From: Bob Bartch 
Subject: SNET: Y2K and the IRS software "fix" bid, due soon
Date: 3 Aug 1998 01:21:43 -0400
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Path: news.uni-stuttgart.de!news.belwue.de!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-raspail.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!howland.erols.net!Supernews73!supernews.com!Supernews69!tcmay
From: tcmay@got.net (Tim May)
Newsgroups: comp.software.year-2000,misc.survivalism,scruz.general
Subject: The Panic Begins in a Few Months
Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 09:32:35 -0700
Organization: Cypherpunks
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In article <35c33dbb.0@news-out2.newsnerds.com>, "shek borkowski"
 wrote:

> "Our goal is not perfection. Our goal, ***if*** we are really successful,
> will be that disruptions will be minimal and inconvenience will be minor."
> from Reuters "North American power council sees Year 2000 readiness" July
> 28, 1998.
> 
> So, if its less than perfect, we will have major disruptions and
> inconvenience.

I think we're seeing signs of a shift in "official" pronouncements from
"it will be fixed because we are Americans and we know how to get things
done" to "we will try to minimize the consequences of failure."

Hamre is talking about DOD problems and possible martial law, Koskinen is
admitting that remediation efforts are way, way behind schedule, and
Bennett is hearing more testimony that major industries and most of the
rest of the world are essentially making no progress.

A few months ago the popular press was basically just discovering the Y2K
problem, with reporters slowly convincing their editors that Y2K deserved
more coverage. Predictably, the focus of many of these reports was on
"survivalists" (e.g., catchy but insulting titles like "The Great Geek
Migration"). Those who took prudent steps to have food and water and
personal protection were portrayed as high tech versions of Ted Kaczynski,
holed up in their mountain bunkers waiting to shoot the marauding "spiky
hairs" and "cannibal welfare mutants." Ever trendy, "Wired" magazine has
in the current issue an article on these "gun nut survivalists," including
a visual on a geek/nerd sitting amongst his bags of grain and stockpiles
of canned food and survival supplies. Makes for good press.

Call this Phase One: Alerting the sheeple that _something_ is out there.

I expect the tone of reports in the next few months to be grimmer, as the
tone of Koskinen, Hamre, Bennett, Horn, and others cannot be ignored.

This will affect markets. Probably around October, November.

My prediction, made months ago, is that the Trigger Event may be the
absence of any credible bids by industry to fix the colossal IRS problems.
As we all know from Gary North's articles from last summer, the IRS
admitted it could not tackle this massive problem and sent out a bid
request to the major software companies (EDS, Computer Sciences Corp.,
IBM, Boeing, etc.). The bids are due October 1, 1998, a mere two months
from now. The fixes to the IRS system are due by June 1, 1999...this to
give them a "30 day safety margin" and "time for testing" before D-Day:
the start of FY 00 on July 1, 1999. As Paul Milne would put it:
BWWAAHAAAA! There is absolutely no way a contractor could get the
contract, hire the additional programmers (tens of thousands of them?),
make the changes, upgrade hardware and mainframes and minis, install the
changes, test the new code...probably not in six or eight _years_, and
certainly not in FIVE OR SIX MONTHS!!!!

(As we all know, _testing_ is usually as big a part of changing a large
program as making the actual changes is. The 6 months for this IRS process
is absurd for many reasons. Testing the changes is only one of them.
Probably a showstopper, though.)

These outside contractors will realize that essentially no amount of money
could let them do all that needs to be done to fix the massive IRS
problems in the several months they'll have between the awarding of the
contract and the hard due date...so they won't bid. At least not credibly.
(I.e., they may "sandbag" their bids to say they'll complete the fixes by,
say, 2003 or so, and with no guarantees that the changed code will run on
existing IRS computers, blah blah. This is obviously equivalent to "IRS
shuts down for several years." A good thing to many of us, but not
something the government can accept.)

This will add to the realization that "awareness" of the Y2K problem is
coming many years too late, that the problems are not about awareness and
team spirit but about the sheer difficulty of actually fixing hundreds of
millions of lines of code, millions of small business systems, and dealing
with the rest of the world (which is more concerned with mounting local
and "right now" problems than it is with solving "future" problems which
lie _months_ off in the future).

The panic will start in earnest in just a few months.  Oh, and the panic
will not help remediation efforts...it will only make things worse. This
is why I focus on something I can do something about: personal
preparedness.

Your longevity may vary.

--Tim May

-- 
Just Say No to "Big Brother Inside"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^3,021,377   | black markets, collapse of governments.

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