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25 April 1998: Add Y2K news roundup
24 April 1998
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 16:33:20 +0200 (MET DST) Subject: Programmers flee Y2K problem -- and we're spooked too To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 07:27:10 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Programmers flee from Y2K problem -- and we're spooked too ******* http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0%2c1042%2c1929%2c00.html time.com The Netly News April 24, 1998 by Declan McCullagh, Lev Grossman and Steve Baldwin The most disturbing part of the Year 2000 thing is that the more you know about it, the more spooked you get. Recently we've been talking to programmers who are predicting -- and preparing for -- severe social problems when computers touch 1-1-00. And it's even giving steely, cold-blooded Team Netly the heebie-jeebies. Rick Cowles, who spent 17 years programming for electric utilities and should know enough to ignore the hype, is in fact quietly preparing for the worst. "I'm looking out for my family, doing an assessment of our needs as a family. Food stocks for a period of time. We already had a portable electric generator," he says. Cowles has decided not to head for the hills, though. He lives in rural New Jersey in a small town he hopes will be safe if a computer crash (or the threat of one) causes a run on the banks. But other people we respect have taken even more drastic steps. Paul Milne is a former commodities broker who moved to a 10-acre farm in the rolling hills of southern Virginia. He expects major cities to implode when transportation networks fail and food shortages arise. "I can live indefinitely -- completely self-sufficiently -- for the next 25 years," he says. (That would be, what, only five years if Team Netly suddenly came for a visit?) "The real danger is the unpreparedness of individuals. If every family had one year of food, you wouldn't have one tenth the problem. Hungry people will do desperate things." [...snip...]
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 11:10:02 -0400 To: cypherpunks@toad.com From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com> Subject: Re: Programmers flee Y2K problem -- and we're spooked too Didn't Hal Finney recently debunk Y2K apocalyptic millenarianism? Or is Y2K-mongering now competing with the elint industry for more domestic preparedness for techno-seancing, tap, tap, tap? Pray 00-00-00 unplugs the global Echelons.
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 10:58:44 -0800 To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net> Subject: Re: Programmers flee Y2K problem -- and we're spooked too At 7:10 AM -0800 4/24/98, John Young wrote: >Didn't Hal Finney recently debunk Y2K apocalyptic millenarianism? Do you mean didn't Hal _purport_ to debunk the significance? Or do you mean didn't Hal _actually_ debunk the significance? While I respect Hal's judgment in many areas, I also respect my own estimations and calculations of plausibility. I think the effects could be severe. On the bright side, if Gary North and others are right about the severe problems the IRS faces (and it is already overloaded with trying to keep up), the next two years could be quite exciting. Two points to make here: 1. Whatever one thought of the warnings discussed on the Cypherpunks list last September and October (cf. the "Preparing the remnant for other side..." thread), we are now 6-7 months closer to the deadline, a deadline which is unlike any other deadline in history. The IRS is _still_ doing "studies," though key personnel are leaving the IRS for greener pastures, possibly literally greener pastures. "Tick tock." 2. The Feds are caught in an awful squeeze. The more they pooh pooh the problem, to avoid panic, the less urgency there is to prepare. (A sobering point is that Asian banks and financial networks, including huge ones in Taiwan, Japan, etc., have not even begun to prepare, by their own admission. Maybe they assume Uncle Sam will ride in and fix their problems. Maybe the managers just plan to ensure their own safety and financial well-being. Whatever, Asia and much of the world is several years behind the U.S. And no, the fixes that a Citibank makes on its systems will not apply to Japanese banks. Obviously.) The other side of the squeeze is that to get the kind of urgency for this problem would require the kind of "fireside chat" that FDR was known for. But this would trigger the kind of financial panic that could be worse than the Y2K problem itself. (If this sounds like what Declan was saying, we have been talking about the Y2K problem for a while. And he interviewed me for his story. Others are saying the same thing about the squeeze the Feds face.) How bad is the problem itself? I believe we don't know which systems will have the biggest effect. It is possible that most systems will be fixed by mid-99, which is when the problem begins to seriously effect some