************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** I've been getting a lot of emails lately from readers wanting to know about the Year 2000 (Y2K) bug. "Should I give my Windows PC to my grandmother and buy a Y2K ready IMac?" No. IMacs are ugly. "Should I buy Y2K ready software?" No. Get a contract job and steal what you need from work. But please, leave the manuals. "Should I hunker down in my basement Dec 31, 1999 and guard my possessions?" That's the way I personally spend every New Year's Eve, I don't see why this one should be any different. Oh yeah, my lawyer advises me to state nothing I say in this column about Y2K should be taken as sensible advice. But if you ask me and not my lawyer, I say maybe take a couple hundred bucks out of your bank account to tide you over for a few days. You never know. Here's my Y2K Doom's Day scenario. When the calendar rolls over to a two digit year 00, an ancient, forgotten line of COBOL code calculates you've been dead for forty years, closes down your bank account, and transfers the funds to bank shareholders. Your credit cards cease working because card readers with embedded systems think your cards expired some time around when Norway gained independence from Sweden (1905). Two days later back ups come on line, everything returns to normal except in Quebec. The geeks responsible lose their jobs, move to the States, and make US$200K fixing Y2K bugs, whether real or imagined, for the next five years. For all your troubles, your bank will host a "Sorry About the Mess" day at your local branch and serve up free coffee and cookies. Nothing is too good for a loyal customer. You will get a letter in June explaining service charges went up to pay for the Y2K bug and all the shortbread you scarfed down. Beyond that, I figure disruptions in our so-called normal lives should be minimal. The financial industry woke up to the Y2K problem years ago. If I can tear myself away from IRC's #toronto and #korea21+ chat rooms long enough, I may top up the gas tank and buy some candles and tins of cocktail wieners just to be on the safe side. The conspiracy crowd, however, has a different idea. They always do. The Y2K bug is no bug. It's all part of a planned Armageddon. Oh yes. The conspiracy nuts believe that unseen forces are trying to push North America into a state of anarchy so martial law can be declared, the constitution can be suspended, a one world government can be set up, and United Nations troops can start interring patriotic gun owners in concentration camps. Although the Y2K problem has been a major computer industry concern for a decade, its only been in the past year that the marginal types on alt.conspiracy have begun weaving the millennium bug into their vast tapestry of evil political, satanic, and extraterrestrial machinations. It's a wonder they didn't catch on earlier. I suspect these pipe-bomb making conspiracy nuts had to wait until they had enough remaining fingers to do the complex math of single digit subtraction. I'll say this again, dust the gun powder OFF the pipe threads before you screw the cap on. For a peek at some of this Y2K nuttiness, see the Millennium: The New World Order page at home.pacbell.net/mcivr/miscella2_articles.html. Even wackier is the Millennium Computer Bug & NWO page at www.mt.net/~watcher/cosmic.html. You can get a good grasp of the logic these people use by reading the later page's "Arizona Concentration Camps" link. Its a hilarious analysis of how a baseball park is really being readied as a concentration camp. If you really think society is going to take longer than normal to bounce back after computers lose track of your Club Z points (I have half a million), there's a survivalist page at www.doubleought.com that will teach you exactly what kind of legal documents and guns you need to turn your mobile home into a sovereign state. Capitalizing on wide-spread paranoia is always a quick way of making a buck. Probably one of the more clever ideas is found at the Alpine Survival Foods web page (www.webpak.net/~survival/index.html). Society is going to collapse in January. Winter. That doesn't mean you have to dig for tubers. Alpine Survival Foods is marketing a line of gourmet survival foods that will nourish even the most discriminating tastes trapped on a mountain side 17,000 feet above sea level or during a forced march in the dead of winter to an Arizona concentration camp.