-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 08:46 PM 9/14/97 -0700, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
Gary North has been predicting apocalypse on the y2k subject for awhile. but he has a lot of data to back his claims. this talks about the IRS computers and predicts they're going to collapse.
Gary North has been predicting apocalypse on whatever subject would sell investment newsletters for 20 years or more. But, hey, if the IRS does collapse from Millenial troubles, fine by me :-) I couldn't find a PGP key that would decrypt the signature - was it vznuri's, jackdoolin's, or Gary North's ? The Y2K problem is largely hype, but the machines that will suffer from it most aren't just the old C0B0L-burning dinosaurs - it's the PCs on the desktops; even some of them made in 1997 will probably need at least new BIOS PROMs to keep up to date. Some number of years ago, the Treasury Department put out an RFP for a bunch of computers and networks. The RFP was a shade clueless, wanting things like C2 security certification when there were only a few B-level systems and one C-level system out there, and Red Book security was still a research topic inconsistent with the requirement for GOSIP networking compliance. The winning team, from AT&T, bid a bunch of servers (Pyramid MIPS-2000- based?) and blazingly fast 386/25 machines, and was immediately thrown into three years of litigation because they were selected not for lowest cost but for best technology. By the time the courts were done, and they could actually start implementing the job, the red-hot 386/25 was now pretty lukewarm, but a lot easier to provide at a decent profit margin :-) I don't know if what they provided was the same as the AT&T 6386/25 on my desk, but neither that machine nor the Pentium-75 laptop I'm typing on now does the right thing when you set the clock to 12/31/99 11:59:59 and wait. The IRS has probably bought some newer machines since then, but I'd be surprised if they're _all_ fixed. Or mostly fixed. Bitrot is cool -- heh heh -- heh heh -- bitrot, yeah. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQBVAwUBNBzUSfthU5e7emAFAQFCewH/c0bzLYPtobPtDA3ZsFk7pn64r+qcn9LB MorKVSoL4VDk70hMCXE8AsZ7rhOmZ8Y23EiUILF7ibr8g/mX5KjuIw== =QzcU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----