Gary North's Y2K Links and Forums - Mirror

Category: Compliance

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(Links to documents appear after the summary.)

Here is the problem in a nutshell.

1. There is no agreed-upon standard for the change: 20000101 or 01012000. Also, does 01 refer to January (American version) or the first day of the month (British version)? All computers must agree on this after the fix. They will not agree.

2. There is no coordinating agency with the power to impose sanctions for failing to comply. The market will impose the sanctions. The market is merciless.

3. A noncompliant computer will infect a compliant computer with bad data, rendering the compliant computer noncompliant. Why bother to pay for making the repairs if everyone else doesn't? It's Catch-22.

4. Locking out a noncompliant computer keeps that computer out of the system or network. How many must be locked out to destroy the system? Now, think one word: "banking."

It boils down to this sentence: "If you can't fix every computer in a system, then you cannot be sure of the system."

It's not good enough to make your computer individually compliant. You must make every computer that it interacts with systems-compliant. But you can't do this. No one can do this. Except God. And He's amused. "And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth" (Deut. 8:17).

All confident talk about a solution to the year 2000 problem must demonstrate, step by step, system by system, how this operational virus can be avoided: technically, managerially, and financially.

It's coming down. The system is coming down. By "system," I mean the West. We can date it.

Never before in man's history has anything this big been predictable with anything like this precision. What will amaze historians of the future is that anything this huge could have been ignored for so long and then, when discovered, been denied so universally. It's Cassandra's curse, multiplied across an entire civilization.

I know of only one work of fiction that describes anything like this: Isaac Asimov's short story, "Nightfall." I'm not an expert on literature, however. Still, you might read "Nightfall" to get a vision of what has been programmed into the system.

Are you really at risk? Here's a test. Send out a letter to any company or organization that you rely on: public utility, mutual fund, bank, railroad company, airline, or whatever. Ask if the organization is Year-2000 compliant? (It won't be.) Then add this sentence: "If you are not Year 2000-compliant, please answer the following three questions: (1) How many lines of code are in your system? (2) How many programmers are presently working full-time on repairing it? (3) When did they begin the repairs?" The fact is, the outfit is probably not to the assessment stage. It's probably not even to the inventory stage. Actually fixing code? Highly unlikely.

Here is what will happen.

1. You will not get a written reply. This is the standard response.

2. A manager (Dilbert's boss's boss) will send you a letter saying that the company has been working on this, and plans to be compliant on December 31, 1998. (This is the standard date, since it leaves a year to run tests.) He will not give you the specifics you need to judge if the outfit has a prayer of getting compliant: number of lines of code, etc.

3. A manager will tell you his organization is already compliant. His organization uses only PC's. Unfortunately, every supplier it depends on is still non-compliant.

What happens if he tells you that his company isn't going to make it? He gets fired. What happens if Dilbert tells his boss that the programming team won't make it? He gets fired. Who has any incentive to tell the truth? None. That's why every outfit gives you the late 1998 date: a full year for testing! (Right! On what? Where does the world get the spare mainframe capacity in 1999 to run all those tests? And if there is spare capacity, then hardly anyone got as far as testing.)

(Other categories: "Too Late?", "Noncompliant Chips," and "Domino Effect.")

