Ed Yourdon comments on the Pentagon Papers

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Koskinen's "Take" On Jim Lord's Pentagon Papers

Tick... Tock... <:00=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), August 19, 1999

Answers

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-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), August 19, 1999.

Not to be contentious (here?!) but 'innocent until proven guilty' may be a culturally valid mode for our legal system but not for evaluating risk. Certainly a bank will not lend you ANY money until you are 'proven' to be a good credit risk. They assume you are a crook, a louse or a moron until you can prove otherwise (past performance).

Last year, I believe, Bennet said 'If Y2K happened now then it would be as bad as some imagine' or something to that effect. The point here is we have a known failure rate which would be TEOTWAWKI and we have to assume that it has not been taken care of until proven that it has been. There are virtually NO third party audits going on which we know about. Vitually NO ONE is admitting that they will NOT make it. We will all come across the finish line at the same time, heads held high, perfect data interfaces, etc.

If the Navy report was based on the idea that you can not depend upon something which is not proven to work then I want to be hanging out with them in bad times. Seems good to me.

-- ..- (dit@dot.dash), August 20, 1999.


Another point regards perceptions of other people's sincerity. A really good con artist can fool everyone they meet. They are really intelligent people. They use their skills and capabilities to con people. Most times a really good con artist sets up his/her scam so that you don't even know they where the ones to have taken you.

John Koskinen is a lawyer. He was hand selected to run this mission. The current administration has done NOTHING to inform or motive people in this country to prepare themselves for potential failures. John Koskinen's role is to pacify public sensibilities. He may sincerely believe that what he is doing is the correct thing. The outright contradictions which he articulates to the public in his mission to neutralize public reaction indicate to me that he operates in a moral grey zone at the least.(ig - one moment 'assuring' people that things will be OK, in the next saying 'no one knows what will happen'.)

Regardless of what we perceive as a person's sincerity level we must deal with the facts of their behavior and words not our feelings about the level of their sincerity.

-- ..- (dit@dot.dash), August 20, 1999.


One last thing from this end of the world. Watch what they do, not what they say. I've known people who present an emotional ambience which is completely different than their actual words. They can say the ugliest things in a way which completely goes over my head because of the 'feel' of the person. They slander or gosip or spin information straight to your face which is completely enveloped in a fog of 'concern'. They are completely unaware that they do this. Usually the greater the disonance between their words and their non-verbal presentation he greater the 'fog' factor. Kind of like a 'real diplomat' they can tell you to go to hell and have you looking forward to the trip.

To me the political realm is full of this type of personality. I can't describe it any better than this. Maybe someone else can.

Anyway, the point being that with some folks you 'just never know'.

-- ..- (dit@dot.dash), August 20, 1999.


Thus, for me the burden of proof is not on Jim Lord and his supporters to prove that their document is "right," but rather on the Y2K optimists to prove it's wrong. The notion that Mr. Koskinen's "Community Conversations" is providing such proof is laughable: these events have involved nothing more than public officials in some two dozen cities lecturing to an audience of a couple hundred people about why it's a bad idea for them to take their money out of the bank.

That's our Ed!

-- a (a@a.a), August 20, 1999.



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