How many of those "Prophets of Doom" knew what they were talking
about but it worked for most executives.
The doom would have been real enough if the prophets had been ignored.
We began fixing that "Y2K thing'gie" in late 1992, a tad over 7 years
before 2000. At that time it was mandatory in some jurisdictions to
keep tax-related business records for seven years. In mid-1992 we
recognised that from 1st Jan 1993, when our major product archived
files, they would have the YY part of their discard date calculated
as "00" (93+7=100 truncated to 00) and thus immediately appear "old"
with the result that they would be deleted within 24 hours of
capture! Of course there were other things to be fixed across all
our products. I recall that another major effort was required in
'97, but essentially, like many, we were done with "Y2K" before the
start of 1998.
Countless other professionals did corresponding good work and as a
direct consequence "Y2K" was not a disaster at all. One suspects
that sections of the media were hoping it was going to be very bad
(planes falling from the sky, toasters electrocuting their owners,
elevators plummeting and countless other pieces of mundane equipment
going Disney-dancing cranky.
And sure, as inevitably happens when there's a
must-do-by-a-fixed-date project with an essentially unlimited budget
and other boundaries very poorly defined, quite a lot of other stuff
got slipped through under the guise of "Y2K remediation". Yeah,
that's just human nature.
So, absent the total murderous malfunctioning of just about every
aspect of our technical society, media can still occasionally squeeze
a few column-inches out of "the great Y2K conspiracy to defraud us
all" rubbish. Yawn.
There's a real story, which media doesn't cover, about how many of
the Y2K fixes crafted back in the late '90s were not going to last
for more than a few, maybe ten or fifteen years. And I'd guess at
least some people decided that "this application will be replaced by
(cut 'n paste from your favourite airline mag article here) no later
than 2010!" Uh huh. Toxic residue from Y2K remediation will
continue to surface as we plow on into the 21st century. And many of
the people who know/knew the details are going/gone.
Ok, back to work (got an order for some square pegs).
Cheers to all,
Graeme
At 10:12 AM 17/05/2010, you wrote:
This type of article re-appears every two years..
It's suppose to make you "fear" and maybe you will subscribe to
their magazine.
Remember the Y2K thing'gie ?
How many of those "Prophets of Doom" knew what they were talking
about but it worked for most executives.
Anton
Note: Another example... "The oil in the Gulf is about the wipe out
all the Florida/Alabama/Mississippi/Texas/Louisiana beaches"
On 5/16/2010 5:09 PM, Ed Gould wrote:
Cracking Down on Independent Contractors
Federal and state regulators increasingly want to know whether
companies' independent contractors are truly independent.
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/14480567?f=search
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