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U.S. is "Just About OK for Y2K"
whostudios wrote to us with the current CNN headline news, stating that the White House has deemed that US will be OK for Y2k. Besides having silly rhyming involved in it, it's an interesting report. What do you folks think about all of the whole Y2k fears?
The only problem i forsee is the fact that some things will say Jan 1, 1900 and say that day was a monday and 1/1/01 is a thursday, thats the only problems...
There was however a sewage plant in van nuys that backed up and flowed over into a neighboring park...so i'm not sure what to think...go Nitrozak
JediLuke
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
I think the US will probably be prepared for Y2K, by and large. However, I'm not so sure about other countries.
There are just so many details to consider. For example, at the hospital my dad works at, they have spent tons of time and money correcting potential problems with all sorts of medical equipment (X-Ray machines, heart monitors, etc.).
Do you think everyone else will take this seriously enough to prevent major problems? Perhaps some of our fellow Slashdotters from around the globe can comment on the situation in their countries.
-Jason
If you're being paid to be prepared, then do your job. This means policemen, firemen, hospital workers, the CDC, and the uniformed services of the government.
The rest of you, don't cause any trouble with all that stockpiled ammunition and champaigne! The millennium party is going to be excellent, and you've got 13 and 1/2 months to get ready for it.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Uncle Sam won't tell us if the national infrastructure is going to disintegrate on January 1, because people would run on the banks, horde food, and stock-pile arms. They have to say everything is OK because of the consequences.
Of course, I think the whole Y2K thing was blown way way way out of proportion by the media. I agree that nothing major's going to happen, but what if it did?
Perfect excuse to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and turn America into the police state that the Suede-Denim Secret Police have been planning all along!!!
Or at least a good excuse to "pick up" a new VCR.
the power grid will come down. This has been rather thoroughly tested. What may (probably will) happen is that there will be local blackouts. Some could be serious, but I doubt that many people will be killed as a direct result of lack of heat.
the banks will lose everyone's money. Banks have had to look past December 31st, 1999 for a while. My credit card doesn't expire until September 2000, for instance. Again, there _will_ be localized problems, but I doubt that anyone will permanently lose a significant portion of their income.
nukes will accidently go off. This is actually the one I'm least sure about, as I think there is a tiny possiblity that Russian (possibly other country's) nukes will be launched due to some bad data. This is pretty small, though, and (on a rather foreboding note) I think that the US should be able to shoot down any stray nukes before they cause significant damage.
What am I afraid of? People. There are people right now that have enough guns, ammo, and other so-called "survival" equipment to outfit a third-world country. Many of these are not the most stable people to begin with. I'm afraid that when Y2K occurs and nothing significant happens, a few of them will decide to use their guns and ammo in what will already be a rather tense situation. The possiblity of riots due to the lack of Y2K problems should not be ignored. If you have friends that fit in this group, invite them to a party and make sure they pass out or something ;).
~=Keelor
Some things that will happen during Y2K:
1) Earthquakes. Lots of them.
2) Hurricanes. Lots of them.
3) Floods. Lots of them.
4) The Apocolypse's horsemen will ride the earth.
5) The Messiah will come, but it will turn out he has no power, and will perish with the rest of us.
6) The Antichrist will come.
7) The Supreme court will announce Microsoft innocent, and the apocolypse will come.
8) Every computer, everywhere (except those running Linux or some other flavor of UNIX) will crash.
9) After being announced not guilty, and after all the computers crash, Microsoft will reveal that in order to fix the problem, you must buy Windows2K which will arrive in about a year.
10) WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!
If anything else is going to happen, please notify me so I can stock up more food and buy more guns.
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
Nobody really knows what's going to happen. Nobody. Too many unknowns. So, the computer experts take a back seat to the washington sugarcoating and marketing machine. And, of course, everything comming from there is going to look positive and good. Reminds me of Leslie Neilsen in "Naked Gun", standing in front of a burning fireworks warehouse, saying "Move Along. Nothing to see here. Move Along."