systems (fiscal year 2000 typically starts July 1, 1999). But the ripple effect of the systems which _don't_ work could be quite large. How large? I don't know. But a prudent man has insurance against unexpected events, especially when the cost of such insurance is fairly low compared to his other assets. In particular, the following is what I think is the bare minimum everyone should have: -- a 3-week supply of food, water, and emergency light and (maybe) heat -- weapons, at least a handgun and, better, a 12-gauge shotgun and/or rifle -- mental preparedness for "hunkering down" for several weeks, maybe longer (more concretely, a checklist of things to have or to buy) This is the bare minimum level of insurance. If more people had just several days worth of food supplies, just simple things like canned goods and cereals and the like, we wouldn't see the constant spectacle of people standing in long lines waiting for Big Brother to distribute emergency food after earthquakes, floods, riots, and other such situations. An amazing number of people buy the food they plan to eat on the day they eat it, or eat exclusively at fast food places. They will be hungry and standing in lines for government or emergency aid handouts the day after a crisis happens. (I rode out the 1989 Loma Prieta quake here in my backyard...a 7.1 quake a few miles from my house. Power was out for 3 days. And yet even I was dumb enough to not have enough flashlight batteries, so I stood in long lines with the rest of the unprepareds to buy batteries, candles, and a little bit of food. Never again. Even today my community is cut off from natural gas by a large mudslide which ruptured two big pipelines near Salinas....70,000 homes and businesses are without heat, cooking gas, etc. Lots of hand-wringing. But anyone who prepared, who has a propane grill or suchlike, is OK. Me, I have a 500-gallon propane tank. And a generator, by the way. I'm unaffected.) This is not the oft-villified "survivalism," this is simple common sense. Or "preparedness." I don't know if the Y2K problem will trigger the effects Gary North describes, and Ed Yardeni describes, and others describe. But what I know is that if serious problems do happen, I'll just hunker down and not leave my place for several days or weeks. Ditto if I hear that a smallpox outbreak has occurred in LA or New York or some other city. Congregating with crowds is the worst thing one can do, for reasons of disease, violence, government relocation, etc. And contrary to oft-cited surivalist wisdom, in my opinion the dumbest thing one can do is put on a backpack (aka "a bug out bag") and head for the wilderness. Unless one is an accomplished camper or hunter or wilderness trekker, it's just plain dumb to leave the relative comfort (even without heat or power) of a defensible home or apartment for the chaos and cold and hunger of the mountains. And even accomplished campers and hunters are usually not prepared to live in the wilderness for weeks and weeks. And getting to the wilderness could be highly dangerous. Clogged highways, wrecks, martial law, etc. >Or is Y2K-mongering now competing with the elint industry for more >domestic preparedness for techno-seancing, tap, tap, tap? > >Pray 00-00-00 unplugs the global Echelons. Sorry, but your transmission became garbled. (Why is it that John Young's posts often start off fairly intelligible but usually end in some undecipherable series of obscure references and puns? I guess this is the Johnspeak we've come to appreciate, even if we ignore it.) --Tim May "The tree of liberty must be watered periodically with the blood of tyrants...." ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments.
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 11:58:09 -0700 To: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net From: Marshall Clow <mclow@owl.csusm.edu> Subject: Re: Programmers flee Y2K problem -- and we're spooked too At 11:58 AM -0700 4/24/98, Tim May wrote: >Two points to make here: > >1. Whatever one thought of the warnings discussed on the Cypherpunks list >last September and October (cf. the "Preparing the remnant for other >side..." thread), we are now 6-7 months closer to the deadline, a deadline >which is unlike any other deadline in history. The IRS is _still_ doing >"studies," though key personnel are leaving the IRS for greener pastures, >possibly literally greener pastures. I had a discussion with a friend (what! you have friends?!) last night who argued that the IRS's lack of preparedness was the direct result of the changes to the tax code last year, and he opined that this was deliberate. He blamed/congratulated Dick Armey for trying to destroy the IRS by keeping them so busy with the present, that they had no time to prepare for Y2K, or any other future events. He pointed out that the same thing could happen again this year. -- Marshall Marshall Clow Adobe Systems <mailto:mclow@mailhost2.csusm.edu> Warning: Objects in calendar are closer than they appear.
