Y2K Media

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Mr. Yourdon whines to his open letter to Rodney Dangerfield that we shouldn't be upset with him, we should be upset with our government. Afterall, he did not REQUIRE us to purchase his book for $20, nor did he REQUIRE us to prepare for impending Y2K disasters. Well, Ed, what was your book telling us? It was only $20 but did you not profit from it? Were we expected to learn that Y2K was going to bring travesty upon the land and we, naturally, are to do NOTHING in response to this information? Yes, I am pissed off at our government for the ridiculous amount of money they spent on Y2K preparations (as well as their spending on everything else!). At least we can say that our government did behave responsibly (amazingly enough) concerning the information they gave the public. You took a big risk with your book, your web site and your overall public displays concerning Y2K. You said yourself that if it turned out to be nothing, you would eat crow and be embarassed. Now that you are in such a position, you are blaming everyone else for YOUR troubles. IT IS NOW THE FAULT OF THOSE THAT BOUGHT YOUR BOOK AND PAID HEED TO WHAT YOU WERE SAYING for your corrent condition!!! Great work Ed...biting the hand that fed you. I doubt anyone will be buying any further books, if you can even get them published. I would also imagine that your career as a consultant is damaged beyone repair. FYI, I didn't buy your damn book and believed Y2K would be the non-event it is. Why can't you simply say you were wrong and stop blaming everyone else in the world for your own mistake? This very attitude you now display is the real travesty in our nation. No one can accept accountability for their actions anymore. When we are wrong it is always someone else's fault (at least in part). Hey Ed...Your-don(e). Please go away now.

-- Shawn Eric Miller (shawnmi@bgnet.bgsu.edu), January 07, 2000

Answers

I'm having trouble understanding this.

All the people who claimed Y2k would be no problem were correct (as they currently understand the situation) and they all seem to be angry.

All the people who spent money getting ready for something that has not (as yet) been disastrous seem to be happy.

Why are the "correct" ones angry and the "wrong" ones happy? Any why can't the "correct" ones spell better, and use upper case more sparingly?

-- bw (home@puget.sound), January 07, 2000.


My favorite aspect of Yourdon's latest missive is that he says that just as he had predicted, in many ways indeed we are now living like that of a third world country. I am stunned by this remark. As evidence he takes every instance of recent problems world wide and puts them together, as if somehow that shows how our standard of living has been so tremendously degraded over the past week. Really? Has Mr. Yourdon ever been to a third world country, where the mail does not arrive, the power goes out regularly, there is little to no internet access, water functions sporadically? Is this REALLY what life is now like in the US and Europe?

Beware of tautology: that which cannot be disproven. We were told to prepare for major disruption. That, by any measure, has not happened. Mr. Yourdon cannot now try to change the terms so that he is still correct.

-- Patrick O'Neil (pho2@hotmail.com), January 07, 2000.


That should be "AND why can't " they spell better. S'cuse me a second while I bandage my foot.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), January 07, 2000.

Shawn, Quit being such a whiner. Did you buy his book and now you're sorry? I doubt it.

You're probably one of those elitist snobs produced by the higher education system. You think that everyone else is an idiot that must be protected from themselves and most certainly from those Y2K charlatans.

Let's have some personal responsiblity here. Oh, that right, we wouldn't want that! The elitists of the world would lose the influence they hold by being everyones 'daddy'.

Shawn, please go away now...

-- whiner patrol (patrol@whiner.com), January 07, 2000.


Hmmm...I realize it's not only improper but illegal to yell "fire" in a movie theater when there isn't...

I also know that there are many many litigation lawyers that are still functioning fine in Y2K. Wonder if anyone has given any thought to...

-- Dennis Dean (ddean@attglobal.net), January 07, 2000.



I'll say one thing, Ed is never at a loss for words. I printed that thing out and it runs a solid 12.5 pages!

I haven't read the whole thing but I'll guess that Ed is not going to say that he was wrong and offer apologies. If that were the case he could have done it in one paragraph.

One thing that some of my more vocal polly friends need to keep in mind is that 99.5% (and that estimate is probably low) of the population doesn't even know who Ed Yourdon is. And if they did, the vast majority of them would have taken one look at Timebomb 2000 and laughed. All it is is one man's (and his daughter's) imaginations run amok. Sure he has an impressive IT background but there's no hard facts in it, just lots of "what ifs".

