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A L S O__T O D A Y 21st Log Gassee says Microsoft is full of Be-S   T A B L E__T A L K Gossip travels fast in the land of chat rooms and e-mail forwarding. Discuss rumors and hoaxes online in Table Talk's Digital Culture area   Search for technology books, software and more at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author     R E C E N T L Y Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Why is it so hard to find a valid yardstick for measuring Web traffic? (02/05/99) Night of the living day traders By Dana Blankenhorn Meet the new breed of Net-obsessed, short-term stock traders (02/04/98) Aliens blew up my garbage dump! By Andrew Leonard SimCity is back -- and managing municipal utilities has never been so much fun (02/03/99) First Amendment wins another round online By Janelle Brown Court rules against Net censorship bill (02/02/99) The resurrection of Golgotha By Howard Wen Volunteer programmers rescue a defunct company's software -- and produce a do-it-yourself tool for building 3-D games (02/01/99) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST FEATURES ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - -

Lawyers, guns, money? PUNDITS AND INSIDERS REVEAL THEIR PERSONAL PREPARATIONS FOR THE Y2K DISASTER. BY JANELLE BROWN | What are you doing to prepare for Y2K? Expect to hear this question a lot over the next 327 days -- that is, if you haven't already. Millennium Bug paranoia is now officially running rampant throughout the mainstream media, as "60 Minutes" and Vanity Fair alike warn of potentially dire consequences (power grids down! stock market crashes! riots and looting!) if that nasty computer glitch isn't fixed immediately. The catch, of course, is that no one actually knows what to expect on Jan. 1, 2000. Various Y2K experts predict everything from total disaster to mere minor glitches. Still, survivalists and angst-ridden geeks have long been stocking up on beans, guns and gold. And now they're being joined by "experts" as diverse as Leonard Nimoy and the Utne Reader, which is distributing Y2K preparation guides complete with shopping lists and community-building advice. How to gauge what's really in store? Rather than turn to the pundits for more general predictions, we decided to ask technology industry leaders, Internet insiders and journalist experts what their personal Y2K plans were. We already know that throngs of systems administrators will be spending New Year's Eve 1999 baby-sitting corporate networks and praying that nothing goes kablooey. We've heard all the press releases about corporate progress toward Y2K readiness. But what are people's plans -- if any -- for themselves, their homes, their finances and their families? Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly & Associates Am I preparing? Not particularly. However, if the religious right continues to get active about this issue, I will start to worry, because we may then end up having to defend ourselves from survivalist gangs who are creating a crisis because they fear it. Really, the fact that churches are starting to run Y2K seminars is the thing that I find the scariest. As a technical problem, Y2K is a pain in the butt, and something that is soaking up a lot of MIS time and energy that could be spent on better things. But ultimately, it's not a lot more trouble than spring cleaning on a worldwide scale. Cleanup from our various environmental sins, or nuclear waste storage, are much bigger problems. And global warming gives me the willies every time I open the paper ... But Y2K has a name that invokes millennial fears, and has a nice ring for everyone to get worked up about. Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert I've heard that many people are hoarding cash and food just in case civilization collapses. My strategy is to hoard guns and ammo so I can take the cash and food from the people who didn't do a good job thinking through the "collapse of society" concept. I don't expect much trouble from computer malfunctions. But I do think there will be so many nut-jobs trying to kill themselves that the air will be thick with stray bullets. And I suspect the residents of inner cities will take the opportunity to loot stores if the lights so much as flicker. The biggest Y2K risk is that the impeachment hearings will be over and no famous people will have killed anyone lately. The media will be forced to blow the Y2K "threat" into huge proportions in order to attract viewers. That in turn will make the fake crisis a real one, which can only mean one thing: more media stories analyzing whether the media is doing the wrong thing. I'm actually hoping a celebrity slays someone just so we can get better news programs in December. N E X T_ P A G E .|. Hot parties, "sporadic food riots" or "a decade of economic depression"?