http://www.jediknight.com/~smpoole/fix0899b.html
In this issue:
Ed "Chameleon" Yourdon
Winner Of
The Flying Pig Award: Leon Kappelman
From
The
Trenches: Cherri Stewart
A Passing ... And A
Reprehensible Response
Note: I update this page frequently. If you don't see the article you're looking for, it may be in the archives. Click here for an index of previous State of Y2K articles.
Ed "Chameleon" Yourdon
In mid-July, I posted An Open Letter To Ed Yourdon. Yourdon responded ... and then the response (and his entire Web site, for that matter) disappeared with no warning. Any attempt to access the site won the attempter a 404 ("Page Not Found").
As a result, I linked to a copy of his response on my main page. Well, now his site is back, including Yourdon's response to my open letter. But I want to look at the New And Improved Site first.
Call me a prophet; I predicted in June 1999 that Ed's "retirement" from Y2K wouldn't last and, further, that he would write another book. Yourdon's site now features an online book-in-progress (the same way TB2000 was initially launched) with the working title "Humpty Dumpty 2000."
Yourdon has apparently moved beyond the concept of Y2K disruptions, having taken that as a given; he's now gearing up for Y2K recovery.
My New And Improved prophecy, then, is that Ed will write at least two additional tomes about Y2K: the "Humpty Dumpty" thing, and another (sometime next year) congratulating the IS community for proving him wrong and for fixing Y2K. "You're all heroes," he will say.
The man is no longer "Indiana Ed" in my book. He's a chameleon. Hold him up for scrutiny and he turns sky blue. Hold him against gullible people with money ... and he turns cash green.
We should all be so malleable. After all, we are talking about the guy who wrote and continues to sell at his Web site the books "Decline And Fall Of The American Programmer" and "Rise And Resurrection Of The American Programmer" ... two books which completely contradict each other.
But why quibble?
Quibble we shan't. Instead, let's look at his response to my open letter.
Yourdon admits that he was wrong about the fiscal year problem (he rather smoothly ignores that this isn't the only prediction he's blown by a long shot, but let's keep this simple), and then says:
But having done some serious soul-searching on this issue, my fundamental outlook on Y2K remains essentially unchanged. My reaction to the [lack of problems thus far] ... is basically the same as when someone tells me ... that the [banks are finished] ... "I'm not sure I believe such a statement without the assurance of a third-party IV&V vendor, but even assuming that it's true, what about everything else?"
So ... instead of admitting that he was wrong, we have more Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD). I cover that elsewhere in the new ditty, "Embeddeds" And The It Mindset. Suffice to say, the Chameleon has earned his Flying Pig Award and it shall remain in the showcase.
Let's look at one more statement from his response:
I'm sure you can anticipate what my strongest disagreement will be, with regard to the assertion that "fiscal-year Y2K problems were non- existent, and therefore Y2K won't be a serious problem after all." That disagreement involves two words: embedded systems.
Well, stay tuned, Ed. Let's introduce a fellow who will share the
Flying Pig
Award with you on the strength of his concerns about embedded
systems and
"everything else ..."
(08-22-1999) Upon releasing the original version of this article
at the old
wwjd.net site, I received an email from Dr. Kappelman. It accused me
of
"slander;" he demanded that I remove my "lies" from this page, or
he "may take
legal action."
He (or one of his supporters) also sent legal threats to wwjd.net,
which
resulted in my site being closed temporarily. I agreed to move it
because
they're outstandingly nice people, and I saw no reason whatsoever to
cause them
any trouble.
I have since rewritten and expanded this to cover some late-
breaking events,
including an appearance by Bro Leon on Fox 4 television in Dallas/Ft.
Worth. The
man is worth a smile a minute.
Dr. Leon Kappelman is an Associate Professor of Business Computer
Information
Systems at the University of Northern Texas (in Denton, TX). Calling
the man
"prolific" is like referring to an elephant as "large;" he's probably
cranked
out more articles on Y2K than anyone (save, of course, for Gary "The
Trumpet Of
Doom" North).
As chair of the Society for Information Management's Year 2000
working group,
Kappelman has published the most restrictive definition
of "compliance" that
we've found yet (from Year 2000 Problem: Strategies and Solutions
from the
Fortune 100, (c)1997):
In short, things will "work" as they do today into and beyond the
year 2000.
That's innocuous-sounding on its face; "things will 'work' as they
do today."
