I found this thread, I hadn't seen a bigger waste of bits since my manager bought a 30 Gig hard drive to store his occasional email message...

-- geez (enough@all.ready), May 17, 2000.

Well, I must say I find all these responses immensely surprising, but what the hell. Go with God, cookies. Believe whatever you want to.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 17, 2000.

ERRingman,

FINE. You just take your little football and GO HOME, then. Next time you try to start somethin', bring your helmet and do your homework first.

And -- dare I hope? -- shouldn't you consider actually *READING* what I've written?

Just for the record, I should note that you never did post anything that I said last year about third world nations to demonstrate my ignorance (save for the "two computers" thing, which was a joke -- and the fact that you took it seriously *PROVES* that you have no sense of 'yumor).

-- Stephen M. Poole, TTMHMIY2K (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 18, 2000.

This recent thread has an exchange between Andy Ray and Peter Errington that clearly shows the basis for the opinions of each on this topic.

It's worth taking a look at again.

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0036U4

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Let us begin with the "under-developed" and "third-world" countries lie: This assumes there was anything to fix to begin with, which there was not. A catastrophic Y2K was not avioded (contrary to the doomer meme), the truth is a catastrophic Y2k was a fantasy concocted in the minds of a few disillusioned lunatics. The third-world countries didn't spend any money "fixing" the problem becuase money in most of those countries was not available. They survived - as did we all. Would the West have survived without massive amounts of cash and effort directed at the perceived problem? Yes.

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Andy Ray, you don't know jack shit about underdeveloped counties. Here is what I believe happened: there was a lot of dependence on software, but it was packaged software from foreign firms. The computer shops in the LDCs merely installed the Y2K fixes sent to them by their suppliers. One of my information sources told me this is exactly what happened in Nigeria.

This certainly does reduce Y2K remediation to normal maintenance (one strand of polly thinking). It offers no support for the fix-on- failure model, that we've been getting so much noise about from other pollies ("country X did nothing, squat, zero..blah blah blah").

OK, did I as a pessimist foresee this happy outcome? No, I did not. One of this year's pleasant surprises.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), May 06, 2000.

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The bottom line in this disagreement....

Whether or not a lack of problems in foreign countries (that spent little on Y2K) is a sign that Y2K could never have caused significant problems in the U.S., even if the U.S. had done little or nothing to fix it.

Do we agree or disagree with Andy Ray when he said....

Would the West have survived without massive amounts of cash and effort directed at the perceived problem? Yes.

-- The crux (of@the.issue), May 18, 2000.

crux:

No, that's the wrong question, and when you ask stupid questions you get stupid answers. The problem is, "survival, yes or no" *assumes* a binary, yes-or-no answer. Either answer you give means you have bought into this false assumption.

More realistically, if nothing had been done, how much efficiency would have been lost for how long? What would this degree of relative inefficiency have meant to the economy? Would it have even been visible in our normal measurement scales?

Before the fact, many (really, most) observers considered y2k a tossup as to cost benefit. On the one hand, we had a LOT of organizations upgrading to newer and better hardware and software, inventorying their systems, improving their documentation, removing obsolete stuff from their operations, etc. On the other hand, we had the threat of downtime (of unknown magnitude).

After the fact, we notice that the magnitude of downtime was essentially insignificant, while those listed benefits are real. On balance, y2k was a net blessing!

Survival? Not appropriate. No, we didn't have a spare copy of the US to use as an unremediated control system. But based on experiences elsewhere, if we hadn'd lifted a finger to remediate the loss of efficiency would have had (my guess) a 50-50 chance of being noticeable in our economic indicators. Peter's picture of loans defaulting here and there turns out to be unrealistic. Remember the S&L scandal? Did you suffer? Need preparations? Perspective is called for here, isn't it?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 18, 2000.