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Getting It Wrong Y2k


shortstep
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Want to hear some real shock and horror, listen to the ABC radio segment from this morning.

Listen how there was no motive to say it was all a bunch of bunk.

Listen to how 12 billion in Australia was spent on something that was not going to happen.

Listen to how even the public funded ABC radio spent our money over reacting to hysteria by building a bunker that the senior ABC staff hid in on years day....the cowards...LOL.

Now lets hear about global warming ABC?

Nothing left to discuss, the world is doomed if we do not over react and over react NOW? It is all fact now, nothing left to discuss, the only thing left to do tax the heck out out of everything we do, and then redistribute this wealth of Australian citizens to poor countries? Sure you got this one right too ABC?

http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl

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I spent about two years removing real live Y2K errors from programs that calculate payroll and super, paid bills and sent invoices for things charged on hourly, weekly, monthly rates ie using time calculations.

The trouble was the powers that be kept asking us techies to promise that there would be no bugs left, and everything would work perfectly. But no techie would make that promise. The closest you'd get is that it's "highly unlikely".

And things did break for about six months afterwards - but mostly financial things that were easy to fix. No planes dropped out of the sky - but how many of them have engines that shut off if the date is wrong? Highly unlikely.

All the media could hear though was "it might happen". The money spent on cleaning up the bugs had to be done anyway. And it probably couldn't have been done much sooner because back then - two extra digits of data cost a lot to keep and process. So no money wasted there.

And For the last 30 years, Perth has had one third the rainfall it averaged in the previous 70 years or since records were kept. They know about climate change.

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I spent about two years removing real live Y2K errors from programs that calculate payroll and super, paid bills and sent invoices for things charged on hourly, weekly, monthly rates ie using time calculations.

The trouble was the powers that be kept asking us techies to promise that there would be no bugs left, and everything would work perfectly. But no techie would make that promise. The closest you'd get is that it's "highly unlikely".

And things did break for about six months afterwards - but mostly financial things that were easy to fix. No planes dropped out of the sky - but how many of them have engines that shut off if the date is wrong? Highly unlikely.

All the media could hear though was "it might happen". The money spent on cleaning up the bugs had to be done anyway. And it probably couldn't have been done much sooner because back then - two extra digits of data cost a lot to keep and process. So no money wasted there.

And For the last 30 years, Perth has had one third the rainfall it averaged in the previous 70 years or since records were kept. They know about climate change.

Yea, so why did ABC need to build a bunker to hide in, and paid for with Tax payer money. Over reaction and histeria. The sky is falling.

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Meh. for Dec 31st 1999, and 1st Jan 2000, I went and stayed on a remote country farm where there was no mobile phone reception. My cousins were very happy. They went to the local coastal holiday town and partied, while I fed all their animials for them. Win win.

Mostly I did that so the bosses couldn't find me if they wanted bugs fixed up. There's no reason to fix financial bugs before the second week in January. However people don't need much excuse to run riot, and you can't always predict when it's going to happen. Rarely has anything to do with anything rational. So I don't blame the ABC for building a bunker. They probably need one to protect media broadcasts for a variety of possibilities.

For instance - in Canberra when they had those bad bushfires - one of the first things to get destroyed was the communication links in and out of the Disaster Management Headquarters.

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Shortstep

Yea, so why did ABC need to build a bunker to hide in, and paid for with Tax payer money. Over reaction and histeria. The sky is falling.

Don't spend a nano second worrying about it. You will be flash fried and incinerated in a moment by global warming long before the sky falls :)

Would tell you more, but I have a boxer puppy repotting a plant, and the plant doesn't look too well

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Want to hear some real shock and horror, listen to the ABC radio segment from this morning.

Listen how there was no motive to say it was all a bunch of bunk.

Listen to how 12 billion in Australia was spent on something that was not going to happen.

Listen to how even the public funded ABC radio spent our money over reacting to hysteria by building a bunker that the senior ABC staff hid in on years day....the cowards...LOL.

Now lets hear about global warming ABC?

Nothing left to discuss, the world is doomed if we do not over react and over react NOW? It is all fact now, nothing left to discuss, the only thing left to do tax the heck out out of everything we do, and then redistribute this wealth of Australian citizens to poor countries? Sure you got this one right too ABC?

http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl

Oh, great now we have climate change deniers on DOL [sIGH!] Surely you have enough of cyberspace to troll. Leave the dogs alone!

Di

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Y2K didn't impact you because people reacted to the hysteria - hundreds of millions were spent fixing REAL errors. If they had just ignored it, you might not have been able to take money out of the bank, have electricity etc.

My understanding that the "In the News" section was for news about dogs. Off Topic is for people to talk about climate change, who Lara Bingle is dating etc.

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I was on call for potential Y2K disasters like our office security failing. I had to have a special survival kit for it. I'm very glad it didn't have the impact anticipated but when you are a big organisation it would be negligent to not do any risk management planning. Given the ABC is a 24 hour service I guess the bunker was to protect staff and possibly some precious files if something did happen. How would we be feeling if something did happen? The big govt building I work in now has lots of basement bunker type rooms but I doubt they'll be inviting me into them - I'm not important enough!

