mhaze, thanks for the articles linked above, which give even more concrete evidence of the emerging facts about the great covid over-reach and mass panic surrounding vaccine mandates, lockdowns and censorship.
I know who has "had their arse kicked" and it's obvious it sure ain't you, but as I've said you can't debate reasonably with closed minds.
Meanwhile I think this article must be setting new records for comments but there's probably only a few of us still following the long and winding road...

mhaze,

Your mockery of the hospital overloads, as if they were only “a few days” on the other side of the world, is a total distortion of what actually happened.

Healthcare systems in the countries I mentioned were pushed to the brink in the ways that I mentioned, and healthcare workers were overwhelmed for months, not just "a few days." Ignoring this reality to support your narrative doesn’t change the fact that lockdowns helped prevent this level of strain from becoming the norm everywhere.

Australia’s hospitals weren’t overwhelmed because strict measures were taken early. Comparing Australia to countries with entirely different conditions is a poor excuse for denying the evidence.

As for Y2K, you're pushing the same tired conspiracy theory that it's all a scam designed to make people rich.

In reality, Y2K didn’t result in catastrophic failure because of the proactive work done by programmers, engineers, and IT professionals around the world. Just because planes didn’t fall out of the sky doesn’t mean there wasn’t a real threat - it means that the preventative measures worked.

Your linked-to claim that companies wasted millions on a non-existent problem is like claiming a fire alarm is useless because the building didn’t burn down. The issue wasn’t a scare - it was a success story of how preventative action can avert disaster.

If you think anyone familiar with Y2K sees it as a fraud, you’re either surrounding yourself with conspiracy theorists or you’ve conveniently forgotten how many IT professionals saw the issue for what it was: a real problem that needed to be solved to prevent widespread failures.

Pretending it was all a hoax doesn’t align with the facts, just like pretending lockdowns weren’t necessary ignores the overwhelming evidence of how much worse the pandemic could have been without them.

If you doubt my experience, then I'm happy to go into the details with you if you'd like. Somehow I don't take me up on the offer.

As usual JD you completely misunderstand.

As I said years ago in the post I linked, Y2K was a problem that needed fixing. But the problem was limited to computers older than 1995 (and not even all of them) and the means to fixing it was well known and easily implemented. Sure it was sometimes time-consuming and sometimes expensive but there was never a doubt that the fixes would be implemented and would work.

The talk of planes falling out of the sky or nuclear plants exploding because they couldn't deducted a 20th century date from a 21st century date was fictitious.

If you get an infection in your pinky toe, you'll die if you do noting about it. But saying infections in pinky toes is deadly is mere alarmism.

Every organisation that had a problem had long ago recognised the problem. I was working in places in the 1980s who knew that they'd need to do something by 21/12/1999. But no panic. And when the time came to fix it, new equipment that had the memory space to store the century part of the date were easily obtained and the programming to do it was easily implemented. I did it dozens of times using all sorts of processes.

But that was not how the scare was sold to the ignorant public or, it seems, some gullible programmers. If you get an infection in your pinky, you dab some iodine on it and get on with life. If you've got a problem with the storage of the century in a date, you fix it and get on with your life.

Or as some did, you run around like chicken little and declare that the sky is falling.

The cognoscenti knew that it was a problem with an easy fix. The ignorant were convinced that it was a major issue and forked over gigantic sums for no good purpose.

mhaze,

Once again, you're downplaying the significance of a large-scale issue by focusing on how you dealt with it personally, while ignoring the broader global implications.

Yes, the Y2K bug was more relevant to older systems, and yes, IT professionals like yourself were able to fix it with relative ease in many cases, but that doesn’t mean the threat wasn’t real.

Large companies, utilities, government agencies, and infrastructure were all using legacy systems that hadn’t been upgraded, and those posed a genuine risk if not addressed. This wasn’t just a case of slapping iodine on a pinky toe and moving on with life - it required global coordination, testing, and investment to ensure nothing fell through the cracks.

Your repeated dismissal of the alarm is like saying we over-prepared for a hurricane because our homes didn’t get blown away. The reason things went smoothly is because we prepared. The “chicken little” narrative falls apart when you look at the number of organizations that had real issues to address - and the consequences they would’ve faced had they not taken it seriously.

And let’s not forget: just because the public was warned of the risks doesn’t mean it was all a scam. The truth is, most of the money spent went into fixing systems before they failed. You can’t blame people for taking action to prevent disaster when the problem was genuine, even if some took advantage for profit.

Maybe you were in a position to calmly handle the fixes in your environment, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world could afford to be so casual. Your insistence on ignoring the bigger picture has you missing the point once again.

I can't determine if he just doesn't get it or gets it but refuses to admit it.

There was a problem. The problem was addressed. By mid-1999 there was no problem. Everything resolved. Every single person who had a PC and spent money on it to 'fix' the problem was ripped off. Because the scare-mongers convinced them they needed to do 'sumfing' when in fact they had precisely nothing to worry about. Every single company that had a PC network and spent money to address the problem, wasted that money. But people did spend it because they fell for the scare.

If you were in the industry and were still alarmed in late 1999 you were either a victim or a perpetrator of the scare.

Its impossible to work out which.

mhaze,

You seem determined to paint this as a black-and-white issue: either you were a “victim or perpetrator” of a scam, or you were part of the enlightened few who knew better. But that’s a gross oversimplification.

While you may have wrapped up your Y2K fixes by mid-1999, plenty of companies - especially those with older systems - needed more time. Not everyone was running on modern hardware, and large organisations had complex infrastructures that required thorough testing. Just because you finished early doesn’t mean the entire world was equally prepared by mid-1999.

Dismissing anyone who took precautions in late 1999 as a fool who was “ripped off” misses the point entirely. The point wasn’t that planes would fall from the sky or that nuclear reactors would explode (those were exaggerations, sure), but that systems that hadn’t been updated could fail. And when you’re talking about financial institutions, healthcare, utilities, and government services, those failures would have been serious.

This wasn’t about selling fear - it was about ensuring that nothing got missed. And the fact that the Y2K issue didn’t cause major problems is a success story, not proof that it was unnecessary.

By your logic, should we never take preventative action, just because you didn’t experience problems personally? The world doesn’t operate that way. The real lesson here is that preventative measures work - even if some people blow it out of proportion, that doesn’t mean the underlying threat wasn’t real.

By the way, I didn’t panic during the process, nor was I surprised when I woke up on New year’s day 2000 to see that nothing had appeared to have collapsed, because I had a good idea of just how thoroughly the problem was being addressed everywhere. I was also aware that, either way, planes weren’t going to fall out of the sky.

Personally, I had a good chuckle to myself on New year’s eve 1999 seeing some people stock up with trolley loads of non-perishable items.