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CIA predicts serious world-wide Y2K problems 59

Posted by sengan from the food-storage-space-needed dept.
Stradivarius writes "CNN has an interesting article about the CIA's prediction that there will be serious Y2K issues around the globe. "
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CIA predicts serious world-wide Y2K problems More

CIA predicts serious world-wide Y2K problems

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  • FEMA (Score:1)

    by gavinhall ( 33 )
    Posted by The Orge Captain:

    hmm
    as it would happen (and not by choice) I also live in alberta canada. It would seem though that your statments are verry general and not rooted in truth. It isnt fair or possible to compare the crime rate of any city in Alberta to any major city in the us because we have less people in this province than are in most major america cities. Also saying that we have a lower crime rate then any major us city is ignorant.

    If you compare cities of equal size such as my own Lethbridge with 60,000 people to Boulder Colorado with 80,000 people even though it is bigger it has a fewer murder in 1995 or 6 bouldor had a 1 murder(and the national trend is for a drop in the murder rate) lethbridge wich is smaller has an average of 7 per year. We on average as a country have a lower rate of murder then the united states however this is due to the fact that it is impossible to get a handgun hear comparatively to the ease at wich one can be purchased in the united sates. If we were to make it as easy to get guns in canada we would probbilby end up with a comparble murder rate.

    Now you can say that you can walk down the streets at night, well you can when you live in the suburbs would you walk down the streets of downtown calgary late at night?

    Taking fredoms away is not the soloution to societys problems (Ask the communists how well that works) people will just find away to do what they want, most of the time causing more harm then they would if they were to just be allowed.

    Wow the goverment cant decrypt or files ? They never could. If i want to cary a gun, smoke crack, or speed then I should be able to. These things are outlawed for the greater good of society (You call it an evil I call it population control) i think that we shouldnt outlaw these things, but increase the consequences for harming others then you will see results.

    Im not an anarchist you see, my views on the world are just views i use them to see how I can crack the system so to speak. If you think your going to change anything then your setting yourself up for a big nasty surprise its basic human nature that is the problem not any matter of political policy or otherwise.

  • >Not only was this drug-addled rubbish bumped up to one

    Everyone but ACs gets a 1 score by default, no moderators were involved.
  • It's always struck me as odd how someone could want to use Linux, then oppose gun ownership. Both stand for self reliance.

    The police have no responsibility to protect you as an individual, just as proprietary software has no responsibility to fix individual bugs that cause your system to fail. The point is that if all else fails, you have the means to take care of yourself.

    When there were riots in LA, the police stayed away from the area. The stores that *didn't* get looted were the ones with the owners sitting on the roofs w/ rifles. When the system fails, and chaos ensues (whenever there's a 'state of emergency', looters tend to come out of the woodwork), having a means of protecting yourself is vital.
  • The major Y2K disasters will be induced by people, not machines (at least in this country). If the power goes out in parts of China and all of India, the natives will say "so whats new?".

    It will be little things, like non-Y2K compliant date codes and inventory/shipping software used by food packagers and distributors, that will cause many small problems.

    Whats the expiration date of your Milk? Is the date printed with 4 digits? Now, check the barcode - is it coded in 4 digits or did some programming dweeb code the barcode in 2 digits and print the human readable version with 19%d ???? I've seen this done on boxes of meat. A few stupid mistakes in the distribution chain and you've got 5000 people with food poisoning.
  • Oh yeah... all of a sudden the spooks are credible public experts on techology issues. Is it just me, or is it really suspicious for a group that thrives on disorder and disruption to be peddling more crap scare-stories to the ignorant public? CIA + FEMA + y2k = ... you do the math.
  • OK, if you know [newstrolls.com]
    NewsTrolls
    you know I've been covering every aspect of Y2K info and news since we began and before that in HotWired Threads...


    YES, there's a LOT of BS...especially when it's put out by a consulting company that really just wants to farm out their consultants to you.