No, the only people Ed led astray were the one's who wanted to be led. The people, who for their entire lives trusted that when they flipped that light switch the power would flow, wanted to believe that all those people that they had always trusted were now lying to them. If it hadn't been Ed and y2k it would have been the next conspiracy theory. Always been like that always will be like that. You can already see this board morphing into a board that's looking for the next boogyman....stock market crashes, Russian/Chinese alliances, chemtrails, etc., etc.,......a never ending list.

-- zzzzz (zzzz@zzzz.zzzz), January 07, 2000.


People are angry because of the refusal of the doomers to review information from responsible, informed individuals who actually knew what the hell was going on. Instead they chose the drum beaters as their info source. This entire thing snowballed and allowed a whole helluva a lot of dishonest individuals to make money off of peoples hysteria.

Yeah - that pisses me off.

-- H.H. (dontscrewme_2000@yahoo.com), January 07, 2000.


Well, HH, I'm a GI, which in your vocabulary probably means "doomer". I'm also responsible and informed, having worked on mainframes, PCs, you name it for 25+ years and on Y2k for 5 or so. My info source was my experience generally, and my specific exposure to Y2k problems. That included work in a software remediation "factory", Y2k-related artificial intelligence tools, and working on a Y2k team of a significant corporation.

And I take Y2k real seriously. I tell others how they can prepare, and I tell them what I think might yet happen. I made no money off it, and in fact lost quite a bit, but that's just my style. Does making one penny turn me into a dishonest ripoff artist? Does losing money crown me with a halo? Or would you consider that just being stupid?

The most amazing thing about Y2k has been the polarization; the inability of "pollies" to think of "doomers" as intelligent people, and vice-versa. I was recently called a "zombie poster" and "weak minded", which I really want to frame and put on a wall.

Somehow I don't think you gave the real reason, when you explained your anger. It feels like there's something else there.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), January 07, 2000.


Shawn and his minions...

Why does someone always have to be at "fault" in your eyes? Why should Mr. Yourdon or any of us have to apologise to you for anything? Incomprehensible!

I agree with "bw" that it seems as if the complaining Pollys (not all Pollys, just the ones who complain) are upset about something, while we GIs are happy. Do you really feel we wanted civilization to fall apart (well, aside from maybe a little power outage or something)??? 99.9% of us are not sadists or masichists. Some of us even left most of our money in the bank. Aren't those of us who did glad that the banks didn't go belly-up?

Those of you who seem to derive a sick pleasure in "rubbing our nose" in our "mistakes" should really feel free to leave this forum and stop wasting their (and our) time.

-- No Polly (nopolly@hotmail.com), January 07, 2000.


One of the real solid consistent threads in Y2k is that pollies talk about doomers being wrong all the time. It's not really a question of risks and benefits, it's right and wrong, and the worst epithet a polly can hurl is to say you're WRONG.

It's funny, but the GIs seem to take being wrong as a minor fact of life. Taking risks occasionally means you make mistakes. And GIs never seem to talk about pollies being wrong, only that they perhaps have a narrow view or don't consider all the possibilities.

There is something in the background of the average polly, I would guess, that makes being wrong the worst possible thing they can imagine. Some kind of trauma or social embarrassment, perhaps. Somebody, somewhere, really must have rubbed their noses in it. Maybe that's where the strident calls for apology come from - by damn, now I can make someone ELSE feel like crud.

Sad, if true.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), January 07, 2000.



I don't know about all your GI's - but my GI tract works fine!

-- Bob Dole (bdole@stiff.com), January 07, 2000.

bw--

Right on... when I became GI, I analyzed the facts that I had, albeit they were imperfect, determined the risks and pursued a course of action to reduce those risks. At all times, I acknowledged that I could be "wrong" in my assessment, due to the uncertain and incomplete information.

Something in the Polly mentality cannot seem to grasp the fact that I (and dare I estimate other GIs) are GLAD TO BE WRONG in this case. Admitting that problems were possible is NOT the same as wanting them to happen.

It is too early to say "who won" (as if anyone cared), but I can say that I feel I am in a "no loose" situation. I may have misjudged the effects of Y2K, but I don't care, and I have lost nothing in my efforts at preparing!

-- No Polly (nopolly@hotmail.com), January 07, 2000.


Shawn... any original thoughts lately. I take slight issue with your use of the word travesty. Let me use it in a sentence for you so that you get the idea. Your's is a travesty of writing. Before you take issue with that last sentence, the subject is implied.

-- Michael Erskine (Osiris@urbanna.net), January 07, 2000.