The biggest problem our country faces on Jan 1 is not computers or technology. Its a bunch of crazy-ass people!
Well, the world is gonna end anyway, I may as well strap a bomb on my back and head down to times square! Kabooom!
There may be some problems in third world nations where they may have gotten some old System 34/36 systems shipped in, that will burn up on Jan 1st, but if they're just barely automated, stepping back to non-computerized methods isn't liable to be that much of a problem.
I am a bit less worried about the "people" problem.
Ed Yourdon says so :-).
Supposing thousands of crazed lunatics head, heavily armed, to Montana next month. What's likely to happen? They're liable to accidentally shoot each other. This might make next year's Darwin Awards as one of the dumbest things of 1999.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
The impression I most often get whenever I hear about the Y2K bugs that'll bring the end of the world is that whoever is talking has no idea what they're talking about (or, even worse, they have no idea what their sources are talking about).
:-)) ...
... Good luck convincing me that the Y2K bug can cause more damage (financially, emotionnaly, etc. ) then any of these.
:-)
Still, as a CS grad, I have a pretty good idea how it must feel trying to convince someone, and oneself, that a complete (to be defined) system will behave exactly as it should in less then 2 months. I mean, if I spend hours debugging code I write because it's behavior is erratic, I'm not sure I'd like to prove (to be defined) that someone else's code will not display a behavior I can't predict (this is probably a NP problem
Generally, I think the world will keep on spinning and most people will encounter, over the next few months (if not years), a few instances of the problem (be it a VCR not working or a credit card refused). But in no way will humanity crash. Worst case, there'll be a few extreme cases with serious consequences (say a plane crashing or my town lacking electricity in the middle of winter for two weeks, which some will remember living through a few years back) on which all the medias will be glued for 1~2 weeks before everybody agrees it was a sad and predictable thing; and then forgets about it.
I strongly doubt that statistically speaking the Y2K will have a major impact on the number of deaths in 2000 or cost more to any government then recent natural disasters (be it flood, hurricanes, earthquakes).
Remember that this year we've had a few hurricanes in north america and in Asia, major earthquakes in Turkey, Greece and Taiwan, incredible floods in south america and Asia,
However, no matter my rambling, we'll only know for sure in a few months (say a year or two at max for all major repercussions to show up).
P.S. #1: This is of course only my opinion. There are probably some readers who actually made a living out of fixing such problems. I'd be very interested in reading their opinions.
P.S. #2: Of course, I won't be able to live with myself if Slashdot doesn't load up at midnight...
Although I must say that it has been definitely blown out of proportion, the whole Y2K issue is not to be taken lightly. Countries are very reliant on eachother and any problems in one country can affect many other countries. Apparently, the national governments of Western countries have readied themselves appropriately and well. However, the governments of other nations do not seem so well prepared. Russia, the Ukraine, Indonesia, and China are all unprepared for Y2K. The CIA and the State Department predict that these countries may suffer "significant failures." The State Department plans to withdraw government employees and their families from Russia and three ex-Soviet states on concerns over Y2K problems. These countries cannot be ignored. State and local governments (in the U.S.) are also have problems preparing for Y2K. Many of the nation's emergency call centers are not prepared for the Y2K turnover. Also, some states are not prepared for the Y2K design defect, Alabama, for one, that just over half of its systems are prepared for the Year 2000 (article). This is certainly not an issue that can be taken lightly. Some people tend to think that, because something is on television so often, it must be just hype (most of it is). Sometimes it's not. Not to worry though, I'm sure that we will come out OK, as that is always the believe of the mob.
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
I've alreadk implemented mk K2Y changes. Whk are kou people still kelling about this stork?
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
You may not see any of this on UNIX systems where the "problem date" is in 2038; that does not diminish that there are huge quantities of "bespoke" applications, custom software written for this department or that within companies, where the code has stayed running far longer than it was designed for.
