>From: "Dan Minette" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >J. Bell wrote > > > Similarly, without all the Y2K panic and millions spent to address it, >would > > the turnover still have been a non-event or would it have been the >predicted > > disaster? > > >This is an easier question to answer. Compliance with Y2K varied >considerably. The people in low compliance had minimal problems. > >Dan M. > Dan, are you suggesting that without all the effort, Y2K would still have been a non-event? >From personal experience with pre and post Y2K testing at a major US group benefits insurance company, I can tell you that if the hardware hadn't been upgraded and the software hadn't been re-written (in some cases from scratch because the original had been modified piecemeal by so many people no one could follow the logic in it anymore), the company would not still be in business. The company probably would have been sued by all 20,000 or so of its business clients for not being able to pay claims, and definitely would have been fined very heavily for not living up to "fiduciary duty" by all 50 states. The projection within the company was that it would have gone from being fairly profitable to being hundreds of millions of dollars in debt within a very short time after 1/1/2000 if the appropriate steps had not been taken. And that's just one company, and one not related to infrastructure. I shudder to thing about what would have happened if my local power company hadn't spent as much money as they did to upgrade a nearby nuclear power plant (in fact, I seem to recall an emergency shutdown at that plant in August of 1999 because of a computer draining water out of the cooling system, and I think it was later revealed that this occurred because of a problem related to Y2K testing). I go back and forth between wanting to laugh and wanting to strangle someone (no personal offense intended or threat implied) when I hear people talk about how Y2K was all hype and no substance. The reason there was no widespread chaos in the heavily computerized portions of the world is that computer professionals in those heavily computerized countries and/or industries worked serious amounts of overtime to make sure that everything worked as it should. That's not to say it would have been a tragedy of biblical proportions. There were lots of companies that were not affected or were only minimally affected. But there were also a lot of potential disasters averted by Big Business in America being proactive for once. Reggie Bautista [EMAIL PROTECTED] P.S. I recently re-subscribed to the Brin List following an absence of a couple of years, and this is my first post since returning. It's good to be back. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
