From Contest #15
And Now, On To This Contest's Candidates (the official list, in no particular order):
A very popular submission...
Don Heath, president of the Virginia-based
Internet Society: "It's just not going to happen ... The whole Y2K
thing is an absolute yawn. I am so unconcerned about it that it's hard to
build a fire under me at all."
We guess the recent fire in the Toronto switching station and
the MCI/Worldcom frame relay problems didn't impress him much either. They
did, however, have a rather nasty effect on parts of the net. Quoted on USA
Today Experts:
Major Y2K Net failures unlikely August 17, 1999. Submitted first
by Linda Fitzpatrick.
Stupid Patents (yes, we said patents)
If you've fixed your Y2k
problem, you may now owe someone money...
"Dates stored in symbolic form in a database are reformatted to permit
easy manipulation and sorting of date-related information. Each date in
M.sub.1 M.sub.2, D.sub.1 D.sub.2, and Y.sub.1 Y.sub.2 format is converted to
C.sub.1 C.sub.2, Y.sub.1 Y.sub.2, M.sub.1 M.sub.2, and D.sub.1 D.sub.2
format. To accomplish the conversion, a 10-decade window starting on Y.sub.A
Y.sub.B is defined that encompasses all dates in the database. The value of
C.sub.1 C.sub.2 is determined by the relative values of Y.sub.1 Y.sub.2 and
Y.sub.A Y.sub.B. The reformatted date information is particularly useful
when the reformatting is in C.sub.1 C.sub.2 Y.sub.1 Y.sub.2 M.sub.1 M.sub.2
D.sub.1 D.sub.2 format, because sorting by date is accomplished using a pure
numerical-value sort."
That's "date expansion" from MMDDYY to YYYYMMDD for those of you unfamiliar
with patent-ese. Now which is more stupid: that someone paid good money to
patent this, or that some numbskull from the patent office granted it? Quoted on the US Patent and
Trademark Office website for Date
formatting and sorting for dates spanning the turn of the century.
Submitted by Bruce Webster.
Not stupid, but still funny...
Check out the *unofficial* Y2k compliance web site for Hart
Scientific. Kudos to a company with a sense of
humor.
Submitted by Lynn McQueen.
Pick one...
A: "FAA Is 100 Percent Y2K Compliant!!!"
B: "The FAA makes no claims, promises or guarantees about the
accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the contents of this web site and
expressly disclaims liability for errors and omissions in the contents of
this web site."
In either case, we suppose they can say "we told you
so." From the FAA's official web
site and the disclaimer page at
the bottom. Submitted by Brent Morrow.
The American Bankers
Association is at it again...
"Amid doomsayers' claims that power grids will shut down and
automated teller machines malfunction when the calendar turns to Jan. 1,
the trade group has written a sermon aimed at easing fears about the Y2K
bug. " <snip> "Drawing comparisons with Orson Welles'
famous "War of the Worlds" broadcast in 1938, the sermon urges
consumers to "get the full story" before going out and buying a
year's worth of groceries or burying "your money in the
backyard." Though it does not promise that there will be no glitches,
the text tries to reassure consumers that government and industry -
particularly banking - are ready for the millennial change."
Used to be you would get a toaster when you opened a new
account. Now you get a free sermon instead! Quoted on The
American Banker Online ABA
Tries to Enlist Preachers to Calm Y2K Fears August 11, 1999.
Submitted by Christine Greenwald.
and
"We're not trying to be rabid about this," [ABA]
spokeswoman Charlotte Ford Birch says. But
"a bank run is not like a run on Beanie Babies or Tickle Me
Elmo."
No kidding! Some of those soccer moms can be just downright
*vicious*! Quoted on the Wall Street Journal (requires registration)
As
Century Closes, Some Banks Struggle With Insufficient Fun August 17,
1999. Submitted by Patrick Shannon.
Intel CEO Craig Barrett on the Y2k problem:
"It's been hugely popularized by the press because the press likes
chaos and crises to write about ... There may well be some impact in
obscure places in the world, which have essentially zero impact on the
world economy-it's going to be a nonevent for us."
Really? It was our impression that the press was
usually blaming short-sighted programmers for the problem. Quoted on
Information Week IT
Confidential July 26, 1999. Submitted first by Christine
Greenwald.
Cathy Minehan,
president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston: "No one can give
1,000 percent guarantees of anything ... But we're beginning to start
feeling as confident about our systems now as we want to be at the start
of the year."
It's good that they aren't giving us a 1000%
guarantee. After all, isn't "being behind someone 1000%" a
euphemism for "about to be fired?" Quoted on The Boston
Globe Firms
seen ready for Y2K July 25, 1999. Submitted by Christine
Greenwald.
