From: "Hebraic.Heritage.Newsgroup@hydra.host4u.net"
<Hebraic.Heritage.Newsgroup@hydra.host4u.net>
To: Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup <heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>, Hebraic Heritage
Newsgroup 2 <heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
Subject: Y2K Problem
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 17:12:17 -0800
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From: Paul Jablonowski
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: Y2K Problems
The more I study the Y2K problem, the more that I realize that the people
who are sounding the alarm are the computer programmers who understand the
problem better than anyone else.
Paul...
The following letter was circulated by management, at Boeing, to the year
2000 team:
From: [manager deleted for privacy]
Sent: Monday, March 02, 1998 5:11 PM
To: [names deleted for privacy]
FW: Ed Yourdon: Y2K Pro's are Terrified
As Computing Disaster Preparedeness professionals, you owe it to yourself
to read the attached introduction and letter, and
then decide how to best serve Boeing and yourself in the coming crisis.
From: Allen Comstock[SMTP:comstock@wild-life.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 01, 1998 4:21 PM
Subject: [DISASTER] Ed Yourdon: Y2K Pro's are Terrified
Ed Yourdon is highly respected in mainframe programming circles. He is
co-author, along with his daughter, of the new book, "Time Bomb 2000" which
is the best layman's introduction to the Y2K crisis to date. Ed Yourdon
will tell you that Y2K (year 2000 computer problems) pose a direct threat
to the physical well being of every person on the planet whose lives are
influenced in any way by computers or electronic circuitry--that's most of
us.
Ed's letter below was written February 25,1998, and is his response to a
letter sent to him from an apparently clueless member of a usernet rural
life newsgroup.
Joseph
Begin Letter:
Greetings from Montreal... Thanks for your mail...
Here's something your homestead group might want to consider:
There are approximately 9,000 electric utility plants in the U.S.,
including 108 nuclear plants, and at the present time (Feb 25,
1998), NONE of them are Y2K compliant. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Last survey
that I saw indicated that one-third had not
started any Y2K effort at all, one third were seriously behind schedule,
and one-third were on-schedule. This is not an
exaggeration; NONE of the nuclear plants are compliant, and the Nuclear
Regulatory Agency (NRC) is currently drafting a
letter to the plant operators to warn them of their vulnerability and
liability. The Chairman of the SEC, Arthur Levitt, has drafted
a letter to the non-nuclear agencies, also warning them of their Y2K
exposure; this will probably go out in the next week or
two. Most likely scenario: 20-30% of the utility plants will suffer at
least sporadic Y2K problems on 1/1/2000, primarily with
their embedded systems, including intermittent blackouts; and it's not at
all beyond the realm of possibility that portions of the
nation's power grid will be brought down for several hours, days, or weeks.
Don't take my word for it; take a look at the web
sites of two Y2K-oriented utility experts, Roleigh Martin:
(http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roleigh_martin/)
and Rick Cowles:
(http://www.euy2k.com/index.htm).
Both of them think the situation will be MUCH worse than what I've
suggested.
If you're a computer professional, you may be aware of the statistics for
project success, whether it's utility plants or any other
kind of software project: even if you completely eliminate project failures
caused by budget problems, the data that we have
from the last 30 years of software projects tells us that 15% of all
projects are late, and 25% are cancelled before completion.
The projects that are late turn out to be late by approximately 7.6 months;
for large projects (1+ million lines of code), the
behind-schedule projects are late by an average of 13.8 months, and for
VERY large projects (10+ million lines of code), the
behind-schedule projects are late by an average of 25 months. This is not
an exaggeration; I can give you citations of books
and references if you care to see the details. And it doesn't take a rocket
scientist to conclude that this does not bode well for
Y2K projects.
So much for utilities (and note that I haven't commented on water supply,
oil, gas, and sewage). When it comes to banks,
consider these statistics: there are approximately 11,000 banks in this
country. Even taking into account the holding companies that own several
small banks, and the banks that outsource their IT development to service
bureaus, you have to assume that there are at least 5,000 separate
enterprise-level banking software systems that need to be fixed. The
numbers from one large banking institution are instructive: Bank of America
currently has an army of 1,000 programmers working on 250 million lines of
code, and as of late Jan 1998, they reported they were 1/3 of the way done.
More statistics from another large bank: Chase Manhattan was quoted in an
article in the NY Times last October as saying they have interfaces with
2,950 external entities.
