If Italy's So Far Behind, Why Hasn't It Crashed Yet??

Assumptions:

1. This is a rational forum. Readers of posts are more interested in cold, hard facts than emotions.

2. There is agreement on one fact: Italy started its remediations late--in March or so of 1999, if news reports are correct.

3. Granted, Italy started way later on its remediation than the US, or most other countries. But there have been no reports yet of major crashes occurring in Italy.

First set of Premises:

A. Y2K will be a disaster for those systems which have unremediated code that cannot properly handle calculations involving dates in 2000 and beyond.

B. Nearly all, if not all, legacy systems in operation before remediation started cannot properly handle calculations involving dates in 2000 and beyond.

First Conclusion:

C. Y2K will be a disaster for nearly all, if not all, legacy systems that have unremediated code.

Second Set of Premises:

D. Italy had, as of March 1999, many unremediated legacy systems.

E. It takes more than seven or eight months, once one gets started on remediation, to remediate most legacy systems.

Second Conclusion:

F. Italy cannot have remediated all of its legacy systems by November 30, 1999.

Third Set of Premises:

G. Legacy systems operating in 1999 and used in business (hereinafter: "business legacy systems") must also deal, as a matter of routine, with dates in 2000 (and perhaps beyond), because of fiscal year classifications, projections, and comparisons.

H. There is no instant workaround (i.e., some procedure short of remediation) known which would permit unremediated business legacy systems still operating in 1999 to handle calculations involving dates in 2000 or beyond.

Third Conclusion:

I. Most, if not all, of Italy's unremediated business legacy systems should have crashed by now.

Now, rerun the same assumptions, premises and conclusions, but substitute the acronym "PC" for the word "legacy", where "PC" means "IBM or compatible desktops running DOS, Windows 3.X, or Windows 9X (except only Windows 98, Second Edition)." The only premise that changes is E. Change it to read: "Most people will wait until the end of 1999 to remediate their unremediated PC's once they know (a) they must do it before 2000, and (b) what they have to do, and where they have to go, to download the necessary updates to BIOS, OS and applications." The conclusions remain the same.

Paradox:

The foregoing Assumptions, Premises and Conclusions imply that there should have been many reports of business failures in Italy by now. Yet there have been none. What is wrong here?

Analysis:

Either one (or more) of the Assumptions, or the Premises, must be wrong. (The Conclusions follow inescapably from the Premises.) Most likely candidates: either Premise A or Premises G and H.

If Premise A is wrong, the Doomers can pack up and go home. But if Premise G or H is wrong, the Doomers' assumptions and premises have not yet been fairly tested, either in Italy, or in the United States, or in any other country where remediation is not yet complete (i.e., all countries). At this moment, it is not possible to discard A, G, or H on the basis of any hard evidence. The lack of reported crashes to date in Italy could be cited as evidence that A is false, or that that G and/or H is false. It is also possible under the evidence observed to date, however, that both A and G, or A and H, or A, G and H, are false. Consequently, no one will know until after December 31, 1999 whether Premise A is wrong.

Final Conclusion:

It is not logically possible to argue from the lack of failures in the United States in 1999 to date either that Y2K will be inconsequential or that it will be catastrophic. Either further data is needed to refine operating premises, or the century rollover itself must actually occur, before any viable conclusions can be drawn from the lack of documented failures to the present moment.

-- Socrates (socrates@athens.net), November 29, 1999

Answers

Excellent points! Have not read ANY IT comp. media reports from Italy so cannot draw conclusions. No point turning polly with 790 hours left, so I'll stay a doomer just a few months longer (JIC Just in case the JIT don't work too well).

Pasta in my preps, sauce in jars, olives and olive oil too.

If your observation is correct, then I have spent WAY too much time worrying, wondering and wishing for that lovely Italian girl to come my way.

-- dw (y2k@outhere.com), November 29, 1999.

Premises G and H have flaws. It's sometimes possible to postpone using 2000 dates. See the following thread that has info about Washington D.C. and other state unemployment insurance systems:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00122f

D.C.'s unemployment insurance system would have started encountering 2000 dates in January of 1999 if it had not been patched. It's been working so far this year, even though it won't be Y2K ready until the end of this year.

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), November 29, 1999.

Well Kevin, it sounds like you are getting pretty good at debunking your own posts....good for you! We thought that music brain of yours would eventually figure this y2khype out.