Hmmm. Define "work." Define "incorrect results."
I've mentioned elsewhere that I have some machines that use the
date solely
to mark log printouts; the dates have 2-digit years. Technically, the
printout
will contain an "incorrect result" in January.
Big deal; we'll simply hand-correct the date with a Sharpie(tm).
Kapp took me to task for saying (in the original) that he felt
that any
2-digit date was potentially non-compliant. I accused him of
disingenuity,
because he makes his position pretty clear in those dozens of
articles to which
I referred earlier.
For example, more than once, he's written on strategies for IS
managers to
convince their bosses to move to 4-digit dates; you should read them.
And in an
article about "Y2K Myths," he states that Windows 98 isn't compliant,
with the
offhand comment, "The name alone should alert us to the simple fact
that Windows
98 is not Y2K OK, either."
Leon is an Idealist; a defender of Women and Children.
(Of course, Idealism apparently doesn't preclude using the
University of
North Texas' Web server for commercial purposes -- ie, to to sell his
materials
-- but I digress.)
Theroux one said, "if I knew that a man was coming over to my
house with the
fixed intention to do me good, I would run for my life."
Well, Leon Kappelman is that man. Run.
High on Leon's list of priorities is Keeping The Pressure On. We
can't let
anyone think that Y2K isn't going to be a big deal, or that there
won't be
severe consequences if every single Y2K bug isn't located and dealt
with.
This extremely rigid view got him in trouble with the Information
Technology
Assocation of America (ITAA) a few months ago; he testified to
Congress that
limits on damages in Y2K lawsuits were a bad idea (because he felt
that it would
cause organizations to relax a bit in their remediation efforts). As
a result,
the ITAA gave him the boot.
But no regrets from Denton! "I've been thrown out of better
places," Leon
sniffed gamely.
Kappelman has been expostulating and pontificating for some time
(both at his
web site and
in
expensive private seminars) that embedded systems are the real killer
(in spite
of the fact that, to my knowledge, he has no qualifications to even
speak on the
subject and has never written a line of code for an industrial
controller.)
(I again refer you to "Embeddeds" And The IT
Mindset, where I point out that having a degree in Information
Systems or
the equivalent does not confer a degree in electrical
engineering,
mechanical engineering, or any other specialty.)
We must Test Them, sayeth Leo. We must Test Them All and (since
that's not
possible; there's not enough time) plan for the worst.
(Sound familiar?)
OK (some of you are getting impatient, I can sense these things),
so
why does Kapp get the FPA? It's simple: in spite of the fact
that the
news about Y2K has been getting better for some time, he -- like
Yourdon, our
charter winner -- refuses to accept it. He insists on keeping the
pressure up
in spite of this good news.
We should have seen this coming. Let's go back to mid-1998. Paul
Strassman
had written an article for the May 18th issue of Computerworld about
about Y2K
expenditures; he concluded that "far less" was being spent on Y2K
than was
anticipated. (Ironically, in 1999, various Y2K Authorities would
acknowledge
this and do a complete flip: it would now be used it as proof that
the problem
wasn't being fixed!)
An email debate between Strassman, Ed Yourdon, Capers Jones and
Kappelman
resulted; here's a snippet taken from the June 8 issue:
Kappelman:... the SEC data is weak due to off-Y2K-budget
items (for
example, upgrades, replacements) and underreporting errors ... As the
Society of
Information Management's Year 2000 Working Group points out in our
new white
paper, there is often an enormous disconnect between upper management
(those who
approve SEC paperwork) and the people running Y2K projects (those who
answer the
SIM study questionnaires). From what I've seen about these projects,
I'd place
my money on the project managers.
Strassmann:When I weigh the biases of project managers
reporting to
SIM and management reporting to the SEC, all I can say is that
management may be
held accountable for what they say. It becomes a matter of record and
subject to
litigation and liability suits. Project managers filling out SIM
questionnaires
cannot and would not ever be held accountable for what they say ...
((c)1998 IDG
Publications)
Leon continues to believe that Y2K won't be fixed in time. It's
also worth
mentioning that Kappelman was one of many who predicted possible
problems from
the GPS rollover this weekend. As I write this, the rollover has
already passed,
and the rumors of collapse and mayhem were somewhat exaggerated ...