    BUT...no one, AND I MEAN NO ONE knows to what extent embedded chips and software programs may fail. Remediation and certification consists of patching, changing the date, taking a screen shot of the result and faxing it to whomever in the company as proof of compliance. Do you think every ramification of a program has been thought about and tested? And then we have programs which are "updated" by the users which then go back into testing... Combine that with people testing who only know how to test, not how the software/database/mainframe they're testing works, and I can say with assurance there are going to be problems overlooked.


    But panic? No.


    Look at it this way. What would be the type of daily-life preparation you'd have to do if at the same time you were preparing for a blizzard, a hurricane, and a 2 month trip into deepest Africa?


    Whatever you'd do for that scenario, do for Y2K.


    Where will I be? NYC with all the rest of the Wall Street geeks. As a matter of fact, I'm looking forward to it as all the major firms are shipping in their best techies from all around the country to be here in NYC for the date change to keep the economic infrastructure going. If nothing happens it's going to be the biggest geek-fest New Years party ever...




    --diva
  • I See...Problems! Problems Related to anything but computers. It's funny to watch those people acting if it is the end of the world...Well, they are the CIA, they make their living with things like this...
  • how bad it's going to be. I saw a Y2K page on my banks website claiming they would be Y2K compliant by 1 Jan 1999. Emailed them about it and got no response. Sent another (somewhat nasty) email and got a response saying that their 'internal' systems were Y2K compliant but they wouldn't be fully Y2K compliant until July. This morning I thought to myself, hell our Win NT machines don't even have reliable connections to out Netware server, we don't even have a reliable filesystem. I bet other firms are the same, how badly can Y2K bugs hurt us? Others days I fell like being far, very far from the big city come 1 Jan.

  • X-Files (Score:1)

    by Noke ( 8971 )
    Turn off X-files and go outside.
  • Setting up your excuses in advance.

  • FEMA (Score:1)

    by PD ( 9577 )
    I'm afraid of paranoid nuts like you.

    That's why I'm an athiest and a liberal and not a gun owner. It's also why I use Linux. All of these things take a brain.
  • Oh yeah, I'm taking their word for it. These are the same people who made the world safe for democracy by installing dictators and death squads. I wouldn't trust their predictions for a football game much less the Year 2000 problem. A monkey with a typewriter could produce more accurate predictions than that bunch of icompetent malicious spooks. Consider that the people they pay for information get paid on the basis of the alarmist information they spread. This is like asking Hitler to chair a human rights commission in Kosovo. What a bunch of wankers!
  • If Y2K is such a problem why don't we have other problems?
    • Don't folks born before 1900 get social security checks?
      Don't records somehow account for these people born before 1900? There are still people born before 1900 living. So I don't think everyone will spontaneously combust after midnight 2000.
    • What about thirty year mortgage loans?
      Now here's a big problem. By some miracle my mortgage payments were calculated correctly and my payment schedules are accurate. How can this be possible?

    My only conclusion is that Y2K has already been dealt with for many important issues. I think the biggest issue is the users/operators. I have software at work that only usees two-digits. But I can deal with that, by checking my results.

    ~afniv
    "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
    "We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
  • > "Rest assured, although there will be increasing
    > unpredictability and some degradation in some
    > systems, the armed forces will be ready to
    > ensure national security before, on and after
    > the Year 2000," Hamre said.
  • >There is another date earlier that I can't remember.

    A few weeks ago the airlines & hotels started acceping reservations for 1/1/2000. From what I heard there were absoloutly no problems with it, so things are gooking good for the big Y2K.
    --
  • All the pols in DC, from Clinton to Lott to
    almost all of 'em, are beating the drums for
    another big military buildup right now. So
    now that they can't have the annual sightings
    of Russky warships off the east coast when the
    defense budget gets taken up in Congress, we
    have this instead.

