ABC NEWS: "Despite early smooth sailing, experts say the bug will still bite" - 'The more cautionary news is that only 10 percent of the world's systems went to the gym last night. Ninety percent of them weren't exercising.'

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The calm before the slowly-building storm. From ABC NEWS...

WIRE:01/01/2000 17:16:00 ET

Despite early smooth sailing, experts say the bug will still bite

NEW YORK (AP) _ After the 21st century dawned without a crippling Y2K catastrophe, some people branded the millennium bug an exaggerated threat, a huge angst-washed waste of money that got mounds more attention than it deserved.

Not so fast, the experts said Saturday.

Tens of millions of the world's business systems have yet to reboot. And why should anyone be surprised that the computers guiding the globe's vital power, telecommunications and air traffic infrastructure didn't fail?

Their software was the focus of the most diligent millennium bug removal efforts. Experts never expected anything but a few failures in such systems.

"Throughout the world I think you'll find that almost a trillion dollars was spent on Y2K work. There ought to be some results," said Ian Hugo, a British information technologist who helped write his country's Y2K standards.

"The more cautionary news is that only 10 percent of the world's systems went to the gym last night. Ninety percent of them weren't exercising," noted Howard Rubin, a leading Y2K expert in the United States who was nevertheless amazed at how well the world did.

Institutions including the CIA and U.S. State Department had said the Year 2000 computer problem might spawn major blackouts or phone outages in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Indonesia.

None of that appears to have happened so far, though a slew of glitches - from merely nagging to worrisome - were reported.

The Pentagon said Saturday that a failure in a ground-based system prevented officials from handling information from some U.S. intelligence satellites for a few hours on Friday night. France said one of its defense satellite systems lost the ability to detect equipment failures.

Hospitals in Sweden and Egypt reported non-lethal bug bites in medical equipment, a computer linked to radiation monitoring systems seized up at Japanese nuclear power plant and door locks sealing off sensitive areas refused to open at nuclear plants in Arkansas and Spain.

"Things are looking very good," said Bruce McConnell, director of the World Bank-funded International Y2K Cooperation Center. "This is consistent with, although on the bright side, of our prediction of few if any serious disruptions."

He cautioned, though, that it's too early to declare victory.

Most of the world's business systems don't go back on line until Monday or Tuesday after extended holidays - some of them intended to give banks and stock markets extra time to fix any bug errors that have cropped up.

Chile, for example, told the Y2K center that two-thirds of its computer won't go back on line until Monday.

"It is very, very premature at this point in time to declare victory," said Peter de Jager, a Canadian Y2K pioneer: "We expected the infrastructure to be OK, but wait until next week to start drawing conclusions about how successful or unsuccessful we've been."

Unready at this point to celebrate was Tony DeRosa, of Spencerport, N.Y., who has paid attention to the pundits who say many glitches won't show up for days or even weeks.

"It's like a baseball game, we're only in the third or fourth inning maybe," he said. "I don't think we're out of the woods." DeRosa stocked up on MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) for his family of four and filled four 55-gallon drums with tap water.

No one has argued credibly that the Y2K bug - the legacy of programming in which years were expressed with just two digits - was a scam, although experts say many people have misunderstood the software flaw.

"I was monitoring some of radio stations yesterday.

People were calling in and saying, `I didn't do anything to my computer and it's working,' " said Faizel Dawjee, a South African government spokesman.

Experts say only about a third of the world's computers were susceptible to crippling Y2K errors in the first place - and that electricity generation and distribution are on the whole devoid of date-sensitive systems, though computers that monitor them are not.

The primary control systems that run power plants and telecommunications tend to be far more simple and less date-infested than the accounting and administrative software on which the global economy so depends.

Whether all the corporate SWAT teams and New Year's government command posts were really necessary is also a nagging question.

A survey by the Information Technology Association of America of its Year 2000 newsletter readers found that 76 percent set up command posts at their workplace but 62 percent said they expected any Y2K-related outages to last no more than a few hours.

Terry Holzer, general manager of the Yellowstone Valley Electric Cooperative in Huntley, Mont., thinks all the extensive preparations were "somewhat of an overkill."

"I heard that Italy just started preparing in September and they were fine," he said.

Holzer listed the two main reasons for his cooperative's hard Y2K work and contingency planning.

"One, we had a responsibility to fulfill, and, two, the fear that we were going to get sued," he said. "The lawyers were just lining up to go after people if there were any problems."

[ENDS]

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), January 01, 2000

Answers

Thanks John. A good post.

-- JoseMiami (caris@prodigy.net), January 01, 2000.