Updated - Subject

02-Jan-97   IBM, 1986: "Shut Up About Y2K or Face Action!"
13-Jan-97   The Huge Volume of Repairs
30-Jan-97   What Constitutes Compliance?
04-Feb-97   A Repairman's Simplified List of Rules
24-Feb-97   A Sample Repair Guide: Anything But Simple (GTE's Guide)
24-Feb-97   "Is This Computer Compliant?": Key Questions to Ask
24-Jun-97   Who Says Your New Software Is Compliant?
28-Jun-97   Software Advertising: Compliance Statements
08-Jul-97   IBM and EDS: Not Yet Compliant, Seek Outside Help
09-Jul-97   So, You Think It's Easy? A Case Study
22-Jul-97   Micros, Mainframes, and Now Midrange Systems
06-Aug-97   Merrill Lynch Describes the Y2K Problem
20-Aug-97   IBM's 90,000 Legacy Systems
22-Aug-97   EDS (Noncompliant) Hires Non-Techies to Fix Y2K
04-Sep-97   Form Letter for Businessmen to Use With Vendors
05-Sep-97   More Suggestions for Vendor Inquiry Letter
06-Sep-97   What Is a Vendor Letter Really For? To Alert Him!
04-Oct-97   IBM Announces: No More Support for Machines (18 Pages)
21-Oct-97   87% of Mid-Size U.S. Retailers Are Noncompliant
23-Oct-97   Complex Compliance Problems for PC Networks
23-Oct-97   Internet Is Vulnerable to Y2K
24-Oct-97   Vendors: If They Go, Your Job May Go . . . And a Lot More
27-Oct-97   Non-Simultaneous Solutions Are Not Solutions: De Jager
03-Nov-97   Dates Hidden in Clever Names: A Mess to Discover and Repair
08-Nov-97   Congress Warned: International Economic Crisis in 2000
17-Nov-97   EDS, which Sells Y2K Services, Is Still Not Compliant
18-Nov-97   Deliberately Hidden Dates: A Y2K Repairman's Nightmare
20-Nov-97   Estimating the Cost of the Repair Would Bankrupt Most Outfits
20-Nov-97   Economist Warns Against Low-Ball $600 billion Cost Estimate
04-Dec-97   Too Many Vendors; Too Much Dependence
04-Dec-97   Date Standard: Still Not Agreed Upon
10-Dec-97   Web Site of 2000-Compliant Companies, Dreamers, and Liars
11-Dec-97   Interdependency Makes It an All-or-Nothing Problem
12-Dec-97   The Spaghetti Code Problem
12-Dec-97   Corporate Networks At Risk
03-Jan-98   Companies Must Establish Their Definition of Compliance
07-Jan-98   A Free Report on Compliance
20-Jan-98   No Definition Exists
22-Jan-98   The Bad Effects of 99.9% Accuracy
05-Feb-98   Century Standard: 4-Digit Year -- A Wee Bit Late in the Process
07-Feb-98   Kappelman: It's Too Late for a Single Standard
11-Feb-98   IBM Plans to Be Euro-Compliant in 2001
11-Feb-98   The Media's Party Line: Big Firms Will Be OK; Small Firms Won't Be
16-Feb-98   Time for Triage, Says Y2K Software Renovation Firm
18-Feb-98   Why They'll Solve It in the Movies
02-Mar-98   The Challenger Shuttle: A Model for Y2K Repairs (Unfortunately)
03-Mar-98   Cray Supercomputers Says, New Systems, OK; Old Systems, Dead
11-Mar-98   Capers Jones (The Master) Forecasts Bad Events
11-Mar-98   Huge Check List of Things Your Employer Had Better Be Doing
20-Mar-98   Client-Server Systems Are at Risk
15-Apr-98   Compliant County in Ohio: No Computer
16-Apr-98   Compliance Defined by Hewlett Packard
22-Apr-98   The Failure of Non-Critical Systems Could Bankrupt Your Company
28-Apr-98   Triage: If You Aren't Going to Meet the Deadline
30-Apr-98   Forgotten 13,000 End-User Applications in One Company
01-May-98   Insurance Company Seeks Compliance: How?
11-May-98   Definition of Compliance Used by International Air Transport Assn.
28-May-98   50 Years of Bad Dates Ahead of Us (Capers Jones)
28-May-98   No Century Date Standard (Capers Jones)
28-May-98   Rival Programming Strategies for Fixing Y2K
29-May-98   Phillips Petroleum: 1996 to Now, and Still Not Compliant
01-Jun-98   Credit Cards: Success Story
01-Jun-98   The Rotten Data in 2001 Problem
04-Jun-98   Why Large, Complex Organizations Are at Risk


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