Slashdot Mirror
Stupid Comments about Y2k
@cam.org">Martin Miller
sent us a link to Duh-2000
which tracks stupid quotes about Y2k. It's barely '99 and I'm
already sick of Y2k crap. Is this hype or are we really
gonna get nuked next year? Consultants are making out ok
at least.
Where do I get it from?
But the mass hysteria is going to be awful--people holing themselves up in log cabins, shooting people, commiting suicide, etc. Personally, I'm planning to be surfing the Web with a laptop at around 35k feet, and maybe sucking O2 from a fully computer automated tank :-) It may be the safest place to be when all the looting and shooting starts!
I'm dissapointed. For being a Linux cool site, you guys, inluding that taco guy, are really not in the know. .mil site on y2k...480,000 NG reservists to practice on May1-2, the LARGEST National Guard deployment since 1940 WWII.
My monther-in-law knows more about y2k, and she only golfs for a living.
Check out American Red Cross site for their warning last week, or FEMA's warning on their site 3 days ago to "PREPARE NOW", or Clinton's Y2K czar Mr. Koskinen stating 3 days ago that the gonvernment is setting up "Y2K emergency centers across the U.S." supported by the Defense Department, CIA, FBI, and FEMA. Can you say, "Martial Law"?!
On top of that, check out the National Guard's
You can do your own 'tech' research into utilities (www.NERC.com, www.NRC.com, etc.) yourself, I'm sure.
America is bad...the rest of the world is worse....
Actov Godd
Of course the US gov't and big business will do their darndest to avoid Y2K related problems. But what the media misses in demonstrating preparedness by gov't and industry is:
(1) Small businesses with small budgets have totally ignored Y2K. And big business and the gov't rely on thousands of small businesses for day to day operation. So small business' problems on 1/1/00 will ripple up the chain to cause problems.
(2) 1/1/00 isn't just going to happen in the USA. If big problems occurr in Asia (where they've had other things to worry about more than Y2K), we will be affected too.
For a really informed perspective on Y2K, vist www.yourdon.com. BEFORE reading any of his y2k material, read his bio, and see what people say about his books on Amazon.com
I'm tired of this Y2K hysteria. "Duh-2000" seems to take this "crisis" seriously. Morons! ... "There is a 37% chance that the 'lawyer tax' will cause a massive recession".
Look who Congress put in charge of this "crisis":
Constance Morealla, Congresswoman from Maryland. If it was a real problem, they wouldn't put such a hopeless lightweight on the program. I hear her with a bunch of lawyers on NPR talking about it. Not one geek on the show, just lawyers and Connie.
I've figured it out though, just substitute words "lawyer tax" for "Y2K crisis" and it will all make sense. Now try this
I love the fact that some magazines have started referring to Windows2000 as
Why 2K?
:)
I've heard some radicals suggest that it is easier to disband the IRS than to fix their y2k problems...
G. Gordon Liddy was remarking how they were going sticker crazy at the Radio Station where his show is based. They were running around putting stickers on all the electronic componants, such as the switchboard and the microphone, etc. as to it's status of Y2K compatibility. Fed up with his station manager for doing all this siliness, he asked, "Are you going to put a sticker on my Chair too? I want to make sure it will still hold my ass in the year 2000."
"It should be illegal to yell 'Y2K' in a crowded economy." -- Larry Wall
I know this is true because in my small town I set the clock on city hall to 12:01, Jan 1 2000 and everybody died. We don't have a YMCA, but I assume people there would have been ok.
i dunno about you but alot of those quotes
are hardly "stupid" and the folks supposedly
pointing out the "stupidity" are actually
laying a bunch of politically and business wise naive flame bait.
for example:
the truth is, alot of small businesses can do stuff on paper and pencil, and it is an important part of a good y2k backup plan.
i am very interested to find out whether we're really gonna get nuked, but it seems like we won't know until it comes . . .so people don't know what to believe, they are confused, mistrusting and paranoid (sounds like the FUD conditions eh?). I believe that we are also responding to the number of insecurities wich are due to the overcentralized distribution of resources, and the overall fragility of the whole setup where we depend on huge factories and corporations to live day to day. If a city loses electricity just for a couple of days, tap water might become undrinkable, no heating, no light, no fridges. Why not use solar panels? Why not live sustainably?
somebody here said that the middle east is not as ready as the U$ for the y2k challenge but their year is different, although they do use a lot of western pcs
That site would have been very funny except that I have just been stuck with doing Y2K crap; running tests, installing OS patches and filling out forms. This job was the 1st thing I got assigned when I returned from a Holiday vacation (welcome back sucker!). Please shoot me now and get it over with.
