That Y2K was way overblown and a conjob/scam. If you remember well, the media et al were saying that airplane engines would stop working and they would fall to the ground, personal cars and trucks and public buses wouldn't start up in the morning-after, so no one would be able to travel, appliances would not work so we wouldn't be able to feed ourselves, wash our clothes or heat our homes. The BS list just went on and on. The scare was out there and people "wasted" money on buying survival kits. None of this was ever going to happen.

My brother worked for Detroit Edison as an engineer during this time and he laughed at all the scare tactics out there. He said the same thing that Deadly Ernest has been saying, that outside of some accounting/banking code and legacy mainframe programs, we were not going to feel anything like we were hearing on the news. And he was right.

I find it a bit disingenuous the way the many so-called IT professionals are misrepresenting what Deadly Ernest has said. I've read several replies that claim that he said that NOTHING was going to happen and then these same posters claim the Y2K was a success because of all the preparedness that was done prior.

Well, first of all, I haven't read that Deadly Ernest claimed that nothing would happen; he's always claimed that only some accounting/banking software and some legacy mainframe applications would have been affected. That's hardly saying that NOTHING will happen. And regarding the legacy codes and applications that were updated to modern during this scare, it's also a bit disingenuous to claim that that made Y2K a success. I wouldn't claim that a bold-face lie, reported by the media, that got my procrastinating manager/CIO/CFO/CEO et al to finally get off his kiester to finally agree to update an antiquated code/software/application/hardware et al to something more modern as being a success. These guys should, by definition of their trade and their title, know the wisdom of upgrading versus using out-dated, vulnerable and antiquted systems.

If we're going to measure the social engineering effects of a mass-spread lie, then yes, I suppose you could claim that Y2K was a success - a success in social engineering but not in system failures.

Again, as Deadly Ernest has pointed out, 50-60% of worldwide systems were not tested or checked, and they did not fail. The only systems that ever had a chance to fail, were some of the accounting/banking software and some older mainframes. That's it. Period. The rest of the FUD stirred up by the media was total BS. Don't confuse the media FUD with the serendipitous upgrading success of antiquated systems - it should have been done anyways by pro-active IT professional of the time, without all the BS and FUD of Y2K.