From: Eric Cordian <emc@wire.insync.net> Subject: Re: Programmers flee Y2K problem -- and we're spooked too To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 14:09:21 -0500 (CDT) Tim May writes: > 2. The Feds are caught in an awful squeeze. The more they pooh pooh the > problem, to avoid panic, the less urgency there is to prepare. (A sobering > point is that Asian banks and financial networks, including huge ones in > Taiwan, Japan, etc., have not even begun to prepare, by their own > admission. Maybe they assume Uncle Sam will ride in and fix their problems. > Maybe the managers just plan to ensure their own safety and financial > well-being. Whatever, Asia and much of the world is several years behind > the U.S. And no, the fixes that a Citibank makes on its systems will not > apply to Japanese banks. Obviously.) On one hand, Y2K is silly, trivial, unimportant, and not even an interesting computer science problem. On the other, the government is running hundreds of millions of lines of code written by people who are no longer employed by them, the source for which is either poorly documented or lost, on antique mainframes leased for a yearly cost of ten times their present value, managed by the braindead and the clueless. So obviously, they are fucked. After all, these are people who barely survive "my tape has a parity error" type problems, and who have to hire $1000 a day consultants when they want to do Julian dates. What we should be worrying about is that the Feds will arrange for more of our civil liberties to be sucked into the power vacuum the Y2K confusion will cause. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 13:58:49 -0800 To: Eric Cordian <emc@wire.insync.net>, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net> Subject: Re: Programmers flee Y2K problem -- and we're spooked too At 11:09 AM -0800 4/24/98, Eric Cordian wrote: >On one hand, Y2K is silly, trivial, unimportant, and not even an >interesting computer science problem. Yep, I agree it's both trivial and uninteresting as a technical problem, except perhaps for some ideas about code refactoring (e.g., the work done in rewriting large COBOL projects in modern langauges). >On the other, the government is running hundreds of millions of lines of >code written by people who are no longer employed by them, the source for >which is either poorly documented or lost, on antique mainframes leased >for a yearly cost of ten times their present value, managed by the >braindead and the clueless. > >So obviously, they are fucked. After all, these are people who barely >survive "my tape has a parity error" type problems, and who have to hire >$1000 a day consultants when they want to do Julian dates. Agreed. Some of the unexpected problems will be things like floods of service calls, tens of thousands of users reporting errors, and whatnot. Some companies already on the margin will be unable to handle the volume. This will all add to the sense of unease by Joe Sixpack, part of the ripple effect. ("Martha, maybe we'd better clear out our account down at the bank until this thing blows over.") >What we should be worrying about is that the Feds will arrange for more of >our civil liberties to be sucked into the power vacuum the Y2K confusion >will cause. One scare story I just don't buy is the notion that programmers will be "drafted" by the USG to work on Y2K fixes. Until the crisis actually hits, there will be no stomach for such a draconian, unconstitutional move. And after it hits, chaos will reign. Besides, drafting programmers would be like herding cats. I do agree that there are dangers of civil liberties being violated. Another reason I'm preparing to just ride it out for a few months on my hill. This won't stop them from coming to get me, should they wish to, but at least I won't get caught up in any actions down in the flatlands where the police are thick. (No, I don't think martial law is likely. A slight possibility, as in any widespread panic or disaster, but not likely. Still, a little preparation is cheap.) --Tim May "The tree of liberty must be watered periodically with the blood of tyrants...." ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments.
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 15:09:14 -0400 To: cypherpunks@toad.com From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com> Subject: Re: Programmers flee Y2K problem -- and we're spooked too Here's a Y2K contribution: Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 13:49:00 -0600 From: Jim Burnes <jim.burnes@ssds.com> To: John Young <jya@pipeline.com> Subject: Re: Would you like to archive something for me? Ok, here it is (the largest attachment I've done so far ;-) [See end] Here is the skinny.... IRS is going to award the contract for its Y2K remediation sometime in October, which is of course a joke. By most estimates they have on the order of 100million lines of code to fix, much of it flakey and undocumented. Any Autocoder programmers left? Anyway, the CIO of the IRS quit recently and this file (prime.pdf) was his plea for help before he left and bought gold or something. If you go to the IRS page that Gary North references this document is just plain gone. Its extremely telling if you look at the data flow diagrams for IRS administrative systems. Its so huge that a I had to zoom in 4 or 5 times before subsystem names started to resolve. I downloaded this when it was posted because after reading it I knew someone would eventually yank it. Jim PS: Some quick math: 100 million lines of code/1 million lines per year = 100 years to fix. 1 million lines per year is how fast the Social (in)Security Administration was able to fix their code and even they won't be compliant. ;-) Feel free to post this message (but not the attachment ;-) to cypherpunks. -- ---------- What Jim sent is the May 1997 IRS RFC which shows the stypefying complexity of the IRS computer octupus and daunting job of fixing Y2K. It is in PDF format, 1,259K in size: http://jya.com/prime.pdf ---------- The cause of bizarro endings is due to writing holding breath to assure short messages to please fast-glance Palm Piloters. Consider the last 2/3s as read to the silly end sigs for Lazy Boy broncos with nothing better to read, like Tim's blinking single liners for presenescent presbyopics.