Linux may not have much of a ``Y2K problem;'' there are a whole lot of database-oriented and COBOL-oriented applications that do, or (hopefully by this point) did.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I think that the GNU Y2K readiness list is a bit disturbing. CVS-1.8 and 1.9 are not ready, and no newer version is listed as having been tested. Groff is not ready... ouch...
I also fully expect that there will be major and expensive breakdowns of computer systems. There is far too much stupid code out there being relied on. I had the same reflex as nearly every programmer... 'Ahh, it won't matter except for silly things like sorting your checkbook by date.' I still don't really know -why- it matters, but when people have done readiness-testing (setting the date to Dec. 31, 1999 and watching it rollover) computer equipment has done things like stop a power plant from working. Why? Probably some linkage between database functions and power functions. Or a failure in a cron-like system. Who knows.
As programmers we think it's 'obvious' that it isn't 'really' a problem. But it is a problem. It's just like when it's 'obvious' that it can't be -your- code that introduced the bug... until you step through it with a debugger and realize that it is. You can argue until you're blue in the face about why it shouldn't be a problem, but the empirical evidence disagrees.
Well, Lawyers, Liars and Perl gives a better explanation of why there are Y2K issues even in modern code better than I can do.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
The places that are more likely to have problems are "Developing" nations in Africa and Asia, as they lack the expertise to grapple with the bugs.
On the other hand, those "underprepared" nations are simultaneously new to automation, and may have relatively few truly critical automated systems. If they have to move back to pen and paper, it's not that huge a leap, as computing was new anyways.
Note as well that multinational companies have contributed to Y2K infrastructures in many such places; after all, if Nike can't get shoes shipped out of Thailand, they can't sell them to US consumers. That makes it worthwhile for Nike to invest in the Thai infrastructure. (Names picked arbitrarily... I don't know if Nike has many factories in Thailand...)
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
To reply to myself, I also think that any Y2K
problems will be resolved within a week or two.
It may cost some expensive consulting hours, but
it'll get done.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
It really sucks that groff isn't y2k-ready. I'm curious as to how it fails--if it stops working altogether (unlikely, I presume) then nobody will be able to read man pages.... If it just screws up and gets the date wrong when you tell it to print the date, that's kind of annoying but hardly serious.
It would be nice if they had more detailed descriptions of the problems with the 'not ready' stuff.
Uhm, oops. My bad. I did a 'find in page' but I guess I did it wrong, case sensitively or something. Good to know that CVS 1.10 is fixed. I kinda figured CVS would get prioritized by someone anyway. :)
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
You know what's even worse about that report? The title. What on Earth posessed someone to name it "Project Megiddo"?
If you're doing a project to combat violence by extremist apocalyptic religions, the LAST thing you want to do is give it a name which references any kind of apocalyptic scripture at all. That'll just get them even more frenzied ("See? Megiddo! It's happenning!") Were they trying to mock these religions? That would just piss them off more.
The world would be a lot better place if more people gave their actions just a little bit of thought before acting them out. Geez...
The Apocolypse's horsemen will ride the earth.
NO. WRONG. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse will ride at Churchill Downs. Get your bets in early; Pestilence is a 20:1 long shot, but that's where my money is -- a word to the wise, eh? [wink]
WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!
True, we are: Death by punctuation. It's a horrible fate.
Every computer, everywhere (except those running Linux or some other flavor of UNIX) will crash.
One word: BeOS. Their time_t is 64 bits, and it always was.
The Antichrist will come.
The Antichrist lives in the apartment next to mine. She listens to Annie very loudly: "TAH-MAH-RAH. TAH-MAH-RAH. AH LUV YA. TAH-MAH-RAH." I am a peaceful and God-fearing man, but this woman must be assassinated. NOW.