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Be prepared, thats a good boy scout motto, heck a bunker would make a tiptop wine cellar at any rate..

Stock up on the vino.

So what to do with this bunker now, ABC should store their wine in it you say? You must have a lot more money to throw around than me to be so happy about your tax dollars being waisted.

Maybe they can use it as a crypt for the first 30,000 Australian farmers who are driven off their land by the Greens?

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Y2K didn't impact you because people reacted to the hysteria - hundreds of millions were spent fixing REAL errors. If they had just ignored it, you might not have been able to take money out of the bank, have electricity etc.

My understanding that the "In the News" section was for news about dogs. Off Topic is for people to talk about climate change, who Lara Bingle is dating etc.

Money well spent on a Y2K bunker? You have to wonder why Seattle and the Silcon Valley where not privey to the need of Y2K bunkers, not as savy about computor programs as ABC I guess.

This is not off topic. It is the members of the chruch of Global Warming who want all Australians to not have pets (or cows or sheep or horses or pigs or..blablabla). To save the planet we must be green go veg! (and only imported veggies, as we have to save our rivers and restore farm land back to native bush. If you are going to be a good greenie and want to save the planet from global warming, you must act now! So have you, as a devote to the church, given up your dog for the cause yet?

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Want to hear some real shock and horror, listen to the ABC radio segment from this morning.

Listen how there was no motive to say it was all a bunch of bunk.

Listen to how 12 billion in Australia was spent on something that was not going to happen.

Listen to how even the public funded ABC radio spent our money over reacting to hysteria by building a bunker that the senior ABC staff hid in on years day....the cowards...LOL.

Now lets hear about global warming ABC?

Nothing left to discuss, the world is doomed if we do not over react and over react NOW? It is all fact now, nothing left to discuss, the only thing left to do tax the heck out out of everything we do, and then redistribute this wealth of Australian citizens to poor countries? Sure you got this one right too ABC?

http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl

Oh, great now we have climate change deniers on DOL [sIGH!] Surely you have enough of cyberspace to troll. Leave the dogs alone!

Di

Ohh scary a denier. Remember Rudd's speech at Lowy.

He stated that Australian citizens (approx 2/3 rds of the population) who questioned Rudd's opinion and his Tax donation to world redistribution solution on climate change were radicals and dangerous persons (sounds like some thing the leader of China would say to whip the masses back in to line eh?).

I was waiting for the announcement of the 'Report a Denier' hot line.

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What's the big deal about being prepared just in case? I see no harm in being more energy efficient and using the clothes line instead of the dryer, and walking to work instead of driving. :D

I'm not sure what to believe anymore these days, but better safe than sorry as far as I'm concerned.

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The main problem with climate change is not that it is happening - it does go in cycles. But how fast it is happening this time around. Ie the climate is changing too fast for most creatures to adapt. Possibly too fast for humans to adapt. We don't really know yet.

It is certainly too fast for some humans to adapt as we get more wild storms, floods and droughts - more often than usual. So squillions of people are dying.

The last time the climate changed this fast - the dinosaurs died out (mostly). Only the resourceful, adaptable, low energy critters survived.

The best thing we could do to prevent or slow climate change is slow the human population growth eg get the pope to approve birth control would be a good start. The earth has finite resources and we cannot continue forever to pollute and take and burn everything, without learning to use what we have with renewable energy eg solar - is going to last a lot longer than coal, and recycling.

Not all greenies are extremist. We can't eat without farmers, but more farmers could use Earth friendly methods. And more and more are finding it is profitable to do so.

As for the Murray - you think what has already happened to dairy and fruit farmers in SA won't spread up stream - you'd be wrong. We need both ends of the basin working so that when crops fail in one area from storms then the other area can pick up the slack. But if you kill the southern end of the Murray Basin off (it was dead as far as Tailem Bend, and Barmera, and looking quite fetid round Berri / Remark), and the northern end gets hit by cyclones and there is a fuel price spike - what are we going to eat then?

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'The last time the climate changed this fast - the dinosaurs died out. the climate is changing too fast for most creatures to adapt. Possibly too fast for humans to adapt. We don't really know yet. It is certainly too fast for some humans to adapt as we get more wild storms, floods and droughts - more often than usual. So squillions of people are dying. '

I don't see any meteors crashing to earth, I do not see thousands of miles of earth incinerated in seconds, nor do I see all the sun light blocked out from debris in the air, no masses of debris falling from the sky around the world. No massive die off of of all vegetation on the planet. Squillions of people are not dying from an dramatic change in climate.

Come on, get a grip. I know it makes for good dramatics, shock and horror to act like today is just like the time of the extinction of the dinos. But the reality check is, we are not experiencing anything even like what happened when a massive asteroid was believed to have collided with the earth 64 billion years ago.

But as I asked before, if you are a true believer, have you gotten rid of your dog/s yet (each one equal to carbon foot print of one 4 wheel drive sports vehicle a year)? If you really believe the sky is falling and want to save the planet, then the time to act is now before it is too late, no sacrifice is too great to stop world wide devastation and the rapid extinction of the human race...eh?

(did you hear Gore has bought yet another huge ocean front part time home/property...LOL, but even more amazing is anyone would believe a word this x vice pres who is heavily financially invested in selling carbon!)

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