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 14:40:12 -0800 To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net> Subject: Re: Programmers flee Y2K problem -- and we're spooked too At 11:09 AM -0800 4/24/98, John Young wrote: >Here's a Y2K contribution: > >Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 13:49:00 -0600 >From: Jim Burnes <jim.burnes@ssds.com> >IRS is going to award the contract for its Y2K remediation >sometime in October, which is of course a joke. By most >estimates they have on the order of 100million lines of >code to fix, much of it flakey and undocumented. Any >Autocoder programmers left? Anyway, the CIO of the >IRS quit recently and this file (prime.pdf) was his plea >for help before he left and bought gold or something. By the way, I'll go out on a limb and make a bold prediction: I predict that when October 1998 rolls around, no credible or acceptable bid to fix the IRS computer problems will be made. Companies like Computer Services Corporation, Boeing, IBM, EDS, etc. are presumably even now trying to scope out the size of this problem so they can make a bid that will cover their costs and give them a sizable profit. They will probably look at the 60 million lines of code, the unavailability of source code, the massive problems seen in all past efforts to modernize, their inability to hire tens of thousands of COBOL and Autocoeder and RPG programmers and get them up to speed, and then they'll look at the mere *months* they'll have to fix the problem. (The bids are due in October, the government picks the contractor(s) a few months later, and then the work begins. Except that the IRS Crunch hits July 1, 1999. This is why the announced deadline for completion is June 1, 1999. That leaves about 5 months to fix 60 million lines of code, replace aging mainframes or route around them, etc. As Dana Carvey Bush would put it "Not gonna happen.") Now, where is the successful bidder going to even get the warm bodies to _start_ the programming? Do the math. They can't plausibly raid from other companies for a mere 6-month effort (the job security in being a "Year 2000" expert is nil, espeially after the problem is either fixed or the shit hits the fan and entire systems are simply scrapped). They can't recruit NCGs. Hopeless. I'd guess that few companies want to put up with the massive headaches, and the villification if (when) they fail and the system grinds to a halt. There is not too much profit in most government contracts, and this one has mostly a lot of downside risks. Even lawsuits. Or if they do bid, they'll sandbag the bid with so many escape clauses that the government will consider it pointless to let them proceed. IMPLICATION: If this prediction is correct, then the balloon goes up not July 1, 1999, but many months earlier. Later this year, in fact, as I predicted in my quote that Declan used in his piece. I'll bet that the half dozen or so companies I mentioned, the ones known to be interested in bidding and having some threshold of resources, are on the verge of signalling to the "Y2K Czar" or his equivalent their decision *not* to make a final bid. This may be why some IRS folks are busy bailing out. They may already _know_ that it is hopeless to expect EDS or IBM to fix 60 million lines of code in less than 6 months. The actual Y2K problem has a Dirac delta function-like impulse spike at 1/1/2000, with a pre-spike at 7/1/99 and lesser spikes at other places, but the actual effects will be "smeared out," as financial markets discount ("take into account") the expected effects. Financial markets could start feeling the effects as soon as enough people realize the IRS problem just can't be fixed. --Tim May "The tree of liberty must be watered periodically with the blood of tyrants...." ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments.