    Otherwise, old, old news.

    signed,
    member of Portland Year 2000 Ready Group since 9/97

    --------
  • The Truth



    When looking to future, we look to the past to lead us to the future. In 1929 we had a stock market crash, FACT. Now we find our selves looking upon another problem in our society called y2k. Some groups of people have taken extreme measures in dealing with y2k adding to the problem. More and more people are starting to see that the real problem is in people and there ability to deal with a change in situation. In 1929 after the stock market crash, the real crash occurred that threw the world in to the Great Depression. People pulled the money from the banks and started a global economic collapse that spawned Hitler and WWII.
    More Fact. 1999 Australia and the USA are producing billions of dollars Extra Currency in preparation of Y2k. (CNN) And of course the Canadian and US Marshal Law plans. SCARY FACTS. And the WORLDS FOOD SUPPLY............

    Now we come to 1999, and we as a race seem to regard a new millenium as a major change, instilling fear in some, FACT. Western Civilization approximately 1000ad. GREAT FACT. That's a awful lot of smoke for no fire. (Pun Intended). The Wonderful Cults at work. (See Disclaimer). Another Pun

    Only Opinion I have
    It's a lot of wasted energy. If we put as much in to making peace instead of war, panics like these, cults and ourselves and instead focus on the Race (HUMAN). We would have probably colonized half the solar system by now. "Got Of the Mud Ball" Only Opion I will give. We have wasted our selves bombing countries where all we care about is the oil while letting another starve because of it government in our side of the mud ball and traded with one in the other. WE ARE FUCKED. No Not By China or any other country but by our own stupidly. Its time to unify and get off the mud ball. Please? (See Disclaimer).

    Back to the Fact

    Now lets look at probilty. Before the Challenger Accident NASA put the odds at 1 in 100,000. After the Shuttle crashed the odds dropped to 1 in 123, ( I believe this is the figure or close to it, www.Nukefix.org was down). INTERSTING FACT. Now were back to good old y2k. A possible crash that could be as sever as The Great Depression. Not From the Crash but from the People. Now Factor in all the variables I've named
    The Odds are there for a lot of Devastating Possibilities. Random Chance....



    Isolation the SlapHappyHacker
    "problems are everywhere, this is just one"
    Disclaimer
    I will leave off any mention of USA NATO THE EU CIS UN or any other Sovran nation so I wont get branded a millenium cults or anarchist. I HAVE NO HARM INTEANDED TO ANYONE. 1St BABY. And of course if anything I say in here is wrong, HEY FREE SPEACH, its Hard to Remember everything from 17 years. (See Below) Anything that doesn't harm anyone I clam under the Church of Recurrent Tragedy's. 1st and 2nd I am a 17-year-old punk kid that cant die for my country and will (not by my choice) if it doesn't change soon. I'm a citizen of the planet. Note To G. Carlen yes this constitutes a tragedy if it works. "Welcome to the Fucking Fractal baby." "Your Clock is skewed". "Oh Yeah, Well the math is wrong". Don't brand me as nuts I still have a long life left I hope (See First Sentence).
    Bibliography
    The InterNet
    The Bible
    Zen and other Religions
    Life
    The Media
    Drugs
    Linux
    Lots of Drugs
    Lack of Sex
    And NOT SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!



  • e-mail me at slaphappy_@hotmail.com if you agree


  • The Truth



    When looking to future, we look to the past to lead us to the future. In 1929 we had a stock market crash, FACT. Now we find our selves looking upon another problem in our society called y2k. Some groups of people have taken extreme measures in dealing with y2k adding to the problem. More and more people are starting to see that the real problem is in people and there ability to deal with a change in situation. In 1929 after the stock market crash, the real crash occurred that threw the world in to the Great Depression. People pulled the money from the banks and started a global economic collapse that spawned Hitler and WWII.
    More Fact. 1999 Australia and the USA are producing billions of dollars Extra Currency in preparation of Y2k. (CNN) And of course the Canadian and US Marshal Law plans. SCARY FACTS. And the WORLDS FOOD SUPPLY............