"The more cautionary news is that only 10 percent of the world's systems went to the gym last night. Ninety percent of them weren't exercising," noted Howard Rubin, a leading Y2K expert in the United States who was nevertheless amazed at how well the world did."

10%? A magic number, and maybe it's close for IT products, but for embedded systems its flat out wrong. Most infrastructure (power, telephones, transportation, building managment systems, etc.) was test closer to 90% (my own magic number) for embedded systems, so we are already in good shape for these systems. The big unknowns are the industries that were shutdown (not all were) starting back up on Jan. 3....

We may see some smoke, but don't expect any bigger flames than we've already seen in embedded systems. Looking good. Real good.

Regards,

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.com), January 01, 2000.


I worked for a large company that lost all of its experienced programming and system development staff in 1999. We all knew that Y2K problems in internal systems, not deemed critical by management, would hose the company. Most of the glitches I am aware of involve financial reporting and can be covered up until the end of January.

-- Slobby Don (slobbydon@hotmail.com), January 01, 2000.

John, your rendering of this news is sobering, to be sure, but not in itself completely accurate in terms of the entire picture. When I first started reading about y2k, the first points of doom which struck me were relative to the Auckland power outages. To wit, how can one remediate myriad problems if there is no power. It is quite apparent that the basic infrastructure of our world is up and running, and that assessments were thoroughly wrong. 10%? I'd hasten to say more than 10% of computer systems were up and running.

Power, gas, the banking industry, many, many corporations running after the rollover (see yahoo.com)....well, many systems are a 'go', and I'd add most experts already know this.

But naivete shouldn't be part of the equation. I am just wondering when the 'disaster' can be deemed 'averted'.

Regards.

-- Bad Company (johnny@shootingstar.com), January 01, 2000.


FACTFINDER.......... In the US and (most of our friends in) Canada, manufacturing is more technology advanced than most infrastructure. 60-80% of embedded technology has not seen Y2K.

-- SHOCKWAVE (VISSION441@AOL.COM), January 01, 2000.


Oil is the key, Bad Company, and always has been. Close behind comes the 'death of a thousand cuts' from unremediated supply chain software both overseas and domestically.

A vast number of plants and pipeline systems have also shut down temporarily - we'll soon know how many of them fail to come back up again.

If next-to-nothing is the result, I'll be very happy. But it's hard to discount the experiences of Volkswagen, Hersheys, Royal Doulton, etc. and to think that they were just Y2K exceptions...

I still think you should change your name :)

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), January 01, 2000.


There's a bit of doublethink in the room. I think maybe 80% of embedded systems have been tested. Yes, some facilities were shut down for the rollover. But their systems are not substantially different from those used by facilities that didn't shut down, so their failure rates will most likely be a close match with the rates already seen.

As for IT systems, John Whitley needs to have a long talk with Sysman about this. Whitley cites examples of *pre-2000* problems, caused by attempts to implement whole new (and compliant) systems. The new implementations have been done -- nobody is trying to do them *after* the rollover to forestall y2k bugs. And huge amounts of well-stirred code has been returned to production from remediation. Complete with all the new bugs remediation introduced. And *those* have been cleaned out as well.

All in all, we're about 80% out of the woods on embeddeds, and maybe halfway there with IT systems. And nowhere to go but up, since nobody is *adding* bugs.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 01, 2000.


Flint, I cited examples of programs that have been put in place, tested out as permanent replacements, and which have actually failed in practice.

Many other programs have been replaced and have not yet received their 'baptism of fire', irrespective of any pre-testing done on them, simply because they will not become operative until after the computers they are on are powered back up again on Monday or Tuesday.

Some of those programs are doubtless still being worked upon even as I type this...:)

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), January 01, 2000.


Seems we agree again Flint, I think the 10 % number is horribly innacurate. Your numbers are much more realistic. Once Again I state we were all at work in downtown Manhattan today. These systems are up and running. Will they remain bugfree through the week probably not all of them, but thats a world different than saying that 90% of IT systems havent seen the year 2000.

nyc

-- nyc (nycnyc@hotmail.com), January 01, 2000.


URL? Thanks.

-- Lane Core Jr. (elcore@sgi.net), January 02, 2000.


81.3% of statistics are fictional.

We've got a long way to go yet.

-- Servant (public_service@yahoo.com), January 02, 2000.


81.3% of statistics are fictional.

:-)

-- Lane Core Jr. (elcore@sgi.net), January 02, 2000.


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http://ww w.abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20000101_914.html

..."It is very, very premature at this point in time to declare victory," said Peter de Jager, a Canadian Y2K pioneer: "We expected the infrastructure to be OK, but wait until next week to start drawing conclusions about how successful or unsuccessful we've been."

-- Me (not@here.com), January 02, 2000.


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