or
"Bad news, BAD. Bad things not happen. This America. Bad things not happen in America. "
or here's the text, if you will view full screen, the formatting should be ok, maybe...kinda like y2k itself...on the link, there are responses to Paul's post on Ed Yourdon's BBS. Excellent site for Y2k, I might add.
Rusty
From csy2k - a dose of reality, folks....... . . . .
From GN's site:
Comment: People reject bad news. They assume
that bad events are abnormal and good events are normal. They think they
deserve good news. So, they reject bad news.
They put it out of their minds. They get angry at anyone who sells warnings
of
bad times ahead. As the prime law of infomercials
says: "You can't sell prevention. You can only sell cures."
For three decades, 1965 to 1995, senior men
in the IT deparments feared telling senior management that a disaster was
coming in 2000. They knew what the reactions
would be. "That's crazy." "We'll wait until 1998 to fix it." "You're fired."
A few companies got started in 1995. Citibank did. Chase Manhattan Bank did. Neither is compliant today. 1995 was too late.
If it was too late for the banking system, it's too late for everything else.
If the phone companies go down, the banks go
down, and so do the power companies. The phone companies are far behind
the banks, according to this report.
Most companies have deferrred implementing a multimillion dollar repair.
Now, having waited, it's too late. Corporate
officers are now admitting that some processes won't be compliant. Which
ones,
they refuse to say. Later this year, insider
selling of corporate shares will begin. That will be the sign that the
end of an era is
upon us.
You have a head start. Don't lose it. It's almost gone.
This is from FOX MARKET WIRE (Jan. 2).
* * * * * * * * * *
The new millennium and its much-anticipated
computer bug is still a year away but many U.S. companies are already
throwing in the towel.
They admit they won't be ready.
Companies are beginning to make such frank
statements on Y2K risks to cover themselves against possible securities
litigation,
analysts said. The statements also provide
ammunition for their own suits.
Companies such as Chevron Corp. and AT&T
Corp. say their systems may be vulnerable to significant failures as they
grapple with the Year 2000 date change. McDonald's
Corp. and DuPont Co. are more confident their machines can handle the
date change. They are less sure about those
of suppliers and local governments. . . .
"The fundamental cost of Y2K is the risk of
business interruption,'' said Jeff Ray, a vice president at Compuware Corp.,
a
leading software testing company.
Companies have still not done most of the tedious and costly work to fix Year 2000 computer bugs.
"It appears that over half the work will be
crammed into 1999,'' said Steven Hock, chief executive of research company
Triaxsys Research LLC. . . .
As companies realize they and their partners
may not achieve full compliance, they are planning back-up systems and
looking
for alternate vendors. . . .
The technologically complex telecoms sector
ranks dead last among all other industries in progress toward completion
of Y2K
projects, according to Triaxsys. Also behind
are the utilities industry and the energy sector. . . .
Industries leading the race are banking, securities
and insurance, all of which began looking at Y2K up to 10 years ago largely
because of regulatory requirements. Most telecom
companies only began looking at the issue two to three years ago. . . .
Link: http://www.foxmarketwire.com/wires/0102/f_rt_0102_2.sml
================
From the above article , you can see that the work is not getting done, it has not been done and it will not be done, in time.
However, we have relative newcomers like Preston
Crawford and Reg Smith and ZB who have read, oh, I'd say about one
one thousandth as much about Y2K as some of
us. Are they entitled to their opinions, yes. We are not discussing that
'entitlement'. We are discussing the veracity
of the opinions. They can not discuss the issues, because the conclusion
is bad
news. In their neanderthal minds they say,
"Good news GOOD, Bad news, BAD. Bad things not happen. This America. Bad
things not happen in America. People who say
bad things happen, "BAD" people!"
I understand their 'anger and their hatred and their intolerance' of the truth.
More than a year and a half ago, I said that
they were not moving fast enough. They said they were 'serious'. Yet the
bulk of
the Fortune 500 had not even finished assesments
until THIS year. The federal government had a budget of $1 billion dollars.
I laughed at that. Yet these were seasoned
proffessionals. EXPERIENCED and COMPETENT professionals. They budgeted
$1 billion for 75,000 systems. Do the math.
