Re: *ping*

["Seanna Watson" <seanna@nortelnetworks.com>]

In message "Re: *ping*", 
"Lee Ann Goldstein" <leeann@rand.org> writes:

>
>--Your message was: (from Mike Knell)
>> 
>> What the lack of major Y2K problems worldwide means, of course, is that 
>> the lower-wattage sections of society are now asking why we wasted all
>> this money on this non-existent Y2K bug, only to have nothing happen
>

Heard tonight on the CBC (Canada) news that some high-profile US
lawyers (!) were suggesting that since nothing happened, perhaps it
was all hype.  I think people are having difficulty distinguishing
between the survival preparedness (for which you end up with a
basement full of bottled water and canned food which you need to
unload), and the software preparedness (for which you end up with
computers full of fixed software).

>Just tell them that it was a non-event because the geeks saved the world.
>
I have been telling laypersons for sometime that the computer folks
were hoping that January 1, 2000 would go down as the biggest non-event
in recent history.  Unfortunately, the argument that the geeks saved 
the world, though true, sounds too much like the joke about the 
statue that the homeowners put on the front lawn to protect their
property from marauding elephants.  ("But there aren't any
elephants around here." "See, it works!")

=======================
Seanna Watson
Nortel Networks
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada