|
For those of you who find my Web site unconvincing, this multi-part report should comfort you. In it, you will learn:
* * * * * * * * *
Despite--or, perhaps, because of--all the hysteria, most large institutions are aware of the problem, and they're working on it. In nearly every case, they expect the bug to have little or no effect on core functions. . . .
The Y2K bug is a real problem, it's a widespread problem, and it needs to be fixed. But most of society's vital organizations expect to have the critical portions of their systems repaired or replaced in time. And nobody who's actually working on the millennium bug expects anything near the apocalyptic scenarios put forth by the doomsayers.
[I am the one person cited. There is a link to my site. At last: my 15 minutes of fame!]
Sally Katzen is the director of the Office of Management and Budget for the President and is the point person for millennium bug fixes in 24 federal agencies. Katzen has no indication that many--or any--government systems will fail. "We have a high degree of confidence that the important services and benefits will continue through and after the new millennium. It is my expectation that when we wake up on January 1 in the year 2000, the millennium bug will have been a nonevent," says Katzen.
[There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that a lawyer hired by the Clinton Administration to be its public relations agent on this matter is telling the truth.]
Nicholas Zvegintzov has studied computer science and artificial intelligence since the 1960s and has been a software consultant for nearly 20 years. While he acknowledges that there is a real Y2K problem, he dismisses most of the horror stories as the tales of the inexperienced. "As a thing to do with code, it's not especially complex. It's actually a very clean problem; you can throw some clean techniques and clean tools at it." He calls the Y2K bug fix "an exercise for the software novice" and predicts that business will continue more or less as usual when the millennium rolls around.
[So, if I can line up 500,000 novices who know Assembler, I'll make a bundle.]
|