The computers I get to deal with include Macs (CI's running 7.1 to new G3's), Suns (SunOS4.X to Solaris), and SGI's (IRIX5.3 to 6.5). Amazingly, the PHB has declared that at this time we only need to certify Y2K compliance at the OS level. I guess our apps can be totally screwed up, but hey, that's okay! Yes sir! I only use my computer to run this wonderful Y2K compliant OS. Software? I don't see no stickin software.
Scary point 1: I work for the US Gov/DoD! Fortunately, we do research instead of blowing stuff up so I guess we are not considered DoD Mission Critical.
Scary Point 2: (Dammit Jim) I'm a scientist, not a sys admin. This is why you get your PhD, to do Y2K compliance.
Flame away, it can't be worse than doing this shit.
I figure the spring of 2000 will be a great time to pick up lightly used camping gear, dehydrated food, guns and such. Yard sales will be full of the stuff, and it'll be really easy to get good deals from suckers embarassed at having bought in on the EOCAWKI meme.
People with fireplaces may also wish to buy up remaindered Y2K disaster manuals for use as kindling.
Stefan Jones
One Y2K expert said that factories that run around the clock can't afford to shut down their equipment to test for Y2K or replace the computer. Fact is, few factory machines will operate for 2 weeks straight without some sort of down time for maintenance.
Also, while there are a lot of statistics and estimations flying around about what will happen, I haven't heard much on the problems that are already happening. (So far, I've heard of some crummy point-of-sale software refusing a credit card with a 05/00 expiration date.)
I hear a lot of jabber by "experts" about factories, utilities, and traffic lights shutting down, but I haven't heard any of them mention "PLC". Until they do, I can't take them seriously.
-------------
Duh, was this food packaged in 1998 or 1898?
"...while 15% go unreported." (How did they measure it?)
I just finished up a Y2K contract for a fortune 50 company and I have to say that it is quite scary. I consider this to be a pretty typical scenario; 2000+ custom programs, and around 650 non-compliant programs. It took me 6 months of 60-70 hour weeks to perform the changes and testing of their code-base. Sure I was working hourly, but I was really working my butt off and I consider myself a fairly decent coder and debugger.
/I/ can't fix them all by Y2K :) besides I am on vacation.
Unfixed, this system surely would have crashed (in the "it's not working at all" sense), corrupted the database, and brought about a lot of extra workload for the accounting dept. It sounds like I am generalizing but I have specifically fixed several data corruption issues which were overlooked by all of the other Y2K contractors that came before me; for example in this particular system there were dates read/written into an ISAM database as numeric values (YYMMDD i.e. 990111) and as such were corrupted once the leading digits were zeroes due to the way that numbers are left-justified. A date of 000101 was written as simply 101.
Many other problems of this magnitude.. and a bunch that made me wish that 4-digit dates could have been used in that particular system. Nevertheless, it isn't quite trivial to change 1/3 of a large code-base and ensure that you haven't broken functionality that is used by people around the world, as in my case.
That is what the problem is.. larger corps are working at threshold to do month-end and year-end procedures and any extra problems would cause the workload to be too much. For example, this company typically took approx a week to close the books at month-end when the system was operating normally. In the event of "real" system problems, it wouldn't take much for this time to double or triple. And for a company which does $1 million / day that is a pretty big problem.
To sum it up; IMO a large part of the Y2K "fixing" that has been done up to this point in time has been in the form of automated tools and perhaps code-wrappers which help to achieve 99% compliance. During my 6 month GULAG I wound up getting rid of each of those items because they were causing more problems than fixing, and I believe that they were scammed into purchasing those tools and services by consulting groups that knew they would not work.
