Articoli correlati a The Millennium Bug: How to Survive the Coming Chaos
In plain English, the author explains the gravity of the computer problem posed by the year 2000; its potentially catastrophic impact on government, banking, utilities, and personal computers; and what the average person can do to protect himself or herself. Reprint. $40,000 ad/promo.
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L'autore:
Michael S. Hyatt is the nation's leading Year 2000 consumer advocate. The publisher of Thomas Nelson, he is a part-time programming enthusiast and has written numerous custom applications for companies around the world. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife and five daughters.
Estratto. © Riproduzione autorizzata. Diritti riservati.:
Introduction: Moving Beyond Denial--Ignoring the Year 2000 Computer Crisis Will Not Make It Go Away
Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.
--Demosthenes
"Don't worry," I assured him, "You can bet that someone a lot smarter than either one of us will come up with a solution for this. If we can put a man on the moon, we can certainly fix the Y2K problem." Sound familiar? This was my response the first time I heard about the Millennium Bug.
For nearly six months, my good friend and colleague David Dunham forwarded me articles from the Internet about "the Year 2000 Computer Problem," or "Y2K" for short. As you probably know, this problem causes many computers to interpret the date "01/01/00" as January 1, 1900. I don't know why he thought I was interested. At the time, I didn't think it was that big a deal. I tried to be polite, but I usually deleted the articles without reading them. I was confident that Bill Gates or some other cyber genius would come up with a solution. After all, how much trouble could two measly digits cause?
As it turns out, plenty. At first I didn't believe it. I didn't want to believe it. Life has enough problems without having to deal with a crisis that is so global, so enormous, and, well... so stupid. I didn't have time to worry about it, and I was sure someone else was doing the worrying for me. I continued in this state until I saw the June 2, 1997, Newsweek article entitled, "The Day the World Shuts Down." It wasn't just any old article, mind you; it was the cover story, complete with flashy photos, quotable quips, and commentary from a dozen experts. With an article like that you would expect the stock market to crash, the bank runs to begin, and panic to sweep the nation. But you know what happened? Absolutely nothing. Business as usual. In fact, the week after the article broke, the stock market achieved its highest level in history. Clearly, no one took this stuff seriously.
But I did. I wasn't totally convinced by the article, but I was unsettled. And I began to worry. So, I rolled up my sleeves and set out to do some research. I was confident that I could debunk the whole thing and set my mind to rest once and for all. I surfed the Web (including little-known government and military sites), downloaded articles, reviewed thousands of newsgroup and forum messages, talked with scores of other programmers, and researched the subject at length at a major university library near my home. I read everything on the subject I could find.
Contrary to what I had hoped, the more I read, the more convinced I became that there was, in fact, something to worry about. Something serious.
My Background
Perhaps you are wondering, So what makes you qualified to evaluate this problem, anyway? That's a fair question. Let me admit at the outset: I don't have a degree in computer science. And, for what it's worth, neither does Bill Gates or Steve Jobs; they don't have degrees at all. I have never claimed to be a computer expert, and, quite frankly, I'm proud of that for three reasons.
1. It was the experts who got us into this mess. I'm not trying to be a "Monday morning quarterback," but the Year 2000 Problem is a potential disaster that was completely avoidable.
2. It is not just the experts who will suffer from the Year 2000 Problem. It will affect every person in every civilized country on earth--including you and me.
3. It is not a technical problem requiring experts to fix it. Actually, it's an amazingly simple problem. The real issue is a management one. How do we organize the resources at our disposal to repair the billions of lines of code infected with the Millennium Bug? Programmers can't tell you, and very few managers have a handle on it either. Bottom line: When it comes to the Millennium Bug, there really are no experts.
I am a businessman with a good deal of experience in management. I have been involved in the publishing and entertainment industries for most of my twenty-one-year career. I have been an executive for two large publishing companies, working in both product development and marketing. In addition, I have owned my own company since 1986. My business partner and I specialize in selling intellectual property rights and organizing large-scale conferences. Like many people in business, my day-to-day life is made up of doing research, evaluating options, and making informed decisions--sometimes with good results and sometimes with bad. In either case, I feel the full weight of my responsibility, and I've learned to live with the consequences of my choices. Sometimes it's not much fun, but it's definitely a great way to learn.
