From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Tue Oct 16 2001 - 07:54:59 MDT
Steve Nichols wrote,
> I find the whole Singularity debate on a par with the
> milleniumists and Y2K thing, except it is more of a moveable
> feast so true believers have more squirming room when it fails
> to happen.
It is a common misconception that the Y2K bug never occurred. I can
personally report that many major failures were found and corrected in
advance. Many major failures actually were not found and were corrected
shortly after Y2K. Major financial and industrial institutions lied and
covered up any problems because they were embarrassed to have missed them
after so much hype. I myself personally tested and detected many Y2K
failures and saw them fixed after the event. I also personally have seen
massive failures by institutions that publicly claim that they had zero
failures.
The fact is, Y2K was a major disaster which was predicted, corrected,
mitigated and hidden after the fact. We were very lucky that it occurred
over a weekend and that most businesses were not depending on the
infrastructure until Tuesday morning after the three-day holiday weekend.
I actually predicted that IT professionals would be blamed for Y2K no matter
what. If failures were announced, they would have been seen as failures of
IT. If failures were not announced, the IT people would be seen as crying
wolf. Most institutions opted for the latter, preferring to tell there
customers that there was never really any danger.
-- Harvey Newstrom <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant, Newstaff Inc. <www.Newstaff.com> Board of Directors, Extropy Institute <www.Extropy.org> Cofounder, Pro-Act <www.ProgressAction.org>
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