Not trying to scare anyone, but I believe that there will be a bunch of economic problems at the end of the year (paychecks, missing inventories) if their systems were similar to the one that I just did.. and
I would suggest not to withdraw cash though (unless you have one of those $3 anti-counterfeit pens) because some of the midwestern area banks were reportedly handing out fake $100 bills during the Christmas holiday. Just imagine how many fake bills will be around during Y2K! That's my prediction.. a huge counterfeit problem will occur towards the end of 1999 and bunches of folk will have turned their life savings into worthless paper!
i thought the power outage in SF last month was a really nice preview of the worst-case scenario. what a mess that was!
i agree that people will be providing most of the entertainment for the first few hours of next year... so many christian psychos will exit the gene pool for sure... maybe a few aeroflot planes will nosedive.
just me
"Year 2000"
computers crash
programmers stay up late fixing them
life goes on
You can get the Y2k problem from http://www.microsoft.com/. Around 50% precent of the stuff there should have it, even though it doesn't say so in the text.
In wired magazine, their was an article about the y2k problem and the editor decided to interview government programers and all of them were stock piling weapons, food, medical supplies and water.
It turns out that all of them were optimists before working on the y2k problem. hehehe
Almost all of them predicted major castrophe and mass starvation (due to the power grid going down).
One of the programer who finished his y2k debug talked to a friend form a power company and he said that he all his debuging efforts are usless if the power grid goes down.
Keep ion mind guys that one racoon that enterign a router in Nevada wiped out power from California to washington to wyoming. ONE RACOON!
This is how fragile the power grid is.
Hey! anyone remember the great NY blackout of 77?
Remember that if 2 out of 3 power routers are y2k compliant you will still have a blackout form coast to coast. The remain 2/3 of the routers will be overloaded and shut off.
Another scenario in which only 75% of the power plants could be y2k. If this happens then there will be brown outs because the plants that are y2k compliant will be overloaded with extra demand.
THINK PEOPLE! DONT SHRUG THIS OFF. Use logic here
I know my old laptop (running Linux 1.2.13) doesn't work properly next century; the date in Linux resets to 1970, but I don't know whether that's a Linux bug or a BIOS/RTC bug.
Subject: Computer problems solved
Further to recent computer related problems I have determined that there is
no longer any need for network or software applications at Target Media.
My new goal is to remove all computers from desktops by Jan, 1999.
Instead, everyone will be provided with an Etch-A-Sketch. There are many
sound reasons for doing this:
1. No Y2K problems
2. No technical glitches keeping work from being done.
3. No more wasted time reading and writing emails.
Frequently Asked Questions for Etch-A-Sketch Technical Support:
Q: My Etch-A-Sketch has all of these funny
little lines all over the screen.
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I turn my Etch-A-Sketch off?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: What's the shortcut for Undo?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I create a New Document window?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I set the background and foreground
to the same color?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: What is the proper procedure for rebooting
my Etch-A-Sketch?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I delete a document on my Etch-A-Sketch?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I save my Etch-A-Sketch document?
A: Don't shake it.
Well, the "Powers That Be" have decided to shut down the Nuke Plat that powers a good part of the homes in our area, ~80%, because they cant get the Y2K Changes approved by the Dept of Energy in time, only one problem, it provides 80 % of the power in my area, and we use A LOT of power, (over 1.2MILLION people in this city) and we had a 12% overrun (we needed 12% more power than the TU power plants could make), and the new Natural Gas plant is going to take 3years to make, WHERE THE $#!$#@! ARE WE GOING TO GET THE POWER IN THE MEAN TIME!!!!! I here that most of the nuke plants are going down, so if the North American power grid can asorb the overrun created here in texas, I hope it can handle the overrun everywhere else...
;)
Going shopping for a LP powered honda generator.....
And some REALLY big guns...
Donald (not the duck)
just an idea...
** More testicles means more iron **
By itself, Y2K would only create some really big problems in a few places--hopefully most of them in federal agencies (I would be more than happy to do without federal "help" for a year or two) and a few widespread annoyances.
The worst aspect of it all is the way governments are lying about the success of their remediation efforts, forcing themselves into a PR battle that's going to result in widespread panic, runs on the banks and groceries. The EEC members have wasted all their time and money dicking around with the Euro conversion--there will be BIG trouble in Europe and Japan.
slashdot broke my sig
I wonder if the new "designed-for-Internet" Pentium III will be y2k compliant?