I sat down with a piece of paper with my nine year old sona nd we went
through
it so that he would understand. He laughed
and said that there was not even close to enough money to do even a quarter
of
the systems . Boy, was he right. A nine year
old kid. Who was I to suggest that they were so wildly off base? Now, they
have
budgeted $6.5 Billion for only ten percent
of the original number of sytems. In other words, the original budget should
have
been about 65 times bigger. They are off by
a magnitude of 65+ . These allegedly competent and responsible and serious
people were off by a factor of 65. Imagine
how competent you would think your mechanic was if he told you your
transmission would cost you $32,500 dollars
instead of the original $500, because that is the degree of their error
in real world
terms. Mind boggling isn't it? But the pollyannas
do not care. They march on. Bad things Not happen in America. The one
profession with about the WORST track record
of performance and they under budget by a factor of 65, they start years
too
late, don't staff up, miss schedules, slip
milestones, fake SEC reports, lie to customers/vendors, but everything
will muddle
through.
A year ago they all swore they would be done
by December 31 1998. They had a whole year and they ridiculed anyone who
said otherwise. "Who are you to say that we
can not get the coding done in a whole year? Why you intolerat 'hater'.
You just
'want' us to fail, don't you?" No, it is just
plain common sense in an industry that can never ever meet its schedules
and
obligations on an historical basis, to believe
they will this time either. And they have not. Over half of all small and
medium
sized business has not yet begun. Over 40%
of big business has not yet spent half their proposed budgets, and 30%
of them
hald spent less than 25% of their budgets.
This is not getting the job done. This is MANIFEST failure in an industry
that can
not pull from behind at this late date. Throwing
money at it does not help. Adding people makes it worse.
All of these companies that a year ago scoff
at the notion that they wouldn't be done by the ned of '98 are NOWHERE
in
sight. Where are they all? Supposedly thousands
of them. Where are all the announcements? None to be heard. Pollyannas
just roll along. "No bad thing happen here."
We all know that testing is the most time consuming,
costly and single most important part of the job. As a whole, that point
has not yet been even close to reached. But,
pollyannas who ought to know better, ignore this. At very best errors wil
be
introduced as coding proceeds and not even
close to all the bugs will be found. Even AFTER code remediation, the code
is
NOT remediated. It is only half done. It is
still broken. Right now, better than 90% of all the systems and code in
the world
are still broken. Do you realize that?
Embedded systems. A problem equal to or greater
than mainstream It problems. Yet, overall, less than 2% of all It money
has
gone to it. 1/50th of the money for a problem
of equal or greater magnitude. Do you see a problem there? Not if you are
a
pollyanna, you don't.
But, the pollyannas blithely ignore this chanting
their "This not happen here," mantra. We're American! We'll fix it in time.
But
there is one thing that they forget. If we
fix these thing by virtue of our being 'Americans' then how does the rest
of the world
do it, not being Americans? Do the Pakistanis
have an equivalent of the "Seventh Cavalry"? Is there a Zimbabwaian John
Wayne? Nope. Most of the code is out there
in the rest of the world and it is not getting fixed. Just because you
are sitting in a
diner in Terra Haute drinking a cup of coffee,
do not think for a minute that you would be drinking it if it were not
for the
technology to get it here from Columbia and
to have it processed and marketed and delivered to you.
Japan is more than TWO YEARS behind us in remediation.
Please say that to yourself OUT LOUD. Go ahead, say it. No. I
didn't hear you. TWO YEARS! That's better.
Japan, net impoter of food. Japan imports 100% percent of its energy, Coal,
Oil
etc etc. Germany gets forty percent of its
power from Russia. Russia has ZERO Y2K budget. China BEGAN electric utility
remediation a month and a half ago. A problem
that NOT ONE U.S. utility has acomplished in YEARS. And we have over
8,000 of them. Brazil? Any south American
or Central American country? All toast. Everyone of them. OPEC nations?
All
have their heads in the sand. Literally. All
the eastern European countries, Balkan states etc.., Gone. France has not
even
passed the awareness stage yet.
