Internet coordination effort for the New Year

Thu Nov 18 21:57:49 UTC 1999

> Perhaps most worrisome is I've seen several "consultants" recommending to
> customers to shutdown their e-mail over the new year's weekend.  Unfortunately
> this could create a mail jam, and a large traffic load when they turn the e-mail
> back on the following Monday.
The   most crazy idea is to do something non-standard (such as turn off
computer, etc etc) in the Ney Year night. People (just as this _consultants_) do
not understand that Y2K danger is not the danger   of new year moment when real
time systems (including kernels etc etc) can work withouth any troubles because
this system never use splitted form of the dates (they use the
number-of-seconds-since-XXX instead). Y2K problem is really the human problem
and the problem of the accounting and billing systems which converts dates to
the splitted, human-readable forms, or use the dates to generate file names,
search keys etc etc. The problems begin after the new year   weekend when a
croud of humans attempt to retrieve some information or fill in some forms;

I think the real-time Y2K troubles we'll have   in new year   night will be 99%
caused by this crazy leaded humans who turn off computers, refuse to follow
their habits, etc etc...