An echo of Y2K

“I’d be very interested if anyone could point to a piece published before 2000 taking a sceptical line both Y2K and AGW.”

That wouldn’t be that much; there’s *bound* to be at least *one* person putting out something (on the internet, or in some print publication) taking the view that both were a problem. If there wasn’t, that would mean that there was at least one view which was not represented on the internet, which, unlike the LHC, definitely would cause a space-time singularity.

BTW – I noticed what was probably the Y2K bug in MS Excel, in ’97 or ’98, in a bond pricing function (input yield, current date, date due, and get present value). When I set the due date at ’03’, I got an error message; when I shifted things back 4 years and had all dates in the 90’s, it worked fine.

Really, this issue really reminds you of climate change? That’s quite the leap

The Y2K alarmists had a powerful argument in their favor: fixing Y2K was a huge software project, huge software projects are always late, thus the fix wouldn’t be ready in time.

I never worked on any Y2K stuff, but I’ve always thought that the problem with that arguments was as follows (perhaps someone with experimence doing remediation will comment):

The reason huge software projects are always late is that you never *really* know how much work a software system will require until you start to build it, and as you build it requirements change (for good reason – you didn’t know what you wanted before). But Y2K was totally different – everyone knew exactly what problem needed to be solved. People are *much* better at estimating under these circumstances, thus the estimate were good, and the work got done on time.

If massive concerted global action against climate change does succeed in avoiding any real catastrophe, it is a racing certainty all the denialists will say ‘see, I was right’.

Annoying, but the alternatives are worse.

I argued at the time that the problem was minimal, but that rich countries could afford to take out insurance (which they mostly did) and that poorer countries were les likely to have problems, should any exist, because they were less dependent on computers. Whether I was right, I can’t say, but it does seem that the (implied) icnome elastiticy of demand for insurance against a Y2K problem was right.

The one time mankind works together around the entire globe to proactively identify and fix a problem, and the reward is 30 years of carping about how the whole process was unnecessary. You might want to talk to the Finnish National Railway: their system management software failed regularly on January 1st from 2000 through 2005 (not sure if they finally fixed it by 2006 or just replaced it) – luckily January 1st-5th are not big train trip days in Finland.

Were there excesses, stupidities, and hucksters involved. Sure. Name me a significant human event where no such attached.

Cranky

Slocum@12: “Except that mankind didn’t work together in a coordinated fashion.” There was extensive co-ordination within the computing profession. Yourdon, who I linked, was one of the co-ordinators; ironically his good work was part of what rendered his alarmism invalid. Yourdon also links to the US government’s “Y2K Czar” who was an important co-ordinator. That you aren’t aware of the co-ordination does not speak well for the rest of your reasoning.

Barry@8: Broadly, “systems software” are the components that support applications. These include operating systems, especially the largely invisible resource allocation and networking components of operating systems, firmware, and so on. To use a perhaps over-simplified analogy, systems are like the telephone network and an application are like a business that uses it. To use another, systems are like the structure that makes the finished building stand; the abstract and unnoticed engineering underpinning of the human experience of architecture. Systems work makes it possible for computers to reliably do useful tasks. It is expensive, difficult, and when done well near-invisible. It is noticed when it fails and, as you can see, gets very little credit outside of the field.

The Raven: There was extensive co-ordination within the computing profession.

I don’t doubt that there was sharing of strategies and technologies, but the incentives and actions were at the level of individual organizations fixing on their own (disparate) software systems, driven by their own organizational self-interest, as your linked article makes pretty clear:

“But it has always been common practice for individuals, corporations, and government agencies to fix their problems “behind the scenes” whenever possible, and to maintain a facade of normal operations whenever possible. There’s no reason to imagine that it will be any different than Y2K problems; the only obvious difference is that customers and end-users may be more vigilant in looking for such problems than they normally would. ”

and I’d like to add my voice to those disputing JQ’s assertion that Y2K was not a problem. I was involved in mitigation in a part of my organisation, and the one part of our organisation which refused to cooperate collapsed with several days of serious consequences on New Year’s Day. If banks, transport networks and powerplants had suffered the same problem as that part of my organisation, things would have been unpleasant. Not catastrophic, but worth the effort to avoid.

> that companies should be left to fix their AGW contributions
> themselves rather than the evil govt forcing them to. Just like
> they did for Y2K.

The SEC, auditors of public companies, and government purchasing agents who wrote Y2K certification requirements into purchase orders (among others) did not leave Y2K compliance to enlightened self-interest. Just as well given Mr. “Oracle” Greenspan’s recent comments on the limits of same.

Cranky

Oddly, Greenspan apparently worked as a programmer at some time around 1970 and he admitted that he had left code behind that would not work at the turn of the century under the assumption it would be replaced by that time – but he was aware it was still in production as of 1999.

are we agreeing with one another then?

I think I better go to bed!

This points up the likelihood that climate-change denial will persist even after a successful response to the problems of AGW. Only if we fail will the deniers be persuaded.

Krawk!

I expect better from this blog. Y2K was a very real problem, more real than most people understand. The fact that dire events didn’t take place and the sky fall was taken by nearly everyone as proof that the entire thing had been wildly sensationalized and blown all out of proportion. What should have been understood was that the potential problem was very real and that many very smart people worked very hard to make sure that it didn’t. And this started in the early to mid-nineties when some people working with the Social Security Administration were doing some routine scenario planning x years out and ran into 2000. They realized they had a problem and that if they did, quite a few other systems/structures might as well.

The most dangerous of these was the third leg of the nuclear deterrent triad, the Trident submarines. These operate on a fail-deadly rather than fail-safe mode. If they don’t receive the necessary signal every 24 hours, they launch. Game over. There was every reason to believe that this system might be subject to the same Y2K problem. It was barely talked about, but you can bet a good deal of time and brainpower were expended on it. But I guess it was all false alarm since we didn’t have a nuclear war (just the electoral equivalent of such a catastrophe that November).

Y2K is a lousy or useless analogy in its current misunderstood context.

The most dangerous of these was the third leg of the nuclear deterrent triad, the Trident submarines. These operate on a fail-deadly rather than fail-safe mode. If they don’t receive the necessary signal every 24 hours, they launch. Game over.

I am very suspicious of this story, on the basis that there hasn’t been a non-test nuclear explosion since WWII. There are so many reasons that communication signals could fail, aside from Y2K, that I am inclined to think that if anyone was operating nukes on a fail-deadly protocol by now we should have seen a really big mushroom cloud somewhere just because a rat chewed through the critical component at the same time as someone put a bulldozer through the backup system, or the controller slept in and forgot to turn the machine on, or something. One of my communications engineering lecturers was ex-US military, and he was as firm an adherent of Murphy’s law as any other professor at the engineering school.

I would like to add, I didn’t see much evidence of doomsday alarmism about Y2K in Australia. We knew it was a problem, and potentially nasty, but I don’t recall much discussion of fallout shelters and bottled water. Is this an American phenomenon?