While I wouldn't call myself a computer expert, over the past sixteen years, I've taught myself the art of writing computer software and am fluent in Pascal (Delphi, to be exact) and three dialects of BASIC, including WordBasic, Visual Basic, and Visual Basic for Applications. Programming languages are similar to human languages: the more you understand one, the easier it is to learn another.
As a part-time programming enthusiast, I have written numerous custom applications for my own firm as well as other companies around the world. (I have customers as far away as Iran and New Zealand, for example, and all of my work for them is conducted over the Internet.) Some of these programs are fairly simple; some of them are quite elaborate, involving entire software systems. I am the author of two software packages that are commercially available as "shareware." I am also an active beta-tester for Microsoft, Corel, and several other major software companies.
So, although I'm not a computer expert, I do have significant computer expertise.
But my biggest responsibility is to my family. I have a wife to whom I have been happily married for almost twenty years, and five daughters (no, I'm not kidding)--all of whom I want to protect from the potentially disastrous fallout of Y2K.
Why None of Us Is Safe
They're everywhere. Over the past thirty-five years, computers have quietly infiltrated nearly every aspect of our existence. Except for the PC that sits innocuously on your desk, you probably never notice them. But they are there. Millions of them. They all make possible the quality of life you and I take for granted every day, and almost all are dependent upon other computer systems.
Consider, for moment, a day in the life of "Gary Anderson" (a fictional character).
Gary is vice president of marketing for a large office supply wholesaler in the Midwest. He has worked there for three years. He and his wife, Nancy, live in a suburb outside the city. They have three children: fifteen, eleven, and seven.
Almost all of Gary's work is done on a state-of-the-art notebook computer. He never goes anywhere without it and often uses it at home to finish work he couldn't get done at the office. Nancy, a freelance writer, also has a desktop computer that she uses to run her small, home-based business and manage the family finances.
Gary and Nancy are completely dependent upon their computers. Neither of them realizes, however, that they are dependent upon millions of computers in ways they are unaware of or simply don't think about. These computers run quietly in the background of their existence, invisible to their field of vision, but making possible their twentieth-century creature comforts and amusements.
Picture this: It's Tuesday morning at the Andersons'. Everyone is still asleep. The lights are out, but the Andersons' electronic alarm system, a computerized, high-tech sentry, is standing guard. Although the system was not expensive, it is comprised of a sophisticated array of embedded computer chips that monitor every door and window in the house. (As you may know, embedded chip systems are computer chips that have the actual program "burned into" the hardware.) If the system detects a break-in, the alarm sounds, waits two minutes, and then automatically dials the local police station. The alarm has not gone off in over a year, which was the last time the Andersons had it tested.
At 6 AM the alarm clock goes off. Gary reaches over, turns off the alarm, and then reluctantly throws his feet over the side of the bed. His alarm clock is built into his digital clock radio. It is run by a computer--albeit a simple one--that allows it to keep the current time, and store the wake-up time and the presets for his favorite radio stations.
While Gary heads for the bathroom, Nancy turns on the light next to her bed. The electrical power for the Andersons' neighborhood is generated by a large hydroelectric power plant. The processes inside the power plant and the distribution system outside the power plant are monitored and maintained by mainframe computers and thousands of embedded chip systems. Transformers, using embedded chips to regulate voltage levels, raise the generated power to the high voltages that are used on the transmission lines. The electricity is sent from the plant to substations, where, once again, computer chips embedded in transformers step down the voltage to the voltage on the subtransmission lines. A final set of transformers steps the voltage down even further, to the level used by consumers to power electronic devices. To protect all the elements of a power system from short circuits and overloads, and for normal switching operations, automated circuit breakers are used. These, too, use computer chips.
