"foreword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burt Andrew - Noontide Night)
NOONTIDE NIGHT - Foreward
Foreword
It happens to the best of us. I'd been a professor of computer
science for a dozen years (and a professional programmer for
nearly 20) when I finally realized in 1997 that the "Y2K bug" was
going to be a serious problem. Until then I'd blithely ignored the
Y2K matter on the grounds that, with so much advance knowledge,
everybody would have it fixed well in advance. I regret now
that I told people not to worry, that at most there would be a few
messed up billing statements.
In 1997 it became clear to me that companies and governments
were not adequately dealing with the problem; and worse, that
even if they all began immediately, there were nowhere near
enough competent programmers in the world to get the job done
in time. To top that, nobody seemed to care. As of this writing in
May 1999, deadlines are slipping—"done by March 31" has
generally (and silently) become "done by June 30," or "September
30," or in some worrisome cases, "we'll be ready by December."
I've been in the business for a long time, and I know that date
slippage is the rule, not the exception. Most large projects (and
Y2K remediation of an entire company is a huge project) come in
very late. Often they are never completed at all. In the Y2K
context, "never completed at all" can only mean "out of business."
What's more, since all the companies and government agencies in
the world should be finishing at different times—those more on the
ball finishing first—there should be a significant percent that by
now have announced not "we will be ready by..." but instead "our
systems are ready, now." I'm not aware of any more than a
handful of such announcements; and many of those I've seen have,
with investigation, proven either to be "we will be ready by..."
statements in disguise, or blatantly false (they have demonstrable
Y2K bugs).
Now, I do not want to sound alarmist. I do not want to incite
anyone to panic. Entirely the opposite. I want to spread the
message that, at the personal level, everyone should BE PREPARED. Prepare much as you would for an earthquake, hurricane,
ice storm, or other large-scale natural disaster. Such preparation
is wise in any event, and fairly inexpensive. By being prepared,
fewer people will panic, and society will recover all the faster.
Please remember that this is a work of fiction. Fiction is about
"what if..." I certainly can't predict that anything in here will
happen in any similar way. I honestly hope that I'm terribly,
terribly wrong in my speculations. The primary purpose of fiction
is entertainment, and I've tried to spin a good yarn here. However,
I feel that all of these things are entirely possible; because of this, at
the end of this book is a non-fiction article that explores these
issues in greater depth and provides references, so you can judge
for yourself what amount of preparation you want to make.
But if I can urge you, the reader, to take one thing away from
this book, it is this message: GET PREPARED. Just in case.
I would like to thank my wife, Laura, for her patience and great ideas; the members of the Northern Colorado Writers' Workshop, particularly
Ed Bryant; Orson Scott Card, for his marketing advice; Sir Arthur C. Clarke, for faxing a cartoon that kept my spirits up in a dark hour; and the
dedicated members of the Critters on-line workshop (www.critters.org), especially Jonathon Sullivan, M.D., Ph.D., and Lucy Schmeidler, for their
invaluable contributions to both storytelling and realism. This book would not exist without them.
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NOONTIDE NIGHT - Foreward
Foreword
It happens to the best of us. I'd been a professor of computer
science for a dozen years (and a professional programmer for
nearly 20) when I finally realized in 1997 that the "Y2K bug" was
going to be a serious problem. Until then I'd blithely ignored the
Y2K matter on the grounds that, with so much advance knowledge,
everybody would have it fixed well in advance. I regret now
that I told people not to worry, that at most there would be a few
messed up billing statements.
In 1997 it became clear to me that companies and governments
were not adequately dealing with the problem; and worse, that
even if they all began immediately, there were nowhere near
enough competent programmers in the world to get the job done
in time. To top that, nobody seemed to care. As of this writing in
May 1999, deadlines are slipping—"done by March 31" has
generally (and silently) become "done by June 30," or "September
30," or in some worrisome cases, "we'll be ready by December."
I've been in the business for a long time, and I know that date
slippage is the rule, not the exception. Most large projects (and
Y2K remediation of an entire company is a huge project) come in
very late. Often they are never completed at all. In the Y2K
context, "never completed at all" can only mean "out of business."
What's more, since all the companies and government agencies in
the world should be finishing at different times—those more on the
ball finishing first—there should be a significant percent that by
now have announced not "we will be ready by..." but instead "our
systems are ready, now." I'm not aware of any more than a
handful of such announcements; and many of those I've seen have,
with investigation, proven either to be "we will be ready by..."
statements in disguise, or blatantly false (they have demonstrable
Y2K bugs).
Now, I do not want to sound alarmist. I do not want to incite
anyone to panic. Entirely the opposite. I want to spread the
message that, at the personal level, everyone should BE PREPARED. Prepare much as you would for an earthquake, hurricane,
ice storm, or other large-scale natural disaster. Such preparation
is wise in any event, and fairly inexpensive. By being prepared,
fewer people will panic, and society will recover all the faster.
Please remember that this is a work of fiction. Fiction is about
"what if..." I certainly can't predict that anything in here will
happen in any similar way. I honestly hope that I'm terribly,
terribly wrong in my speculations. The primary purpose of fiction
is entertainment, and I've tried to spin a good yarn here. However,
I feel that all of these things are entirely possible; because of this, at
the end of this book is a non-fiction article that explores these
issues in greater depth and provides references, so you can judge
for yourself what amount of preparation you want to make.
But if I can urge you, the reader, to take one thing away from
this book, it is this message: GET PREPARED. Just in case.
I would like to thank my wife, Laura, for her patience and great ideas; the members of the Northern Colorado Writers' Workshop, particularly
Ed Bryant; Orson Scott Card, for his marketing advice; Sir Arthur C. Clarke, for faxing a cartoon that kept my spirits up in a dark hour; and the
dedicated members of the Critters on-line workshop (www.critters.org), especially Jonathon Sullivan, M.D., Ph.D., and Lucy Schmeidler, for their
invaluable contributions to both storytelling and realism. This book would not exist without them.
back | next
home
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