Posted by Mephie:
I'm gonna stock up on MRE's, guns, vodka and crack. I'll be just fine if the economy fails. And if it doesnt, party's at my place.
--Mephie
Posted by VIiMprovedlon.crosswin:
umm... did you noice that this is under the joke section? why dont you get thicker glasses or somthing? People that run linux can joke around somtimes to you know?
LIz-arD (VIiMproved)
"Trust No One"
In the case of Y2K, for example, businesses -- small and large, US and overseas -- will muddle through all right with (my fearless prediction) for the most part only minor annoyances to their customers.
But if the government comes in with everybody-has-to-do-it-this-way regulations, red tape, and the National Guard, we're in for some real hassles.
I was one of Connie Morella's constituents for nearly a decade. Yep, she's a moron, all right, but that's not the relevant consideration. The more dangerous morons are the bureaucrats that our congresscritters will depend on to "implement" whatever vague recommendations the elected morons come up with.
Craig
(Quoted on The Billings Gazette Y2K: Truth or SCARE The sky may not fall, but Y2K is one big thunderhead January 10, 1999. )
Geeze, this kind of brainless drivel from the Amrican press makes it an embarrassment to be an American! I mean, let's all ignore that fact the western recorded history is over 2,00 years old, and that Jewish history goes even further back than that, who but a total idiot could forget that the Chinese have over 4,000 years of recorded history.
Of course this twit can't seem to undrstand that the mellennium does not end until 31 DEC 2000, nor 31 DEC 1999.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Not only is it Y2K relavent, and their first album in years, it is also (IMHO) their best work since Don't Crush That Dwarf Hand Me The Plyers.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
that Gore quote was just too good...its now my email footer :)
Some one should do a port
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
It'll be the panicky nature of society. There will either be a mass of bank withdrawals shortly before Y2K or one or two relatively minor Y2K-related problems will cause widespread panic.
So long as the media is hyping the Y2K problem as the "end-of-the-world" bug, capable of detonating all nuclear arsenals of the world, capable of toppling buildings and governments, eliciting riots and mass hysteria, society as a whole will be very sensitive when the time comes.
For a more comprehensive look at my thoughts regarding at least the financial side of things (which aren't the only sociological threats I can forsee for the arrival of next year), read about it.
If what Al Gore said is any indication, the US's computer systems will have a bigger problem than Y2K... But at least we'll have enough reasons to poke fun at our politicians, won't we? *ducks*
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
... and I won't be near anything which could kill me due to a failing computer (inside a plane, near a nuclear power plant, you get the idea). Nor will I do something which will risk my life due to the unavailability of computers which happen to run 30 year old software written in COBOL, read: have enough cash and food for a month or so.
It won't be the end of the world, but it could become a little unpleasant. Like a power outage, or a long public transportation strike are unpleasant.
Uhmm...
Research is not just, "Reading what other people think." The only thing you can glean from other people's web sites is-- what they think.
Name one system that has been proven to crash catastrophically because of Y2K. So far, all the sytems that have shown Y2k effects have been fixed in a matter of days. (For instance, credit cards with the ending digits '00' couldn't be used until the problem was fixed. That took less than a week to fix.)
So actually, all the evidence points to a slightly troublesome transition into the next millenium. (No, I don't consider 2001 to be the start of the third millenium-- since our dating system is arbitrary, our lables can be arbitrary, also. But, you can bet I'm gonna party extra-hard for *both* new years.)
The only real question is: how much will the psychological impact of Y2k have society? That is, will there be bank runs, rioting, mass-suicides? Will the stock market survive our millenialism?
The computer problem is not that big a deal. And all real "research" indicates as much.
Easier? No.
Better for everyone involved? Yes.
Here is something I was wondering about Y2K.
There seems to be the implication that having the wrong date will make the computer stop working. In most cases won't the computer just keep working, but just think it is Jan 1, 1900. Well, there might be somethign stranger if it can't roll 99 over to 00. It might become a0, or maybe just stay 99, or whatever the programme happened to do at the time.
The point I am making is that there seems to be the concept that everything will just stop working, which seems unlikely. It is more likely that things will work wrong, which in some cases might be equivalent to not working, but in a lot of cases probably isn't even close. Any ideas?