As Nancy wakes up the children, Gary gets in the shower. He's never given much thought to how the water is delivered to his home. All he knows is that, as he turns the shower knob, out comes the water. But this, too, is a convenience made possible by the use of a highly computerized system. The Andersons' water comes from a larg...
Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.
--Demosthenes
"Don't worry," I assured him, "You can bet that someone a lot smarter than either one of us will come up with a solution for this. If we can put a man on the moon, we can certainly fix the Y2K problem." Sound familiar? This was my response the first time I heard about the Millennium Bug.
For nearly six months, my good friend and colleague David Dunham forwarded me articles from the Internet about "the Year 2000 Computer Problem," or "Y2K" for short. As you probably know, this problem causes many computers to interpret the date "01/01/00" as January 1, 1900. I don't know why he thought I was interested. At the time, I didn't think it was that big a deal. I tried to be polite, but I usually deleted the articles without reading them. I was confident that Bill Gates or some other cyber genius would come up with a solution. After all, how much trouble could two measly digits cause?
As it turns out, plenty. At first I didn't believe it. I didn't want to believe it. Life has enough problems without having to deal with a crisis that is so global, so enormous, and, well... so stupid. I didn't have time to worry about it, and I was sure someone else was doing the worrying for me. I continued in this state until I saw the June 2, 1997, Newsweek article entitled, "The Day the World Shuts Down." It wasn't just any old article, mind you; it was the cover story, complete with flashy photos, quotable quips, and commentary from a dozen experts. With an article like that you would expect the stock market to crash, the bank runs to begin, and panic to sweep the nation. But you know what happened? Absolutely nothing. Business as usual. In fact, the week after the article broke, the stock market achieved its highest level in history. Clearly, no one took this stuff seriously.
But I did. I wasn't totally convinced by the article, but I was unsettled. And I began to worry. So, I rolled up my sleeves and set out to do some research. I was confident that I could debunk the whole thing and set my mind to rest once and for all. I surfed the Web (including little-known government and military sites), downloaded articles, reviewed thousands of newsgroup and forum messages, talked with scores of other programmers, and researched the subject at length at a major university library near my home. I read everything on the subject I could find.
Contrary to what I had hoped, the more I read, the more convinced I became that there was, in fact, something to worry about. Something serious.
My Background
Perhaps you are wondering, So what makes you qualified to evaluate this problem, anyway? That's a fair question. Let me admit at the outset: I don't have a degree in computer science. And, for what it's worth, neither does Bill Gates or Steve Jobs; they don't have degrees at all. I have never claimed to be a computer expert, and, quite frankly, I'm proud of that for three reasons.
1. It was the experts who got us into this mess. I'm not trying to be a "Monday morning quarterback," but the Year 2000 Problem is a potential disaster that was completely avoidable.
2. It is not just the experts who will suffer from the Year 2000 Problem. It will affect every person in every civilized country on earth--including you and me.
3. It is not a technical problem requiring experts to fix it. Actually, it's an amazingly simple problem. The real issue is a management one. How do we organize the resources at our disposal to repair the billions of lines of code infected with the Millennium Bug? Programmers can't tell you, and very few managers have a handle on it either. Bottom line: When it comes to the Millennium Bug, there really are no experts.
I am a businessman with a good deal of experience in management. I have been involved in the publishing and entertainment industries for most of my twenty-one-year career. I have been an executive for two large publishing companies, working in both product development and marketing. In addition, I have owned my own company since 1986. My business partner and I specialize in selling intellectual property rights and organizing large-scale conferences. Like many people in business, my day-to-day life is made up of doing research, evaluating options, and making informed decisions--sometimes with good results and sometimes with bad. In either case, I feel the full weight of my responsibility, and I've learned to live with the consequences of my choices. Sometimes it's not much fun, but it's definitely a great way to learn.
While I wouldn't call myself a computer expert, over the past sixteen years, I've taught myself the art of writing computer software and am fluent in Pascal (Delphi, to be exact) and three dialects of BASIC, including WordBasic, Visual Basic, and Visual Basic for Applications. Programming languages are similar to human languages: the more you understand one, the easier it is to learn another.