    Now we come to 1999, and we as a race seem to regard a new millenium as a major change, instilling fear in some, FACT. Western Civilization approximately 1000ad. GREAT FACT. That's a awful lot of smoke for no fire. (Pun Intended). The Wonderful Cults at work. (See Disclaimer). Another Pun

    Only Opinion I have
    It's a lot of wasted energy. If we put as much in to making peace instead of war, panics like these, cults and ourselves and instead focus on the Race (HUMAN). We would have probably colonized half the solar system by now. "Got Of the Mud Ball" Only Opion I will give. We have wasted our selves bombing countries where all we care about is the oil while letting another starve because of it government in our side of the mud ball and traded with one in the other. WE ARE FUCKED. No Not By China or any other country but by our own stupidly. Its time to unify and get off the mud ball. Please? (See Disclaimer).

    Back to the Fact

    Now lets look at probilty. Before the Challenger Accident NASA put the odds at 1 in 100,000. After the Shuttle crashed the odds dropped to 1 in 123, ( I believe this is the figure or close to it, www.Nukefix.org was down). INTERSTING FACT. Now were back to good old y2k. A possible crash that could be as sever as The Great Depression. Not From the Crash but from the People. Now Factor in all the variables I've named
    The Odds are there for a lot of Devastating Possibilities. Random Chance....



    Isolation the SlapHappyHacker
    "problems are everywhere, this is just one"
    Disclaimer
    I will leave off any mention of USA NATO THE EU CIS UN or any other Sovran nation so I wont get branded a millenium cults or anarchist. I HAVE NO HARM INTEANDED TO ANYONE. 1St BABY. And of course if anything I say in here is wrong, HEY FREE SPEACH, its Hard to Remember everything from 17 years. (See Below) Anything that doesn't harm anyone I clam under the Church of Recurrent Tragedy's. 1st and 2nd I am a 17-year-old punk kid that cant die for my country and will (not by my choice) if it doesn't change soon. I'm a citizen of the planet. Note To G. Carlen yes this constitutes a tragedy if it works. "Welcome to the Fucking Fractal baby." "Your Clock is skewed". "Oh Yeah, Well the math is wrong". Don't brand me as nuts I still have a long life left I hope (See First Sentence).
    Bibliography
    The InterNet
    The Bible
    Zen and other Religions
    Life
    The Media
    Drugs
    Linux
    Lots of Drugs
    Lack of Sex
    And NOT SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!



    if you think I'm right e-mail me @ slaphappy_@hotmail.com
  • yes 95 does suck and i dont like the drugs but the drugs like me
  • The funny thing is that he said we don't need to worry about accidental launchings, but watch out if you live near a silo becaus they're a bit worried about what will happen to the missiles while they're still on the ground!
  • This is the same government "intelligence" agency that didn't know Pakistan and India were going to test nuclear weapons. Their shoddy record prompted Rep. James Traficant of Ohio to state in 1997:

    Mr. Speaker, the Senate is about to confirm another director of the CIA, even though America found out about the collapse of the Soviet Union on CNN. America learned of the fall of the Berlin Wall on CNN. America found out about Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait on CNN. After all this, Congress keeps pouring billions of dollars into that big sinkhole called the Central Intelligence Agency. I say, with a track record like that, Congress does not need a Committee on the Budget; Congress needs a proctologist.

    I think the record is real clear. Congress should fire the CIA and hire CNN. Maybe we will learn what is happening in the world.

  • From what I've seen, in great disasters that take place throughout the world, human innovation and energy can correct many problems in a short amount of time. I agree, however, that the threat of people "flipping out" and joining some sort of mass hysteria may be more of a problem. We seem to be good at fixing many things, except ourselves.
  • I fail to see how Nuclear Reactors missles rely on a correct date to funcion properly. Can anybody explain this to me?
  • Makes sense, thanks for answering my question. It still seems like a trivial problem. Sure, it's important to fix but it's not the end of the world by a long shot.

  • I don't remember where I found this site - might have been here, but check out

    http://www.duh-2000.com/

    .. for piles of Yk2-compliant humor (the Y2k-ready bread slicer wins my vote).

    /rs
  • Too many people believe the Constitution is valid... but most of those people would willingly give it up to get a little bit of security from the Man. Bill Clinton himself has said that we "need" to give up our basic freedoms in the face of new threats to our security. And look what's happening. If there were no support for this Constitution of ours, what's the point of establishing martial law in the first place?

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