I bought Ed's book, long after I decided that there was a significant risk of life-threatening stuff happening. Don't have it in front of me, but as I remember, Ed's analysis gave only a (small) chance of really bad things - I thought then that he was too polly for me. I made my own decisions, did extensive preps over two years, including moving. Why? Because, for me even a 1% chance of catastrophe was high enough, the stakes are so high. Grow up, people and live with your decisions. I, for one, am glad I prepped.

-- prepared (prepared@nowhere.com), January 07, 2000.

oh, yeah on other thing... "me too! me too!", said the young child as everyone got on the bus.

-- Michael Erskine (Osiris@urbanna.net), January 07, 2000.


Shawn,

I've been lurking here for at least a year and have only posted once. When I say "I lurk" I mean I am just about addicted to this forum. I read it faithfully, everyday. I constantly hit reload to catch new threads. I have had the great pleasure and honor of meeting some of the longtime posters over at Bok's during the "recent unpleasantness." If you posted anything prior to the rollover, it must have been unremarkable because your name does not prompt my memory.

As for the time I have spent on this forum and the influence it has had on my life, I have no regrets. I am still here. I am happy to see all the familiar old names and also happy to find some longtime lurkers like myself getting over their shyness. I have found it very comforting throughout this past year to find my unvoiced concerns were shared by so many, presented free over the internet for all, and many people from different regions and even countries, with varying degrees of expertise to answer and crosspost and provide links to sources ranging from gov. docs. to universities, corp. sites, SEC filings, and especially eyewitness accounts and personal anecdotes unfiltered through corporate supported conventional media. I am grateful to Ed Yourdon and the posters to TBY2K. My life has been enriched by the experience. I have lost nothing. And yes, I made a few purchases of various items pertinent to my needs. The local economy was certainly well served by my business, and I am quite certain there was no loss of goodwill among the local merchants I patronized. Perhaps my dollar helped to put braces on some small business owner's kids teeth, who knows? In fact, some of my purchases of convenience products were put to good use PRIOR to the rollover when I had emergency surgery 2 days before Thanksgiving. It's great to always have a backup plan.

I had a keen interest in this subject because my depression era parents taught me the importance of not taking anything for granted. After all-- the porkchop fairy does not deliver cellophane-wrapped pkgs. to the Kroger meat dept. after business hours, loyal employees who never took a sickday can still be arbitrarily downsized, and madmen in faraway lands are still susceptible to seeing the world and all its resources, including and especially, people, as a giant chessboard or Risk game. None of us knows what we have ahead of us.

Therefore, since you said, "FYI, I didn't buy your damn book and believed Y2K would be the non-event it is" why are you so agitated? Do you presume to speak on my behalf? If so, I find that galling. You don't know me. You know nothing of my life experiences or what motivates me or why I am compelled to spend time on this forum. You are operating from a set of presumptions based on your imagination, as this medium of exchange is intangible and I am an unknown entity, a stranger.

It bothers you that Ed's book, although available for free reading at the library I might add,'... was only $20 but did you not profit from it?" and yet, " Were we expected to learn that Y2K was going to bring travesty upon the land and we, naturally, are to do NOTHING in response to this information?" ----I guess when you don't buy or read "the Coming Population Explosion" you'll be embittered about having/nothaving yourself sterilized before you've finished puberty because...somebody almost made you think outside your own provincial worldview there for a minute?

Therefore, since it really chaps your hindquarters that you didn't spend the $20 for the "nonevent", yet you declare disingenuously "At least we can say that our government did behave responsibly (amazingly enough)concerning the information they gave the public. Yes, I am pissed off at our government for the ridiculous amount of money they spent on Y2K preparations (as well as their spending on everything else!)"----truly preposterous! A 50 million dollar bunker for a 3 day storm! And it doesn't bother you! You, wringing your hands in a knot and rending your hair over $20 you didn't spend! Why a person could get rich mining the irony of it all. Although I suspect perhaps it does bother you, the $50 million...in fact, I double dog dare you to e-mail the DoD, the FBI, NSA any other alphabet soup agency that applies and exercise your 1st Ammendment rights as an American and tell 'em what fer! Go on! Do it! I double, triple dog dare ya!!

I suspect a great many people would have done nothing to prep had they not heard the nonstop mainstream television news coverage of the many serious risks facing the world from y2k, the imminent threat of terrorism, the shaky political situations worldwide---I saw no one buying supplies until the immediate days preceeding the rollover, all compelled by the television and newspaper stories, despite the fact that Ed's book had been published years prior.

