The DC Y2K Weather Reports cover the Y2K situation before it happens. Essentially this is the news from a few months in the future. The DC Weather Reports have had an almost perfect record of prediction. The historic record is cached in the various webpages and mirror sites.

We have been wrong. I expected that billing rates for IT consultants would spin up past $100/hour in 1998, it just barely touched that number for experts. One of our writers expected the stock market to melt down in the fall of 1998, it rose to an all time high. We have been wrong because we overestimated the intelligence of the sheeple. This is a good lesson for us, don't bet on people to do the smart thing.

We have been wrong but we have been right more times than anyone else.

But the WRPs haven't been crystal ball predictions. Here's how it works. Unlike most of the other websites and Y2K observers, commentators, and reporters, cory hamasaki and the other contributors to the Weather Reports have substantive experience wit h software. Significantly more experience than in any other media.

Yes, these days everone is a computer expert and is happy to tell you so. Here at DC Y2K WRP central, we've done this stuff for decades. This isn't detonating a pomposity bomb, this is telling it like it is. Take a look at the other sites, ask them if they understand automata theory and have written modifications to the IBM mainframe operating system.

The WRPs take a look at what's happening inside industry. We talk to and correspond with IT experts, the real experts, the geek boyz and grrrls in the trenches who do the real work. Unlike other venues, the WRPs bring you the raw reality from the For tune 5,000, shortcutting the fluff artists, the mission mis-statements, and the yappers and yammers who happy-talk and spin the story until it's white bread, cotton candy, and by god, we're 'merican's and there's always a happy ending.

Sorry. 40,000 people die in automobile accidents each year in the U.S.. There are several million taken to their blue Valhalla by cancer, heart disease, strokes, influenza, and other common diseases that are exacerbated by bad diet, lack of exercise , smoking and environmental factors. Facts of life folk. Bad stuff happens on a regular basis and stirring music and TeeVee doesn't change it.

Y2K is real, problems are brewing, and we'd have been better off if some alarmist action had been taken in 1997.

The goal of the WRPs is not to tell you what to do. I don't have an answer. My area of expertise is large complex systems, not embeddeds, not power generation, not transport, not survivalism, not guns, not food storage, not financial planning. Oc casionally some of the WRPs will touch on these topics but that's a periperal issue, more noticing that I personally have a handful of gold coins, I wonder if they'll be useful. Or musing that there are 120 rounds of .223 secured in the office safe.

Read the WRPs for insight into the IT industry and the trigger to the collapse... if that's what happens.

Here are the facts. The large systems have not been fixed. They will fail. It will take months or years to fix them. Disruptions of some kind will occur. You can infer that the statements that "all is well" are mis-informed opinion, well meaning but incorrect statements, or diabolical lies.

Read the WRPs for a close look at the unwinding. Notice that the popular press, TV, magazines, are lagging about 3-6 months behind the WRPs. The WRPs aren't really predicting things, we're reporting events in real-time rather than after a what-h uh, what-huh, what-huh, cycle at a news organization. You've seen it, the reporter says "Y2K"; the editor says "huh?" and by the time they decide that the problem is real, collect the information, write and review the story, 3-6 mont hs has passed.

WRP subscriptions. The WRPs are free on the web but this may change. At some point, we may simply close off memberships and stop distribution except to existing members. Another possibility is to insert a delay into the distribution. Currently, the print members receive their copies after the electronic distribution. That's because of the time to print, mail, and deliver the print copy.

One possibility is to close off the main site except to subscribers and allow the managers of the mirror sites to release the WRPs a month or two after the members have their copies. I'm not sure what is fair or best for everyone. I believe that the member/subscribers joined because they want to help get the word out and not to keep anyone else from getting a free copy of the WRPs.