To: PaulM who wrote (46517 ) 1/2/2000 9:32:00 PM From: long-gone Respond to of 116779
Y2K - Ed Yourdon's 'Jan 1, 2000 Assessment Of The Y2K Situation' Ed Yourdon's Web Site (http://www.yourdon.com) From Paula Gordon <pgordon@erols.com> 1-2-99 I got up this morning and found that my e-mail inbox was already filled with messages with questions and commentaries about Y2K. Some asked if I was prepared to admit that I was wrong, and that Y2K had been a scam all along; some thanked me for making them think about the issue more carefully than they would otherwise have done; and most asked what I thought about the current situation. The fact that I was even able to receive e-mail this morning obviously says a lot. The Internet is up, the lights are on, I got dial-tone when I picked up the phone. Terrorists did not attack the New Year's celebrations in Jerusalem, Rome, Paris, London, New York, or Washington. As best I can tell, none of the 100,000 computer viruses we had been warned to expect have attacked my computer system. In short, the world has not ended as of 10:00 AM Mountain time, here in Taos, New Mexico. What does all of this mean? I don't think there is a single correct answer to this question. Keep this in mind during the coming days, for there is a tendency in many discussions, commentaries, arguments, and analyses for people to assume a "binary" either-or, yes-or-no, all-or-nothing, black-or-white attitude toward issues like Y2K, not to mention several other complex issues and problems facing society. I believe that the current Y2K situation reflects a combination of several factors: Potential Y2K problems have been fixed. Let's give credit where credit is due: hundreds of thousands of computer programmers around the world worked long, hard hours (usually without being paid for the overtime work they put in) to fix some, or most, or possibly all of the potential Y2K bugs that would otherwise have occurred. I've stated publicly on several occasions that if any industry managed to muddle through the Y2K situation, it would be the banking industry -- because they had their own built-in sense of urgency, they had the financial resources, they had the technological sophistication, and they had more regulatory oversight and pressure than any other industry. The same is likely to be true for the military weapons "industry" -- i.e., the fact that none of the advanced countries of the world launched nuclear missiles at one another last night implies, among other things, that they worked diligently to remove whatever bugs might have caused a problem. The most notable outcome of Y2K last night is that, in almost all parts of the world, the lights stayed on. Industry experts like Rick Cowles are better qualified than I to comment on this, but it's easy to see why people would conclude from last night's success that the electric power industry did a better job, and achieved a higher degree of completion, than the preliminary reports and data suggested would be the case. Potential Y2K problems were exaggerated. This has been a common theme on the part of many Y2K "optimists," and I am one of many people who has been accused of exaggerating the nature, degree, and potential severity of Y2K problems. As I'll suggest below, I think it's premature to make this conclusion about software-related (cont)sightings.com