Actually air traffic control systems at various locations including NY have reported problems. Some timetables put the fixes after 2000.
My favorite was the prize. Maybe self heating meals will make them think twice.
"May you live in interesting times"
A chinese curse
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
Ye All,
You guys have to remember that there
is a massive supply chain that makes
up the things that you use everyday.
I am a Y2K Coordinator at a Blood
Products manufacturer in Victoria,
Australia. Already in the office
systems, responsible for QA we found
issues that needed to be resolved, we
can thankfully say now that systems
appear to be functioning correctly
over the dateline, but nothing is
certain until it all click over for
real.
Companies should not only be
investing in IT personnell to fix
the problem, but also be developing
contingency plans for the "what if"
scenerio. What if your supply chain
is broken, what if your computer
systems do not function at all.
These things are real guys, don't
play them down, but don't be media
like and blow them out of proportion.
If you think your systems are fine, do
another check. I personally am not
going to do any more Y2K after my
current contract. Companies that
exhibit some of your relaxed tendancies
could come crashing down.
Please note that this message
is not in response the previous
authors message. Just some of
the silly comments being posted up
here that play down the issue.
Cheers,
Mitch Denny
warbyte@ezymail.com
Cheers,
Mitch Denny
warbyte@ezymail.com
---------------------------------------- - Mitch Denny - http://www.warbyte.com - mitch.denny@warbyte.com - +61 (4
LOL... The prize looks like a ration for the marines... What a motivation... :P
Well, you posted this already, but it's still funny!
Your Servant, B. Baggins
A must read for everyone who is panicking about this Y2K stuff. Very good article. Much fun about "TEOTWAWKI".
Year 2000 Challenge - Automobile Embedded Systems
This guy will give money to anyone who can prove that their car won't start on Jan 1, 2000 due to the Y2K bug
Did anyone read the HotWired article about Gary North's ulterior motives for hyping Y2K? Onward, Christian soldiers...
L. Ron
Got a friend who suggested (seriously) back in the summer of 1998 that from now on, we should all buy 4 times as much food when we go shopping.
Let's see, that comes out to a 6 year stockpile. Have to be all canned or dehydrated of course. Even then, not sure I'd trust that shelf lifetime. And if things get so bad that you really need 5 years food supply, you'd better have a hell of a lot of ammo to keep the hungry hordes away.
Cor blimey there's a lot of fools out there.
--
Infuriate left and right
There is nothing worse than someone who instead of replying to the comment says: check you spelling. This is not a god dam spelling bee. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Get a life KID
that you can temporarily bypass any Y2K problem
by setting the clock BACK temporarily til you can
fix it for real.
--
When she told me I was average, she was just being mean.
but will it be Open Source??
At a city council meeting one of our counselwomen, god only knows how she got elected, interogated the head of our y2k 'taskforce' making sure that the stoplights were going to be y2k compliant, because "they have computer chips in them, right?".
She's one of those people who's gonna be running around at Sears on December 31, 1999 trying to find a y2k compliant refridgerator.
-AntMan
ps. Later on in that meeting she suggested we tax sales on the internet.
Oh, you'll have y2k it soon. Don't worry.
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
That poll should allow write-ins a-la-Segfault! Imagine all the great immature responses we could get from that!
That's pretty incredible. Those were quite possibly some of the stupidest things I have ever heard in relation to Y2K, wow.
With your luck the computer automated O2 tank will :-)
be running NT4 without service packs! and you will
be stuck in the air until 1901 !
-------------------------------------------------
Welcome to Year 2000 pre-release 1.
Gotta love beta software.
Y2k will be a real problem, but the severity will vary with location. A recent Y2k seminar stated that the problem will be largely managed in North America and Europe. Asia, Africa and South America will have >serious problems.
I know that the banking industry in the US will not have problems. I work for a bank, and the Feds will not allow us to be non-compliant. Non-compliant banks will be forced to sell to compliant intitutions. Expect to see about 5% of US banks to change hands in the next 6 months.
Hey, has anyone thought of the poor bastards who have birthdays ont he 31st of December, 1999?
IMHONYEY2K is going to be a shit time for a birthday!
.Psymonger.
.PsyMonger.