Anyway, here's the award:
Update: The Jim Lord "Secret Navy Documents" story has also
broken in
the past few days. (I've been busy this weekend!). We'll cover
that farce
(and that's precisely what it is) in the next edition of State of
Y2K; but it's
appropriate because of an email that I received from Dallas Saturday
morning,
August 21: Kappelman had just appeared on Fox4 News to talk about
Lord's report.
"The reporter was almost breathless," said my informant, "about
this newest
Navy report being the "worst news on Y2K so far" -- which claim, my
informant
insists, Kappelman did nothing to dispel.
But at one point, Leon was asked: "is there a 'possibility that
you and the
Navy are overestimating the problem'..."
The answer from St. Leon: "ABSOLUTELY. But what if its your
community? What
does it mean if airports work at 75% for six months or 95%?? I'm
working with 40
countries and Los Angeles....... Of the 40 countries I'm working with
there are
many I don't want to be in next year."
And there you go. Now let's meet a gal from whom Leon could have
learned some
things, had he bothered to listen ...
I spend so much time here pounding the Prophets of Y2K Doom that I
don't
often get around to congratulating the warriors who've done yeoman's
work in
countering all of the misinformation. I'd like to amend that
oversight
with a look at one such GI Jane, Cherri Stewart.
Cherri began tinkerning with electronics at the age of 10; she has
now logged
over 30 years in everything from embedded controller design to
operating system
design to mainframes. (As she puts it, "I have installed more
mainframe systems
than most people have even seen.")
In the weeks to come, I'm going to post some of her better essays
in the Expert's Section here at the site. But
here's a
sample, and it touches on what I said about Kappelman above:
Preach it, Cherri. People like Kappelman (and his various
compatriots,
especially Dave Hall -- a long-time sparring partner with Cherri
online) have
maintained that these systems "must be tested." They won't ask the
people who
actually install, program and use these things on a daily
basis, because
we're Mere Techies. We aren't part of The Club.
(In Cherri's case, it's pure bias against her viewpoint, because
she probably
would qualify as a member of The Club.)
Kapp and Dave spent most of 1997 and 1998 telling us the we
didn't
understand; that we weren't taking the problem seriously. In fact, it
was
they who didn't understand (and in many cases, continue not to
understand!) how these systems are actually used.
We're back to my favorite question for Y2K Doomlits. When they
point to a
particular control system and say, "if this fails, it could kill
people!" I
immediately ask: OK, so what do they do when this thing fails NOW?
Or do you
assume that these things never fail except for Y2K bugs?
(There's some logic in there, if you're interested.)
(The truth is the people like us -- who actually implement these
things at
the field level -- have all sorts of backups and contingencies in
place.
Why? Because we've never fully trusted the darned things! They
fail NOW,
all the time!)
A Passing ... And A Reprehensible
Response
Harlan Smith and I didn't agree about many things; he was too much
of a
Doomlit for my tastes. But the longtime Sysop of Compuserve's
Year2000 forum did
agree with me on the aforementioned "Embeddeds" And The IT Mindset
essay.
Harlan passed away recently, rather suddenly and unexpectedly, and
his family
has my sympathy.
He gets none from our Ringmaster, though
... and if you ever needed proof that Paul Milne is slightly out of
phase with
the rest of us, his reaction to Smith's passing should be considered.
Right after Harlan Smith passed away, Milne posted these comments
in comp.talk.year2000:
I thought he was a class "A" Pollyanna Butthead and I won't back
off from
that merely because he cashed in his chips.
He'll need a light spring suit. Way to go, Paulie. Of course, we are talking about the guy
who, upon
learning of my little Test of Web
Journalism, simply replied: "You'll be dead soon."
Winner Of The Flying Pig Award: Leon
Kappelman
"Year 2000 compliance" describes the general approach to
ensuring
that the computing environment (consisting of hardware, custom-built
applications, data, purchased software, and other related functions)
will
neither fail nor produce incorrect results due to the impact of the
changing
century and calculations based on dates ...
Dr. Leon
Kappelman
From The Trenches: Cherri Stewart
All this "speculation" is just that. Anyone can come up
with their
own concept of how whatever is/was done. Why not just get the
schematic and have
someone who knows how to read and understand one look at it and find
out how it
actually works?? The same goes for all these "embedded systems!!!"
Why is it that when someone buys the farm everyone falls
over
himself to come out and say 'nice' things, AFTER the fact, when they
would not
say hello to the man when he was still eating lettuce. Well, I call a
spade a
spade, and I did not like Harlan when he was breathing, and I don't
like him one
bit better now.
-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001