You see, none of the code in this country makes
a whole lot of difference as far as the world's economy goes. Our economic
well being is inextricably linked, now, with
the rest of the world. We used to be an industrial power. Now, we are a
'service'
based economy. We do not manufacture what
we use. We import it. Not for much longer.
But, it is more comfortable for the pollyannas
to ignore all this and rely on their standard childishness. If you point
out 'bad'
consequences, then you 'must' have a malevolent
intent. No one would talk about bad things that could happen unless they
'wanted' those things to happen. They must
be prejudiced or intolerant or haters of all that is good and noble and
clean or
thrifty, brave and reverent.
Yes sir, if you think that not enough has been
done to avoid catastrophe,why, you are nothing more than a bigotted narrow
minded damnable misanthrope. Why we oughtta
string 'em up!!!!! Don't hey know that chuildren will get hurt and that
old
ladies in nursing homes will be caught without
help and that there are hundreds of millions of people that can not do
anything
to prepare??? Why those narrow minded haters
of innocent Americans!!!
This is all just pure bullcrap and nonsense,
because the Pollyannas can not answer the issues. The FACTS and EVIDENCE
are on the table. Not even a tiny portion
of the big companies, the Fortune 1000 companies have gotten even close
to
finnishing thier code yet alone started full
integrated test. And the majority of small to medium sized companies have
not yet
started. And the situation with the 75% of
the code outside this country is even worse.
Nothing that is presented to the pollyannas
will cause them to reconsider. they will not do anything to substantially
prepare.
They will not get their families out of cities
surrounded by thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people who are
not
prepared. They rely on the fact that EVEN
if it gets bad, people will come out smiling, hold hands and help each
other through
a time of trouble.
While some folks do help others on a very minimum
and highly localized scale, historically, this has never happened over
countries and continents. One people wars
against another. When they do not have what they want or need, to live,
one group
attacks another.
Not even fractionally enough to complete remediation
has been accomplished. The remediation has already failed. It failed
when they did not start early enough, budget
enough and assign enough competent people. It was over when they said they
would be done coding and beginning testing
as of yesterday. They failed every milestone along the way. Now they are
all
saying that they will meet the march deadline.
Some will. The overall majority will not. The same thing will happen as
March
turns into June and june turns into december.
The very same way that pollyannas looked forward to Dec 31 1998 when it
was
Jan 1998, is the same way that they will look
forward to Dec 31 1999 wnen it is Dec 30 1999. They will still believe
there is
enough time.
And on that day, they will still have no evidence
of any substantial amount being done. On Dec 1 1999, Triaxsys will put
out a
study showing that less than half of all firms
have finished coding, much less testing, and the pollyannas will STILL
think it
will be OK. Peter de Jager will come out and
say that while it is not common knowledge, testing *CAN* be done properly
by
competent people in less than thirty days.
There *is* still enough time, contrary to what the doom and gloomers say.
And Ed
Yardeni will again give us the grim news that
we might *Choke* have as much as .05% shaved off the GDP based upon
absolutely no econometric model of which *he*
is aware.
These are the pollyannas. No bad thing will
happen. 'disruption', possible. 'dislocation' possible. 'Temporary glitch',
yessir.
But, no bad thing will happen. Brown out,
yup, rolling blackout, yup. Nothing worse than that.
None of the code worth mentioning is ready,
but nothing bad will happen. just remember the secret pollyanna response.
That
way you will not have to waste time thinking
up response to the issues.
"You are intolerant and you hate other people. You are obviously predjudiced and a bigot. You hate society and all people."
See how easy that was. Now you don't have to
know any more. Just copy that to your clip-board so that you can paste
it for
further use when you resond to the evidence
and the facts.
We will always have the prestons, and the reg's
and the other Pollyannas. Peoplewho have done no research at all. People
in
possession of few of the facts. And they will
snip out the whole of this post and childishly harrague on and on about
one line
out of context.
And if you are the average newsgroup reader,
then you will believe them. Because the average reader is an ignorant rube
who
could not think their way out of a wet paper
bag.
No skin off my nose. I'm ready.
-- Paul Milne
If you live within five miles of a 7-11, you're
toast.