Date: Sat, 25 Apr 1998 04:56:36 +0200 (MET DST) Subject: Y2K news roundup: Andy Grove warns it could get "ugly" To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net From: nobody@replay.com (Anonymous) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 22:50:40 -0400 (EDT) To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Y2K news roundup: Andy Grove warns it could get "ugly" ******** U.S. Urged to Speed Its Year 2000 Fix Intel's Grove Warns of 'Ugly' Situation By Mark Leibovich Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, April 24, 1998; Page F01 The federal government faces an "ugly" situation if it does not step up efforts to correct the year 2000 programming error in its agencies' computers, the head of the world's largest chipmaker said yesterday. Andrew S. Grove, chief executive of Intel Corp., gave an assessment far more pessimistic than is commonly heard from Silicon Valley executives. Congress should convene weekly hearings with each branch of government, he said, to discuss how they are attacking the problem, which threatens to drive computers haywire when the 1990s end. By the end of this year, he said, each agency should have to have a plan in place to deal with the problem; in 1999, as the critical year approaches, their systems should be thoroughly tested. If this is not done, Grove said, the government has "no chance" of any meaningful compliance. ******** [no url] Gartner claims millennium panic will soon grip users Gartner Group year 2000 expert Andy Kite warned yesterday that millennium bug panic will spread through European businesses and public sector organisations in the next few months. Speaking at the Gartner Predicts event in Paris, he said that despite reassurances from Government organisations and the public sector, these areas have still not begun to tackle the problem properly. "Year 2000 is not a future event - there are computer systems that are failing already. The big event will be the beginning of January 1999 when we will see a great deal more systems failing - public sector in particular. I'm flabbergasted at their lack of action. When they do wake up, the panic will be heard through the whole industry." ******* http://www.auto.com/industry/qbug23.htm Big 3 fight 2000 bug in forced upgrade Suppliers' computers a worry to carmakers April 23, 1998 BY RACHEL KONRAD Detroit Free Press Automotive Writer Thank heavens it was a test. Only a test. When Chrysler Corp. shut down its Sterling Heights Assembly Plant last year and turned all the plant's clocks to Dec. 31, 1999, executives were expecting to find computer glitches associated with the date change from 1999 to 2000. But they weren't expecting quite so many glitches. "We got lots of surprises," said Chrysler Chairman Robert Eaton. "Nobody could get out of the plant. The security system absolutely shut down and wouldn't let anybody in or out. And you obviously couldn't have paid people, because the time-clock systems didn't work." Executives at General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and thousands of parts suppliers have similar horror stories. ******** www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1998/0420/web-labor-4-21-1998.html APRIL 21, 1998 . . . 14:50 EDT The Labor Department's benefits programs are at risk because resource problems may hinder the department's efforts to fix computers for the Year 2000 problem, the inspector general said today. Testifying before the House appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, Charles Masten said Labor's Year 2000 activities "have been limited by resource constraints." According to Masten, Labor has not made significant progress since its February report to the Office of Management and Budget, which identified only 13 of its 61 mission-critical systems as Year 2000-compliant, and he was concerned about the potential impact the inadequate progress may have on the department's ability to provide services beyond 1999. ******* www.independent.co.uk One firm in eight fails to tackle the 2000 bug By Charles Arthur, Science and Technology Editor ONE in eight British businesses has taken no action to tackle the computer "millennium bug", and almost all have no intention of doing so - despite the fact that another one in ten companies is already experiencing problems caused by it. The indifference "beggars belief" according to Don Cruickshank, head of the Government's Action 2000 group, which aims to help firms tackle the problem. Yet it is widespread among small farms and agricultural distributors - where one-third of companies are doing nothing - followed by builders and trucking firms. By comparison, many hospitals are planning to double their staff over the millennium evening and to have spare resources if the failures predicted by some observers - such as air-conditioning and electricity - occur. "That's not like the contingency plan for other major incidents, because you don't know when those are going to arrive," said Mr Cruickshank. ********** http://www.theage.com.au/daily/980418/bus/bus11.html Time runs out for Canberra on millennium bug By ROBERT GOTTLIEBSEN Is it possible that chief executives like Frank Blount, Don Argus, Bob Joss, John McFarlane, James Strong and David Murray have all made a hideous error and unnecessarily burnt up billions of dollars in shareholders' money? Certainly in Canberra they are doing the sums differently. Blount is spending $500 million of Telstra's money fixing the year 2000 computer problem, the banks are spending between $60 million and $250 million, and Qantas is spending $120 million. The Federal Government has made new allocations of $127 million, and departments are spending an additional $470 million from budgeted allocations. Yet the Government seems to have a much bigger year 2000 problem than any of our large companies. No one will go on the record but, privately, some of Australia's leading managing directors who have committed big sums now believe it is too late for Canberra to solve its problem even if it was prepared to spend a billion or two. ******