Admiral Richard Mies,
commander of U.S. Strategic Command, on the Y2k readiness of other
countries with nuclear weapons: "Certainly I have concerns, but to
some degree we've tried to reassure ourselves and we've tried to gain
assurances from those countries that they are addressing the Y2K problem,
and so to a certain degree our confidence is limited by the amount of
assurances we have gotten."
Huh? Never mind reassuring yourself, reassure us
please! Quoted on AP Nuclear
Weapons Computers Y2K Ready July 22, 1999. Submitted first by
Bruce Webster.
An unnamed FBI agent,
commenting on the FBI's plans to cancel vacations and leave over the Y2k
rollover period: "It's a mess ... They're very much behind. If it was
a 72 hour 'snowstorm,' you wouldn't bring out 12,000 FBI agents on
stand-by and, for the first time maybe in FBI history, cancel everybody's
annual leave for a 20-30 day time frame. That's very significant. In my
line of work, that's called a clue."
I'd like to buy a clue for $200 Pat. Quoted on
WorldNetDaily FBI
cancels leaves for Y2K July 8, 1999. Submitted by Dan Oas.
Stupid Politicians
Senator Phil Gramm,
R-TX, from the question-and-answer session after the second leg of Federal
Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's semiannual Humphrey-Hawkins testimony
before the Senate Banking Committee: "Well it seems to me we ought to
be encouraged that in the year 1000 they had to add a new digit, and you
had no evidence of economic disruption. And then the millennium before, we
had dates going down, and then they started going up, and yet no evidence
of disruption or chaos in the economy, so if they could do it then, surely
we could deal with it now, it seems to me."
It seems to us that he was probably kidding, but we would
have loved to have seen the look on Sen. Bennett's face regardless.
Quoted on Reuters GREENSPAN
Q&A: PART X: Tax cuts, Y2K July 28, 1999. Submitted first by
Dave Pennington.
Y2K Readiness Commission Chairman Basil
Logan, on the selection of "Ken the Cockroach" as the official
mascot for the millennium bug in New Zealand: "Love them or hate
them, I think he (Ken the cockroach) will be noticed and memorable."
Love them?? Quoted on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Online New
Zealand Unveils Y2K Cockroach July 22, 1999. Submitted by Linda
Fitzpatrick.
Johnson County Iowa County Supervisor
Charles Duffy: "If this happens, it'll be the biggest goof-up in the
history of the United States ... The moral to this story is to just not
buy a computer."
An alternate moral: don't elect people who think that
computers are the problem. And a special honorable mention for
stupidity for planning a Y2k test on a possible failure date
(9/9/99)...come on, folks, no one tests the tornado sirens in the middle
of a storm! Quoted on the Cedar Rapids Gazette Online Board
bracing for Y2K Sept. 9 July 7, 1999. Submitted first by
Christine Greenwald.
And now the the unofficial list:
all those other entries whose sources couldn't be verified, but we liked anyway
Something to put your Y2Koffee or Y2Koke
in, we presume:
Found at Schlotzsky's Deli.
Funny name: silly promotion. Spotted by Heather Westerfield.
Stupid E-Mail
No URL on this, but apparently this e-mail has been making the rounds:
|
By the way, there are lots of Windows fixes out there for Y2k problems. This is not one of them. Submitted by Jennifer Plant (who was the recipient of the stupid e-mail, not the sender).
These words came out of my father's mouth
this weekend....I am NOT joking....
"So when is this Year 2000 problem supposed to happen anyway?"
That's one of those questions that could be either very
intelligent or very dumb. Submitted by Jason Ferris.
I have one for your "unofficial"
list. We are a company that outsources to Microsoft - taking customer
calls on some of their products. In a meeting a few weeks ago we went over
our testing and the results of our third party compliance verification
with various representatives from Microsoft. The representatives came with
a list of questions they felt had not been addressed. At the top of their
list was, what were we going to do in the event US West Communications
(which supplies phone service to many Western States including the one our
call center was in as well as Microsoft's Corporate headquarters. Our
Telecommunications Director said, "Well, basically the same thing you
are - we will sit here and wait for them to turn the phones back on."
Then they proceeded to question #2, what were we going to do if AT&T
Communications failed? Our director again replied to that one, "Well,
if AT&T is down, there is no God. That basically means there is no
national communication system whatsoever since MCI Sprint and everyone
else relies heavily on AT&T. My personal plan at that point would be
to go home, build a fire and start killing small animals."
Submitted, as one might expect, anonymously.