' Cory Hamasaki's DC Y2K Weather Report V2, # 32
"August 3, 1998 - 515 days to go." WRP88
(c) 1997, 1998 Cory Hamasaki - I grant permission to distribute and
reproduce this newsletter as long as this entire document is reproduced in
its entirety. You may optionally quote an individual article but you should
include this header down to the tearline. I do not grant permission to a
commercial publisher to reprint this in print media.
As seen in
USENET:comp.software.year-2000
elmbronze.demon.co.uk
kiyoinc.com
Don't forget, the Y2K chat-line: ntplx.net
any evening, 8-10PM EST.
--------------------tearline -----------------------------
Please fax or email copies of this to your geek pals, especially those
idiots who keep sending you lightbulb, blonde, or Bill Gates jokes,
and urban legends like the Arizona rocket car story.
If you have a Y2K webpage, feel free to host the Weather Reports.
Did you miss Geek Out?
Project Dumbass needs you.
In this issue:
1. A wall of dirt.
2. Resources for Geeks
3. Old Timer Croaks
4. Washington Post on Y2K
------------- A wall of dirt ---------
I'm not sure what the term for it is, but you've seen these things, a
large stack of poker chips, at some point it's so high that it just lets
go.... mud slides work like that... and avalances... It might be the
thing that ends a speculative run up or causes species to suddenly die
off.
The question on the floor is whether all of civilization, the sum of
everything controlled by computers is stable or not.
Is it a huge tangle of lantana and Y2K is a runaway car... the crash
doesn't hurt the lantana and in a month, it's grown over completely.
Or is it a gigantic set of gradually enlarging dominos? Y2K knocks
over a few key dominos and the fallover races through the carefully
constructed set, knocking of more and more, larger and larger dominos
until building sized dominos are crashing.
There is no way to characterize what's about to happen.
-------------- Resources for geeks --------------
Fixing software - Here are some free and near free resources -
Grep - lots of free source floating around the net.
Date-like strings - Year, year-to-date, mon, month, mmddyy, more
COBOL compiler for PC's - Get the Fujitsu product.
Decompilers - Checkout the hacker, virus boards. They have decompilers
for PC's. After the Internet worm hit (about 10 years ago), the
post mortem included decompilations of the body of the worm. I have
the underground Virus CD, "The Old West", which might include a
decompiler. I took down my virus research lab so I can't read the CD
safely.
Note: Some precautions that you should take when working with Computer
Viruses. Set up a standalone machine. Explicitly mark all removeable
media as belonging to the Virus lab. Do not connect the lab to your
local area network. Do not connect the lab to the Internet. Treat the
machine as you would an explosive device. When moving files from the
lab to your production machines. Move only source code. Review the
source for worms or viruses.
If we had a couple years, it would be interesting to use one of the
virus engineering sets to build a source decompiler... a year of hard
work and you'd be a multi-millionaire.
The PC370 assembler simulator. There are several versions of this
around. It was sold and commercialized but the original product is
still available.
----------- Another Useless Old Timer Croaks ---------
I'll be at Arlington National Cemetery again. Thomas Raines, PHM,
Lt Col. USA(ret), and geek wannabe, was carried away to his blue
Valhalla last week. The superprogrammers grapevine reported that tom
was trying to learn Visual Basic when he was put on the useless old
fogger list and given the heave-ho. Well, they don't have him to kick
around any more. Post Chapel 9:00 AM Tuesday August 4.
Tom worked on the same monster project that BT, Shmuel, and I worked on
in the 1980s.
Please geeks, watch your health, both physical and mental. We've got a
real mess coming our way and we need every pair of hands and eyes.
It's getting lonely.
------------- Washington Post goes Nutz on Y2K ---------
OK, this is it. Sunday's Post had a way above-the-fold Y2K article... I
think this is their 4th front page Y2K story. This article beat out
the story about the blue dress.... -choke- I'm choking back the laughs,
I'm sorry, this is funnier than the Prince Charles underwear
transcripts. ...and linda trip.... -urk-
Anyway, the post, washingtonpost.com, ran a whole pack of
articles:
Sunday: Above the fold and two full pages on the inside.
Double-Zero Hour Looms for Historic Repair Job
Staggering Repair Bills Anticipated
A Glitch that was Always in the Cards
Challenges for Three Key Sectors
Consumer Products and the Year 2000: A User's Guide
Y2K Spurs Creative Solutions
Patching a Hole in the BIOS.
Monday: With 7,336 Mission Critical systems to fix, Will Uncle Sam be
ready on Jan 1, 2000. Don't miss the article on the Geek shortage.
Tuesday: From Lotteries to Metro to prisons, the region's systems gird
for the new millennium.
Hit their webpage or spring a couple bucks for the paper... these are
good to show your denial-head in-laws and neighbors.
About Sunday's article on Freddie Mac.
spending 50-75 million dollars
has 12 million lines of code
1200 pieces of software on mainframes
Started in 1994.
75% of code is fixed (whatever that means)
320 of 3,300 employees work on Y2K (10% of staff)
One system in progress, PML02, is
36 modules
2500 lines each module
1 programmer has been working on it since mid-may
analyzing took til early June.
Late June, fixes were approved.
two days for code changes.
Testing is a chore, stuff about fake records.
Task will last until late August.
------- What do these numbers mean? -------
Costs are running about $5.00/line of code. 50-75/12
PML02 is maybe 90K (36*2500) lines, is taking perhaps 3 months, up
through unit test. Going with a $12K/month burdened rate (bennies,
floor space), $36K for 90K lines... or about 50 cents a line. ... There
must be several indirect team members, managers, documentation,
testers, support people to bring the rate to $5.00/line of code.
Most systems are 10K lines (12,000,000/1200).
If the time period is 1994 to 2000, their time span is 5 years...
assuming a late 1994 start. They're 75% done with the code and unit
test, I didn't see anything about full up integration tests.
Looks like they're cutting it close but could make it... unless they're
raided, or fundamental problems show up in testing.
This is one of those too close to call situations. I wish there were
more details in the article...
--------------- CCCC ------------
Between the Post and the other newspapers, TV, magazine articles, we're
seeing the last gasps of denial. Sure, there will be a few clueless
postings where college sophomores reinvent anti-gravity, perpetual
motion, or date windowing. We will have the weekly ... my big brain
tells me that this is just marketing hype, and even a few, I can't leave
the comfort of my stupifying, syberitic, pleasure drenched life and
consider the possibility that maybe I'll have to do some dirty hard
work... like 95% of the people on earth.
Just tell them, get over it, make your plans, execute them. And you
geeks, especially you king-geeks and queen-geekettes, crank some code
will you. Times running out and we need fix what we can to soften the
collapse.
Please don't fall for the hysterical rantings of KatScan-ian, Ray "I'm a
PhD who never went to skule" Long; there will be problems, some can be
fixed; some code will work; most code will fail. Hard times are coming
but you have a heads up. Make the most of the time we have left.
Fix the code, design backups and backouts. Have lots and lots of DASD,
MIPS, and full slots in your SILO's and Big Birds.
Be in a position to take care of yours and a couple others and maybe,
maybe we'll get through this. ...if not, I'll see you in Geek Valhalla,
where the mead is hot, there's a dressed boar roasting over the roaring
lodge fire, an icy north wind howling outside but the laughter of the
wenches drowns it out, and a 370/195 is running LSPS MVT.
cory hamasaki 515 days....
____
From : c.s.y2k
From:
kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net (cory hamasaki)
16:23
Subject:
DC Y2K Weather Report (Wall of Dirt, Resources, Old Timer, Washington Post.) |