The Messiah will come, but it will turn out he has no power
The Messiah is already here. His name is Wayne Coyne, and he leads a small but powerful coterie of saviors known as the Flaming Lips. They RULE, my friend.
So the 911 system isn't y2k compliant? What does that mean exactly? Did they tell you? What it means is more than likely that the system will start stamping reports with the wrong dates... not that the entire system will die a screaming death and cause havoc and mayhem in the streets because the police are sitting on thier collective duffs.
My guess from the _real_ y2k problems that I have seen is that less than 1% of non y2k compliant software will actually suffer a cataclysmic failure. The other 99+% will simply start putting the wrong dates on things. So 1% of the software that's not y2k compliant fails... where does that leave us? Most likely cleaning our carpets with y2k compliant steam cleaners the morning after the big party.
That or, OHMYGOD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!!!!
I saw it on the news earlier today and decided that maybe it was time to do a Y2K check around my house:
1. Typed 'pitneybowes' in Netscape location bar
2. Found the Y2K page (clearly linked from the main page).
3. Clicked on facsimile machines
4. All their fax machines are compliant.
5. Cool. Well, I'm done.
> Message from: Rome
> January 18, 1 B.C.
>
> Dear Cassius,
>
> Are you still working on the Y zero K problem? This change
> from BC to AD is giving us a lot of headaches and we haven`t
> much time left. I don`t know how people will cope with working
> the wrong way around. Having been working happily downwards
> forever, now we have to start thinking upwards. You would think
> that someone would have thought of it earlier and not left it
> to us to sort out at the last minute.
>
> I spoke to Caesar the other evening. He was livid that Julius
> hadn`t done something about it when he was sorting out the
> calendar. He said he could see why Brutus turned nasty.
> We called in the consulting astrologers, but they simply said
> that continuing downwards using minus BC won`t work. As usual,
> the consultants charged a fortune for doing nothing useful.
> As for myself, I just can`t see the sand in an hourglass
> flowing upwards.
>
> We have heard that there are 3 wise guys in the east working
> on the problem, but unfortunately they won`t arrive till it`s
> all over. Some say the world will cease to exist at the moment
> of transition. Anyway we are continuing to work on this blasted
> Y zero K problem and I will send you a parchment if anything
> further develops.
>
> Plutonius.
After Y2K famine becomes Y2k cannibalism we'll be seeing "Human meat? Ok to eat!" commercials.
The people problem won't be armed survivalists, heck they're probably gonna have a great time getting drunk, shooting guns in the air, and using the 'lets do it on midnight' pick up line, in safety in the woods.
They're just people. Now take the same behavior and put that in the big city and you got a GREAT excuse to riot. Your enemy isn't some tang drinking freak but your local high school/college kids, drunken asses, trash of all ethnicity, and your usual spineles suburbanites who will join in anything dangerous if everyone else is. Think Woodstock 2000.
"We're gonna party like its 19-99!"
"I'm gonna be trying to turn my car right side up like its Jan 1, 2000'"
I find it amazing how most of the posters here can completely dismiss such a massively complex problem/issue with one or two cleverly worded paragraphs.
My goal all along has not been to argue over all this, but to find rational opinions that could convince me that I was being too pessimistic. Hasn't happened yet. The best most people seem to be capable of is to joke about the whole thing. Seems easier than facing reality; I understand. Scary stuff, denial.
At the risk of going on a little long, here's a small fraction of my two cents:
- Here in the USA, with six deadlines since the summer of 1998 come and gone, most agencies of the federal government are still noncompliant, and receive poor ratings when independently evaluated on their progress.
- Among utilities and big business, what few actual claims of compliance exist are self-reported and unverifiable.
- Most Americans' logic of "we're all right, it's those other countries that are in trouble" falls apart when one considers that it's a global economy, and we are in no way an island unto ourselves. The division of labor is not just a catchy buzzphrase, it's real. Global trade is real. International banking is real.