See, the Gov program isn't compliant...but they patched it...and....it works!

Whaddayaknowaboutthat!

How many other programs can have the same thing done to them?

-- Long Time Lurker (lurkey@turkey.gov), November 29, 1999.

http://www.fco.gov.uk/travel/dynpage.asp?Page=185

Italy Issued: 14/09/99

The following information has been collated by the British Embassy, Rome, on the basis of information currently available locally. No guarantee is given as to its accuracy and no liability can be accepted in respect of any actions taken, or omitted to the taken, on the basis of the following information.

GENERAL

Following recommendations by the Italian Y2000 Committee, the Italian Government has formed a crisis management group and a restricted Ministerial group, composed of the Ministers of Home Affairs, Defence, Telecommunications, Health and the Treasury, responsible for handling the Millennium Bug problem. The Y2000 Committee has also been reinforced with scientific and technical staff.

In July 1999 Prof Augusto Leggio was appointed Technical Director by the Italian Government. His main task has been to set up a sub-group dealing with the coordination and implementation of integrated emergency plans. The "Prefetture" (offices representing the government located in the main cities of each region) who already have the responsibility for emergency services and civil protection in the provinces, have been given the task of ensuring Y2000 preparedness. By 1 October all institutions and companies providing vital services are obliged to submit their contingency plans to the Prefetture. The evaluation of risks resulting from the state of readiness of these plans must then be forwarded to the Technical Director by 15 October for submission to the Cabinet.

ENERGY

Electricity

The main public sector electric power company, ENEL, has said that all areas of its operation will be Y2000 compliant by Autumn 1999. As of March 1999 80% of sub-stations, transmission centres and communications systems had been tested. Because of the complexity of the network, the operators expect some minor problems, but do not believe that in themselves these would cause a major breakdown in the supply of electricity.

Oil & Gas

The ENI Group (the main Italian oil and gas producer) expects all compliance projects within Italy to be completed by September 1999. There are, however, some concerns over the supply of gas over which the Italians have little control. Much of Italy's gas is piped from Algeria or Russia. ENI believes that supplies from Algeria will continue. However, there is little hard information about supplies from Russia.

Nuclear

There are no nuclear power plants in operation in Italy.

WATER

Water companies are still in the public sector. The large water companies have said that their systems are Y2000 compliant. There is little information on the readiness of the smaller companies controlled by municipal authorities. Some of the functions in these smaller water/sewage works can revert to manual operation if required.

COMMUNICATIONS

50% of Telecom Italia's systems are mission-critical. They hope to complete all testing by September 1999. Interoperability tests have been undertaken with the Inter Carrier Testing Work Group and Telecom Italia will run continuity of service tests with MCI WorldCom in September 1999. A contingency plan for mission-critical systems will be presented to the Y2K Committee in September and will be completed by December 1999. The main cell/mobile telephone companies have said that all their equipment is fully prepared.

The Italian Post Office has guaranteed continuity of service. Final checks in the areas of electronic communication and internal services will not be completed until November 1999.

TRANSPORT

Air

Alitalia has been working on Y2000 preparedness since 1997 with the relevant international aviation bodies. Its compliancy programme will be finalised in October 1999. The main Italian airports (Milan Linate and Malpensa, Rome Fiumicino, and Naples) have said that all essential systems will be compliant by autumn 1999. It has been difficult to obtain information on the small regional airports. However, the Association of Italian Flight Controllers says that all airports will be compliant by November 1999.

Ports

The main Italian ports, particularly the container ports, claim they are now compliant or will be compliant by September 1999. There is less information available on the readiness of smaller ports.

Rail

The national railway's work on compliancy started in May 1998 and is expected to end on 30 October 1999. A final statement on conformity will issue in November 1999.

FINANCE

The Bank of Italy and the Italian Banking Association have coordinated and supervised work on Y2000 compliance within the banking sector, most of which was undertaken at the time when they were preparing for the introduction of the Euro. The main banks and financial institutions have said that there will be no problems on 1 January 2000. The 31 different types of Bancomat (automatic cash tellers) in use in Italy have been tested and all are compliant. However, there is little information on the position in the smaller banks.

The central systems of the Italian Stock Exchange are compliant, but tests are still being undertaken with intermediaries.

HEALTH

Information dissemination within the health sector is particularly difficult because of the way it is organised - regional health authorities have considerable autonomy. Some individual hospitals have set up their own system of checks.