Your indignation is not righteous, it is pompous. Your angst is not over wasting $20 on Ed's book, which you didn't buy, and not because you had a crystal ball and saw into the future and found it fine, but because you think you are smarter than me, and others like me, based on your own preconceived provincial notions and pedestrian paradigm. And as "nothing" has happened as yet, you are on a crusade to protect the likes of me from the likes of Ed and all his ilk...because you know what's best for me, because you are smarter than me, because you are special and I must fit into some neat little box, some Great Unwashed Masses Niche for whom words are dangerous memes, because it is not that "a mind is a terrible thing to waste" it is "a mind is a terrible thing" and when The Great Unwashed start thinking outside the box nothing but hysteria can ensue....You, Shawn Eric Miller, are dangerous, for you think we are in bondage and need you to deliver us from the Yourdons of this world, for when the $20 some of us spent for ourselves bothers you more than $50 million taken from us all for the benefit of a tiny fraction of our population, the politically powerful, you reveal yourself to be not only a prejudiced elitist shill but what is also referred to on FreeRepublic.com (my other favorite forum---yes, I'm one of THOSE people--oh how you must cringe) as a Barbara Streisand!

So spare us the big bleeding heart, and do the world a favor and forget how you've been told all your life how smart you are and roll up your sleeves, drop your petty assumptions and discover how chaos theory works in the real world. You want to help people Shawn? Volunteer at a community hospice, teach an adult to read, make a friend at a nursing home and listen, really listen to their Great Depression stories, visit a VA hospital and find out if there are any marines left who served in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, as my father did (he is gone now), learn your history as an American from a first hand source, making sure to note how much trouble people find themselves in when they assume themselves immune from systemic chaotic cascading events generated from seemingly remote sources and then if you have anything PERTINENT to add to the conversation, please let us all know. Should the Americanized view prove too tedious, to unexotic, find out for yourself how the fact that Czar Nicholas' young son was a hemophiliac led to the building of the Berlin wall, and how that seemingly random incident still, after the turn of the century and the collective blood of millions shed, influences politics today. And when you have trained yourself to look beyond your assumptions, then, oh Pious One, Show Us the Way.

-- mellowdog (mellowdogusa@hotmail.com), January 07, 2000.


Mellowdog, wanna mudwrestle?

Really, I think I'm starting to LIKE you doomers! You're misguided, but you give a damn! And some of you can *write*!

Now, re-channel. Maybe the world can use you after all.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), January 07, 2000.


I'm a newbie & mostly here... and greatly looking forward to two full days in Phil Greenspun's Web courses at MIT this weekend.

It's been quite educational over the past 5+ years to see the "debate" rage. I've always thought it would be useful if we could somehow have a profile/background experience of the folks contributing. With a blind guess, I'd assume that most of the "pollies" have never made their living programming or working with complex/dangerous things where the details will bite you.

http://www.wbn.com/y2ktimebomb/Techcorner/DE/de9747.htm

Anyone who's written code for any period of time can easily recite the time(s) they spent chasing some errant systems behavior that came down to the presence or absence of a period (or other seemingly insignificant punctuation mark) in a program. Until you've directly learned the difference between a fly speck/burned out pixel and the imagined period, the details of BIG systems don't seem all that difficult.

-- David Eddy (deddy@davideddy.com), January 07, 2000.


Hey Dave. Polly here. Been working on Y2K issues off and on at two fortune 500 companies for the past 2.5 years. I've been coding in the trenches, but I've also been to a number of cross-industry seminars where I saw a lot of real work presented by the people who actually did the work. Around mid 1998 I was already thinking things were looking pretty good, and by the second half of 1999 I could tell that the confidence level in every IS department I had contact with was very high. In my own IS department we really didn't know what else to test by 7/99. During 1998-1999 We had warped MVS LPARS, Unix boxes, and NT clusters, and had fixed a number of small problems. After rollover, which we watched around the clock, we had less problems than on a normal weekend. Didn't surprise us.

If you've really worked on critical systems you know that teams of programmers will not panic when presented with a problem, they will just fix it. You'd also know that problems happen *All the time* and do not necessarily cascade through an entire company, which seemed to be the main fantasy in Y2K-dommsday land. They are simply fixed. Every day.

I would actually estimate that most doomers (most) are not programmers/IT folks. Every doomer I know personnaly working in IS was sort of considered an oddball.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), January 07, 2000.


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