- The U.S. imports fully half of its oil from other countries, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela among them. These countries are widely believed to be WAY behind. If these countries experience disruptions in their ability to export, keep in mind that the oil crisis of the 1970's was the result of only a SEVEN PERCENT decrease in supply.
- If Y2K is little more than a hoax, why has Citibank, for example, spent nearly a billion dollars on fixing it? Were they hoodwinked by a clever consultant? Or could it be that the risk of not fixing it was worth WAY more than $1 billion?
- If government, big business, and utilities have been working on it for years now, and they're still not completely fixed, tested and compliant, what are they possibly going to achieve in a month and a half more? Nothing more than a switch over to a fix-on-failure approach that I, personally, find less than inspiring.
- For a personal example: In December, 1998, the utility that supplies my region's power was audited and said to have been 15% of the way through their remediation. FIFTEEN PERCENT, and that's not even counting time needed to test these fixes in real-world usage. In ten months since then, I haven't found a single documented update of the status of my power company. Not exactly comforting. On this topic, consider that the organization responsible for making sure that the power companies get compliant (NERC - The North American Energy Reliability Council) is privately appointed by the power industry itself and has no real teeth in these matters. Great.
- The FAA is not nearly compliant. Think airfields full of parked, grounded planes. Think bankrupted airlines.
- Think bad data from noncompliant systems corrupting compliant systems. Think the whole being only as good as the sum of its parts.
- Think of how many fully functional, computerized, systems of labor and industry it takes just to keep your local grocery stocked with food. To keep hospitals up and running. Jeez, just to keep the heat on in the middle of the winter. Division of labor. The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone... Sing along, you know the words!
- Most of all, don't just think January 1. Think both short and long range implications.
I could go on and on with these. Thankfully, I won't.
Do I think the world is going to end? No. Am I buying weapons and digging a moat around my home? No, no, no.
Instead of making empty predictions, I've taken to thinking in terms of risk-managment, at least on a personal level. I have established what I've judged to be a resonable level of preparedness for my family and loved ones for disruptions that could occur in the weeks and months following Jan 1. I think most people won't prepare because it requires some amount of personal sacrifice, but in the end I guess I'd rather have what I don't need than need what I don't have. Whether you prepare at all is a personal decision, obviously.
Whatever one decides, I just don't see the logic in dismissing Y2K as a non-event, given all the information that is available if you just look for it.
I will be the happiest person in the world if I turn out to have been overly pessimistic. Peace.
Bush is a cylon.
Consider the word Government--to govern is to control, limit, wrap, moderate within a set of rules.
Whether policies are set correctly or incompetently, this is the core "philosophy" behind government: To control what would otherwise be destructive chaos.
Y2K falls under this rubric, and what the Government has been attempting to do is create a form of Structured Fear.
There are two possible failure scenarios for a known global-scale disaster sometime in the recent future:
A) Panic. In this scenario, protective and corrective measures fail to be executed, since the belief is that they'll be useless anyway. Large scale breakdown of social order commences before the actual disaster date, as the value of preserving peace for the future is drastically diminished with the elimination of a future to preserve peace for. (Perversely, groups that base their leadership on a mythical "to be delivered some time in the distant future" suddenly are forced to begin their plans, so that the months/years/centuries of planning were not all for naught. Also perversely, the predicted disaster no longer needs to occur--society will have corrupted itself on its own.)
B) Denial. Just as destructively, protective and corrective measures fail to be executed, since the belief is that they're unnecessary. Large scale breakdown of social order commences, with the additional penalty of only the survivalists being truly prepared. The "surprise" aspect would cause widespread chaos and arguably more accelerated social breakdown then even the panic scenario--panic takes time.
The core concept is to scare people enough to fix the problems, but no so much as to make them think it's impossible to fix. Even more dementedly, corporations need to be convinced that they're competitors are guaranteed to fix the problem, so if they don't, they'll lose market share.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com