GOVERNMENT

AIPA (the Government Department providing IT in public administration) started to monitor the state of government preparedness in 1998. Data provided in March 1999 showed that 8 administrations expected disruptions. There is concern that there is a general lack of awareness and under-evaluation of the problem by public administration at local level, especially in the central and southern regions of Italy.

INDUSTRY

Most large companies are entering the final stages of compliancy. A Confindustria (CBI equivalent) survey has shown that nearly 100% of companies with over 250 employees say they are either compliant or have preparations in hand. Smaller companies are much less aware of the Y2K problem (in a recent survey of SMEs 66% knew of the problem but only 26% were taking action). A survey of 7,300 small companies suggests that in March 1999 42.6% were not compliant.

THE MILLIENNIUM JUBILEE YEAR IN ROME

Over twenty million additional tourists are expected to visit Rome during 2000 to celebrate the Catholic Jubilee Year. The combination of this upsurge of visitors and the Y2K problem is likely to cause some disruption for people visiting Rome in early 2000. ATAC-COTRAL (the agency responsible for bus, tram and rail transport in Rome and region of Lazio) started its Y2K programme in early 1998. All testing will have been completed by 30 June and all operations are expected to be Y2K compliant by early October. The Rome Jubilee Committee has recently started to focus on Y2K.

-- Helpful (about@Italy.Y2K), November 29, 1999.

The foregoing Assumptions, Premises and Conclusions imply that there should have been many reports of business failures in Italy by now. Yet there have been none. What is wrong here?

Besides the temporarily postponing of the use of 2000 dates, there's another point that needs to be made. Errors in accounting software organized on a fiscal year basis, or errors in financial forecasting software is not an automatic death sentence for a business. What's mostly to cause a business to quickly fail would be problems in either distribution or manufacturing processes.

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), November 29, 1999.

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00122f

[snip]

Some states that have not solved their Y2K problems will use a simple temporary fix, such as ending all benefit years on Dec. 31, 1999, while other states will use different techniques that essentially trick the computers so they will perform accurate date calculations, officials said.

If the computers are still not ready to operate on Jan. 1, 2000, states then will rely on emergency backup plans, including the writing of benefit checks by hand, officials said.

[snip]

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), November 29, 1999.

http://195.92.149.132/new/

November 12, 1999

ITALY

Electricity - The main public sector electric power company, ENEL, said that all areas of its operation would be compliant by Autumn 1999. As of March 1999 80% of sub-stations, transmission centres and communications systems had been tested. Because of the complexity of the network, the operators expect some minor problems, but do not believe that in themselves these would cause a major breakdown in the supply of electricity.

Telecomms - Telecom Italia aimed to complete all testing by September. Interoperability tests have been undertaken with the Inter Carrier Testing Work Group and Telecom Italia ran continuity of service tests with MCI WorldCom in September. A contingency plan for mission-critical systems is to be completed by December. The main cell/mobile telephone companies have said that all their equipment is fully prepared. Although the Italian Post Office has guaranteed continuity of service, final checks in the areas of electronic communication and internal services will not be completed until November 1999.

Air - Italian Air Traffic Control is ready for Y2K, ENAV, the company in charge of Italian air traffic services said on 9th November

Oil & Gas - The ENI Group (the main Italian oil and gas producer) expects all compliance projects within Italy to be completed by September 1999. ENI has stored gas that, when added to its domestic output, would allow the company to meet its supply commitments for 4 - 6 months without any imports. ENI spent some $300m on Y2K efforts including promoting the same standards at third-party suppliers and contingency planning.

-- More (on@Italy.Y2k), November 29, 1999.

Italian currency amounts are "telephone numbers" anyway, so who would be able to tell if they are right or wrong?

-- Y2KGardener (govegan@aloha.net), November 29, 1999.

ROTFLMAO!!

Where have you been? Italy is one big CONSTANT failure, bub! Nothing works right here.....If you had been monitoring the Italian posts, you'd know that. I live here...I learned that shortly after I arrived.

Lesson one:

There are two Italys...the northern one is more like Europe...it works...usually.

The southern Italy rarely works and uses few if any computers...

Northern Italians think Southern Italian are lazy and incompetent and Southern Italians think Northern Italians are NOT Italian and are elitists.

They all think they are descended from the noble Romans...in fact, most are not. If they had managed to retain a modicum of that heritage, something would work. The acqueducts in Britain at Bath still work...my plumbing, electric, sewer, etc... DO NOT! However, they can really decorate nicely and do wonderful things with marble.

Lesson two:

Nothing in Italy is fixed until it breaks. Regardless of what you read, I do not for a moment believe that they have tested a darn thing and neither does their Y2K Czar...However, they are saying they are ready...makes one suspect others who say they are compliant too, now doesn't it? There is NO external verification and it is the national pastime here to say everything is AOK....Nothing is ever broken, until it is broken for some time and causing somebody major problems.

Lesson Three:

The Italian are the greatest folks in the world at "workarounds"...if those gas pumps stop working, they will rip the covers off and pump the gas out by hand...environmental pollution...? No problem...we got your gas for you...now shaddup! They will not have a dozen lawyers around them telling what they can and cannot do here if things break down, they will "make it work"....somehow....hence, no problems.

Relax, things never make the press here unless it is a scandal or juicy gossip. We all know that the planes are ok (at the moment) and so is most of the infrastructure (temporarily). Why do so many folks think this should be a reason to quit preparing and throw the baby out with the bathwater....last time I checked, it was called the Y2K bug, not the December 1999 bug....Give it time before you throw in the towel. The date change hasn't occurred and they have been fixing the things that break due to Y2K (few if any at this point) along with the things that break due to poor Italian fabrication (humongous number and growing) all the time.

In short, I doubt that you will hear much of anything in the news. The Italians, correction MOST OF THE WORLD, do NOT brag about their problems like the United States does. That is why we are perceived as a dangerous place to live, filled to the brim and overflowing with racial riots and tensions, cultist nuts, and militant militia. CNN broadcasts our problems (which we know are few comparatively, which is why they are news in the first place) all over the world 24 hours a day...repeating and repeating and repeating....Accordingly, we are a basket case internationally to most folks.

Quit looking for failures over here...You probably won't even hear about it except from the Americans and foreigners living here. It is the Americans that fill our ears full of conspiracy theories, looting, mayhem, etc....

I am an American living overseas. I have been overseas for 6 1/2 years now. Stop expecting the rest of the world to behave as you do. It doesn't.

Your logical analysis places you in an ivory tower. You believe what you read...Want to really be logical? Move to Italy and look out your window. The world is VERY different from here. Sorry to shatter your illusions.

I know you don't want to believe it..That is of course your choice. Before I lived overseas, I didn't want to believe it either. But there you have it. The world is not the same all over. The news is not reported the same, interpreted the same, or given the same respect and freedoms in America...nor is business, religion, or anything else.. You'd be very, VERY suprised.

Everything is "va bene"...."don't worry"....and of course the ever present...."slowly, slowly"... The world is much slower here. They will still have magnificent gardens, food growing from trees everywhere, olive oil in abundance, pasta and bread to die for. They might not even notice if Y2K breaks down something...they routinely strike every December and August...the trains stop all together. You think they'll notice the bug? Think again...It's all routine here. They are used to it...why report it?

-- Ynott (Ynott@incorruptible.com), November 29, 1999.

Virtually all the Y2K problems that occur before 2000 are financial and accounting programs, which can be worked around or fixed in one way or another. The real Y2K glitches won't happen until January through March or so of 2000; they involved manufacturing, distribution, shipping, raw materials, etc., and this is the true danger of Y2K. Think oil.

-- cody (cody@y2ksurvive.com), November 29, 1999.

Kev

Besides the temporarily postponing of the use of 2000 dates, there's another point that needs to be made. Errors in accounting software organized on a fiscal year basis, or errors in financial forecasting software is not an automatic death sentence for a business. What's mostly to cause a business to quickly fail would be problems in either distribution or manufacturing processes.

Maybe things have changed. It's been over 10 years since I participated in a Disaster Recovery study, but at the time, the conclusion was almost the exact opposite; cash flow applications, such as receivables and payables, were the applications most likely to take down a company in the shortest time.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), November 29, 1999.

Financial forecasting systems are looking into 2000 (or trying unsuccessfully) and have been for some time. Whether they are working or not has no impact on accounts receivable and accounts payable, which deal with present and past dates. Whether they are working or not may have affected some planning decisions already made, but they should not have caused a significant number of concrete problems. We won't know about receivables and payables in Italy or anywhere else until January and beyond.

I hope the real winners turn out to be those who did next to nothing, such as many organizations in Italy. In that case, premise A will have turned out to be wrong. I'm not counting on it.

-- Bill Byars (billbyars@softwaresmith.com), November 29, 1999.

Don't know about you, Bill, but every receivable and payable system I've worked with involved processing of a due date.

Whether a Customer or Vendor Invoice, a due date is entered or calculated based on the terms. For example, posting a Vendor invoice on Nov 15th with terms of Net 60 would calculate a due date in the year 2000.

Payment runs are made against the due date. The same with Billing. Calculations of interest, etc., are again made against the due date.

In a sense you're correct; payables and receivables should only be dealing with current and past dates. But that assumes the systems are correctly calculating, storing and processing due dates in the year 2000.

Terms vary from company to company. But some fairly standard terms are Net 90, Net 60 and Net 30. Which is why I think Gartner's estimates escalated at the beginning of October.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), November 29, 1999.

Hoffmeister, I hope all these systems are processing the due dates wonderfully. Not being a programmer, I want to avoid saying anything incredibly stupid, but it seems to me it would be fairly easy to change a net 60 to a net 30 or even a net less than 30, to keep things running. If not, are there other tricks that are fairly easy to use that steer around year 2000 dates for the moment? I know IT people are crafty.

-- Bill Byars (billbyars@softwaresmith.com), November 29, 1999.

I recall a post from this forum from a few weeks ago stating that the International Airport in Rome had run out of jet fuel due to a distribution problem; there was speculation that it was Y2K related but no definitive word.

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), November 29, 1999.

Bill Byars

Well, working around problems is far different than not having them to begin with.

That aside, even work-arounds generate their own problems. Especially on the Customer side. Sending Invoices to customers that have negotiated terms into the year 2000, that show due dates in December, is an example.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), November 29, 1999.

In smaller systems no due dates are recorded, most other systems used in midsized co's are using windowing logic => consequence: 99% of the system is fine while the unexpected can only be seen in 1900 when your MRP or CRP quits due to a small bug which have gone unnoticed. I'm working as a project manager for ERP system implementations for a couple of years know so knowing well about date sensivity of these kind of systems.

Typically big co's, in Italy too, have tested their legacy systems by time travelling. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT WORKS RELIABLE BECAUSE KNOW ONE CAN TEST EVERYTHING AND only few OF THESE TIME TRAVELLS have been made together with interfaces to customers/suppiers systems.

Please see as well my recent post "paging for STFrancis where you can find an analyses by Gartner Group which comes to no good conclusions.

-- Rainbow (Rainbow@123easy.net), November 29, 1999.

Hoffmeister,

You are, so to speak, comparing apples with oranges. The person who started this thread was wondering about the effect of "fiscal year classifications, projections, and comparisons" (the Jo Anne Effect) on Italy. The Jo Anne Effect has been talked about the most in connection with April 1st, July 1st and October 1st.

Cash flow problems in connection with receivables or payables is not quite the same issue. If it's true that Net 30 is the most common terms for billing, then most problems that could impact cash flow would still be ahead us and not behind us. The Jo Anne Effect wouldn't be as noticeable to those outside of an organization as problems in billing and distribution would be.

More on the "Jo Anne Effect" can be found at:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00122f

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), November 29, 1999.

Here's the flaw:

< I. Most, if not all, of Italy's unremediated business legacy systems should have crashed by now. >>

This is absolutely incorrect. In fact, your "conclusion," as seen in practice here in the US and UK where systems have been remediated, is completely false logically as well: you are actually stating a premis, because this is a fact verifiable ahead of the rollover date.

.......

Correct Premis:

NON-REMEDIATED systems and programs will continue working correctly - AND WILL COST THE COMPANY OR GOVERNMENT NOTHING - UNTIL THE ROLLOVER DATE..

.....

The ONLY failures here (in the US and UK) on systems have been those that either failed during testing of the remediation solutions, or fialed due to inadequate time to properly replace the systems and train the new operators.

Correctly put, there have been NO y2k-induced failures in the world - so far - other than a few fiscal year problems in July and October, most notably in the FAA and few government programs. ONLY failures due to inadequate testing, incorrect testing, or incorrect implimentation of the new systems that are intended to replace on-compliant testing.

Conclusion 1.

A large, but unknown, percent of non-remediated systems will fail AFTER rollover.

A large percent, but again unknown, of these failing systems cannot be "worked around" - but must be replaced or reprogramed before they will operate correctly.

Of the remainder, some will fail, but the failure will not be noticed.

Of the remainder, some will fail, but the failure can be resolved by temporary fixes or work-arounds. How many can be resolved at the user level without reprogramming is unknown.

The economic impact of the unnoticed failures and work-around failures is unknown.

The economic and social impact of the absolute failures is unknown.

Conclusion 2.

Given that the current programs are running correctly,

given that there is great cost in remediation efforts,

given that there are impossible schedule conflicts in trying to remediate enough systems to avoid problems - especially since the Clintons' administration squandered the chance to fix things early enough,

given that there is great cost and political impact of telling people to prepare for failures and become self-reliant,

given there is tremedous economic and social pressure to "hope" the y2k-induced problems are minor,

and given that the world's socialist governments have learned that there is no penalty in the national press for lying to the public in hopes of temporary political gain,

.... is it any wonder the world's socialistic governments are (again) misleading and lying to the public about this issue?

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 29, 1999.

Kev

Wasn't my read that the original post was strictly limited to "fiscal year" and accounting projections. Gave those as examples, but the overall take was any systems dealing now with Year 2000 dates.

My post was directed at your assumption that manufacturing and distribution systems will cause a company to fail in the shortest time.

Yes, Net 30 would be, at least in my experience, the most prevalent. But the others are used, quite extensively. Which means the systems either handle them, or they don't.

But hey, give it another couple of days. The Net 30 terms will start kicking in shortly.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), November 29, 1999.

According to my calendar, today's date is 29-Nov-1999. It's not time for "major failures" yet -- in Rome, Moscow, Washington, Cairo, Bejing, or anywhere else.

The problems will become more frequent as we get closer. The hurricane is still well off shore, though tides are beginning to rise.

-- TA (sea_spur@yahoo.com), November 29, 1999.

>> Where have you been? Italy is one big CONSTANT failure, bub! Nothing works right here....<<

Ynott, you may be amused to know that when I try to prognosticate what Y2K may look like in the USA next year to my friends and relatives, I usually say, "It'll be the year we have to learn to live like Italians, but without the compensation of Italian cooking!"

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), November 29, 1999.

To all those who have responded to my post, thanks--especially to Ynott, for contributing on-the-ground observations of what is actually happening (or not happening) in Italy. My point was not to say that things are working just fine in Italy--I've lived there, too, and know how the Italians improvise to suit the occasion--but simply to draw out the logical consequences that flow from the fact that large (and presumably unremediated) companies like Fiat, Olivetti, ENEL, ENI and Telecom Italia are still functioning, despite the fact that their remediation efforts started comparatively so late compared to here in the US. I appreciate that Linkmeister and others believe that premises G and H are flawed; that is just what the evidence to date would suggest. BUT--the same evidence could be cited to argue that Premise A is flawed, as well. Barring some evidence from some Italian IT types that they are working around the dates they already have to deal with that are past December 31, and fixing as they go, we will not be able to say with certainty until after January 1 that the lack of observed crashes was due to the falsity of G and H, and not A.

This conclusion cuts both ways, of course. Those who would argue that A must be wrong, based on the observed evidence to date, could be ignoring that the lack of failures to date is due to the falsity of G and/or H, and that A will be shown to be all too true once the rollover occurs.

Mr. Cook, I'm glad you spotted that there was something wrong with Conclusion I (it doesn't fit the observed facts), but I respectfully suggest that the problem is not due to faulty reasoning by which I is the logical conclusion of premises G and H (and of the earlier conclusions, as well). As my post indicated, the logical flaw in the result obtained is most likely due to earlier flaws in premises G, H, and/or A. Your "Correct Premise" is simply the converse of G and H--i.e., you premise that unremediated systems, even though they may encounter some post-12/31 dates that they may have to deal with in late 1999, will operate just fine until actual rollover. If there were hard evidence that this is indeed the case, we could replace G and H with correct premises, and conclude that the lack of observed failures to date does not allow anyone to draw any conclusions now about how bad it will be in 2000. In other words, it would still mean that the truth or falsity of Premise A will not be evident until post-rollover.

-- Socrates (Socrates@athens.net), November 29, 1999.