Naturally, we can be highly confident that all 2,950 will be Y2K compliant
with no problems, right? Nevertheless, it's interesting
that Edward Yardeni, chief economist of Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, predicts
that between 5% and 20% of the small banks in
the U.S. will fail because of Y2K problems. That's the good news; the bad
news is that Europe is approximately one year
behind us and is dangerously distracted by their Eurocurrency projects,
Latin American is sound asleep, and Asia is
preoccupied with its current financial crises. If you're a
computer-literate person, here's an interesting statistic: 70% of the
Japanese banking systems are in-house, customized systems, while in the
U.S., 70% of the banking systems are packages.
Conclusion: maybe the international banking system will survive, but when
Alan Greenspan says Y2K could be a serious
problem (as he did today, in his testimony to the Senate) you'd better pay
attention. From my perspective, this is not a
theoretical, academic issue: this affects my retirement savings and it's
not something I feel like risking.
Bottom line: the banking system, as we currently know it, is in serious
danger of collapsing.
The other component of the "iron triangle" of critical infrastructure
services is telecommunications. Each of the "big three" of
ATT, MCI, and Sprint is dealing with a Y2K portfolio of 300-400 million
lines of code; there are interesting rumblings from all
three that indicate all is not rosy with their Y2K efforts. Even if they
make it, there are now hundreds of small, independent,
deregulated carriers that can wreak havoc on the overall telecommunications
"grid". An example of this occurred two days ago with a problem caused by a
random firm called Illuminet; see the attached news release below. Even
assuming we get dial tone on 1/1/2000 in the U.S. and England, you can
reasonably expect that several third-world countries are going to be cut
off from telecommunications for several weeks or months because of Y2K
problems.
Meanwhile, within the typical corporate environment, consider yet another
statistic: 90% of the PBX switchboards installed
before 1996 are NON-compliant. Small-medium enterprises (SME's) are
generally oblivious to this problem, and are not at all interested in
upgrading their equipment. If you look at this on a global basis (as I'm
currently doing with one of my consulting clients, who has 100+ MAJOR
offices on 7 continents), the problem is horrific.
Then there's the government. The character who critiqued my email
to your list-serve member seemed amused by my oblique reference to
Clinton's executive order; I suspect he had never heard of it before, which
isn't surprising considering how little media attention it got. For what
it's worth, the Executive Order was quietly published on Feb 4th and began
with the words "Minimizing the Y2K problem will require a major
technological and managerial effort, and it is critical that the United
States Government do its part in addressing this challenge." But it turns
out that the "Y2K Conversion Council" that Clinton has created with the
Executive Order is just another bureaucratic committee, and won't have much
impact on the outcome. Your homestead group may not care about such things,
but it's worth noting that 16 of the 26 major federal agencies are
predicting that they'll finish their Y2K testing in Nov or Dec 1999; that's
enough to make any veteran software professional break out in howls of
laughter. Congressman Stephen Horn (R-CA, and a former university
president) predicts that 14 of the 26 agencies won't finish even their
mission-critical systems on time. IRS appears to be doomed; perhaps that's
why the CIO, Arthur Gross, resigned last month.
By 2000 military command and control will be non-existent and it seems
likely most hi-tech weapons systems will be
non-functional. Two weeks ago the Y2K honcho for the US Department of
Defense resigned and his resignation was
immediately followed by the resignations of his two top assistants, leaving
no one with the ability to rapidly step into this critical national defense
command position. No one wants to command a sinking ship. Last week it was
announced publicly that Y2K defective embedded circuitry programming has
been found in the United States nuclear missile launch systems. Face it,
Y2K is serious stuff.
FAA has gotten lots of press recently about their Y2K problems (and the top
Y2K person in that agency has resigned, too) -- but that's the GOOD news
about the Dept of Transportation, which is currently estimated to finish
its Y2K work in 2019; the bad news is that 95% of the exports from this
country go by sea, and the maritime industry only held its first Y2K
conference this week (in NYC; I attended it), and doesn't have a clue about
Y2K. HHS (Health & Human Services) has basically shot itself in the foot by
firing its outsourcing-contractors and bringing its partially completed
software projects in-house without Y2K compliance; as a result, Medicare
and Medicaid are seriously threatened. Etc, etc, etc. I can't claim that my
crystal ball is perfect, but I will tell you that my own personal Y2K plans
include a very simple assumption: the government of the U.S., as we
currently know it, will fall on 1/1/2000. Period.