As a part-time programming enthusiast, I have written numerous custom applications for my own firm as well as other companies around the world. (I have customers as far away as Iran and New Zealand, for example, and all of my work for them is conducted over the Internet.) Some of these programs are fairly simple; some of them are quite elaborate, involving entire software systems. I am the author of two software packages that are commercially available as "shareware." I am also an active beta-tester for Microsoft, Corel, and several other major software companies.
So, although I'm not a computer expert, I do have significant computer expertise.
But my biggest responsibility is to my family. I have a wife to whom I have been happily married for almost twenty years, and five daughters (no, I'm not kidding)--all of whom I want to protect from the potentially disastrous fallout of Y2K.
Why None of Us Is Safe
They're everywhere. Over the past thirty-five years, computers have quietly infiltrated nearly every aspect of our existence. Except for the PC that sits innocuously on your desk, you probably never notice them. But they are there. Millions of them. They all make possible the quality of life you and I take for granted every day, and almost all are dependent upon other computer systems.
Consider, for moment, a day in the life of "Gary Anderson" (a fictional character).
Gary is vice president of marketing for a large office supply wholesaler in the Midwest. He has worked there for three years. He and his wife, Nancy, live in a suburb outside the city. They have three children: fifteen, eleven, and seven.
Almost all of Gary's work is done on a state-of-the-art notebook computer. He never goes anywhere without it and often uses it at home to finish work he couldn't get done at the office. Nancy, a freelance writer, also has a desktop computer that she uses to run her small, home-based business and manage the family finances.
Gary and Nancy are completely dependent upon their computers. Neither of them realizes, however, that they are dependent upon millions of computers in ways they are unaware of or simply don't think about. These computers run quietly in the background of their existence, invisible to their field of vision, but making possible their twentieth-century creature comforts and amusements.
Picture this: It's Tuesday morning at the Andersons'. Everyone is still asleep. The lights are out, but the Andersons' electronic alarm system, a computerized, high-tech sentry, is standing guard. Although the system was not expensive, it is comprised of a sophisticated array of embedded computer chips that monitor every door and window in the house. (As you may know, embedded chip systems are computer chips that have the actual program "burned into" the hardware.) If the system detects a break-in, the alarm sounds, waits two minutes, and then automatically dials the local police station. The alarm has not gone off in over a year, which was the last time the Andersons had it tested.
At 6 AM the alarm clock goes off. Gary reaches over, turns off the alarm, and then reluctantly throws his feet over the side of the bed. His alarm clock is built into his digital clock radio. It is run by a computer--albeit a simple one--that allows it to keep the current time, and store the wake-up time and the presets for his favorite radio stations.
While Gary heads for the bathroom, Nancy turns on the light next to her bed. The electrical power for the Andersons' neighborhood is generated by a large hydroelectric power plant. The processes inside the power plant and the distribution system outside the power plant are monitored and maintained by mainframe computers and thousands of embedded chip systems. Transformers, using embedded chips to regulate voltage levels, raise the generated power to the high voltages that are used on the transmission lines. The electricity is sent from the plant to substations, where, once again, computer chips embedded in transformers step down the voltage to the voltage on the subtransmission lines. A final set of transformers steps the voltage down even further, to the level used by consumers to power electronic devices. To protect all the elements of a power system from short circuits and overloads, and for normal switching operations, automated circuit breakers are used. These, too, use computer chips.
As Nancy wakes up the children, Gary gets in the shower. He's never given much thought to how the water is delivered to his home. All he knows is that, as he turns the shower knob, out comes the water. But this, too, is a convenience made possible by the use of a highly computerized system. The Andersons' water comes from a larg...
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- EditoreBroadway Books
- Data di pubblicazione1999
- ISBN 10 0767903749
- ISBN 13 9780767903745
- RilegaturaCopertina flessibile
- Numero di pagine286
- Valutazione libreria
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