Monday, Nov 15, 1999
US Roundup
Simha Simha is a opinionated Cyber Lion in the Pink Panther vein. |
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What's Wrong with Us?
This has been an eventful fortnight where the ludicurous battled with the macabre for greater limelight and won! The ludicurous was the Pope's visit to India and his call to proselytize; a topic that I am not going to dwell on any further since it has drawn so many rants and raves on US based discussion forums.
The macabre was the death and destruction unleashed in Orissa by the most powerful storm in recorded history. That too is not something to talk about. It is, however, certainly something to introspect about and perhaps do something about. Remember, it is the Indian government's policy not to appeal to the rest of the world for help when faced with a natural calamity. The policy is based on a strong sense of national pride and brotherhood. Let us do our bit to justify the policy.
To the aggravated Hindus and Christians my appeal is - let the truth that we are Indians first and foremost prevail for now. Later, maybe we can seek permission from the Vatican to allow a delegation of Hindu holy men to visit the Vatican and issue an appeal from there to the Chritian world world at large to join the Hindu faith or be damned in Hell!!
The Millenium Countdown
Despite the huge amount of money and effort that has been invested into Y2K remediation a certain sense of apprehension continues to prevade, even here in the US. The cause for it is neither difficult to fathom nor easy to dismiss. Protagonist of the "All will be well" scenario assume
(a) All Y2K remediation work was identified.
(b) The remediation work was correctly implemented.
While the above contentions maybe largely true in respect of commercial applications, its hard not to be skeptical about their applicability to operating system level software that runs radars, communication equipment, automated production machinry, navigation computers, control centres...the list is endless. Cosidering how fast technology has progressed it is hard to believe that there is even documentation of the realtime software that runs a large part of this world now, let alone programmers to rectify the Y2K flaws. The older the machinery / software the more suspect it must be and that makes me think more about India than the US!
Even with commercial software the above contentions maybe too optimistic. Even the most rigourous quality assurance processes cannot ensure flawless functioning of any software upon release. There are always the imponderables, that make software development challenging and life in general so interesting. Personally, having been closely associated with both the American and Indian software practices, I have my doubts the work done has been as good we would all would like to believe.
I think there is a lot at at stake here. Not just reputation of Indian software companies. (Indeed, it maynot just be their reputation that takes a bashing if things don't go that well; their bottom lines could easily collapse into a pool of red given the penchant for lawsuits here in the US!) There is real potential for disruption of daily life when the millenium rolls over. While aircraft are not likely to fall out the skys (Which incidently is not a strage phenomenon these days!), communication and power disruptions could occur and have the potential for fuelling panic. The real danger is going to come from within us, from flaws in our mental software rather the Y2K bugs which I suspect are still out there.
We will bitch again...
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