I just noticed your sig file says you're from Georgia. Well, here's what's
going on in GA: about a month ago, the Governor
woke up and announced that the state would have to spend approximately $130
million to "combat" the Y2K bug, most of
which would be spent to hire approximately 400 programmers. By itself, a
proposal from the governor doesn't mean
diddly-squat, but it's amazing to see that the GA legislature actually
approved the funding proposal within a matter of weeks; by contrast, states
like Texas (where my daughter recently addressed the Appropriations
committee of the state legislature on the global economic impact of Y2K)
cannot easily do so, because they operate on a constitutionally-mandated
balanced budget, which doesn't allow deficit spending. Anyway, GA
apparently has approval to spend $130 million, which means that it has
approval to hire 400 programmers. But the governor doesn't want to hire
them himself -- the appropriation has to trickle down two or three levels
to the various departments that will actually decide how much they need,
and how many programmers they need. How long will that take? Three months?
Six months? Whenever it happens, the state IT departments will go out into
the marketplace to try to hire 400 people at civil-service salaries. In
today's marketplace, how many do you think they'll be able to hire? How
about: ZERO. The "great sucking sound" that Ross Perot warned of in his
last Presidential campaign turns out to be the sound of programmers being
sucked out of the public-sector government agencies, into the private
sector, where competitive salaries can be paid, and salaries are rising at
the rate of 2-5% per month. And even if they could hire 400 programmers 3-6
months from now, it's too late. IT'S TOO LATE! Of course, maybe God will
smile on Georgia, and maybe the critical state agencies in your state will
get their Y2K work done in time; meanwhile, there are 49 other states,
several of whom (ND, MT, WY, AK and several others) appear not to have even
begun doing any Y2K work. The chances that even a reasonable majority of
them will finish is pretty small, in my humble opinion. And then there are
the counties, and the cities....
I could go on at great length, because there's a lot more detail that we
Y2K "warriors" know about and are dealing with, but I
think you see the point: those of us who are living with the problem on a
day-to-day basis are terrified. You indicated that some of your listserv
members have 20 years of computing experience. Wow. Big deal. I've got 34
years of experience in the field, and I've got a public reputation that (if
nothing else) suggests that I probably should not be dismissed as an
alarmist quack; see my web site at
http://www.yourdon.com for more details.
Yes, I've written a Y2K book which will sell more copies if Y2K is a
problem-- but I've also written 24 other software-engineering computer
books, starting in 1967, that are doing quite well, and generating much
higher royalties than a
mass-market, low-priced, heavily-discounted Y2K book. I could make at least
as much money, if not more money, during the
next two years by focusing my efforts on OO technology, Java, and the
Internet; but in my opinion, the Y2K problem will make
any discussion of OO and the Internet roughly akin to rearranging deck
chairs on the Titanic. Frankly, I couldn't care less
whether your computer veterans agree or disagree with my views on Y2K; my
daughter and I wrote our "Time Bomb 2000"
book to articulate personal Y2K contingency plans for our family, our
friends, and other personal acquaintances. If Y2K does
turn out to be as bad as I think it will be, nobody is going to care abut
the opinions of software professionals on 1/1/2000
(other than possibly lynching them for having created the problem in the
first place!); instead, everyone is going to be
concentrating on how to get food, shelter, clothing, and the basic
necessities of life. Y2K threatens all of this, except in the
backwards economies that have never depended on automation or
socio-economic interactions with other automated societies. Rural China
will probably be okay; but in my humble opinion, New York, Chicago, Atlanta
and a dozen other cities are going to resemble Beirut in January 2000.
That's why I've moved out of NYC to rural New Mexico a couple months ago.
You're welcome to post these remarks on your listserv if you think it would
serve some constructive purpose; I'll leave that up
to you. But in general, I assume that your listserv group has come to the
conclusion that Y2K is not a problem, and that you'd
rather not hear any opinions of the sort that I've expressed above. That's
fine with me; as Spock says on Star Trek: "live well
and prosper." I wish you well, and hope that we'll all be able to compare
notes about the Y2K situation in a calm rational
fashion on 1/2/2000.
But in the meantime, I've got work to do. There are only 674 days left.
Sincerely, Ed Yourdon --
Are you aware of the Year 2000 problem? We all need to be.
************************
http://pw2.netcom.com/helliott/00.htm
http://www.year2000.com
http://www.yourdon.com http://www.garynorth.com
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roleigh_martin/
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