IP: Crunch Time for Y2K Suppliers

From: believer@telepath.com
Subject: IP: Crunch Time for Y2K Suppliers
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 1998 11:22:46 -0600
To: believer@telepath.com

Source:  Wired
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/16035.html?3

Crunch Time for Y2K Suppliers
 by Declan McCullagh 

 4:00 a.m.5.Nov.98.PST
 The phones are already ringing when Steve
 Portela arrives at his office every morning.
 Orders are piling up as they never have before.
 Walton Feed, his bulk food company, doubled
 its workforce this year to 125 people and a new
 warehouse will open in late November. 

 It isn't enough. Orders placed today won't be
 delivered for six months. 

 "I'm falling further behind every day," Portela
 complains. 

 The source of Portela's woes? Widespread
 worries about the Year 2000 computer problem.
 The looming bug has sent thousands of
 Americans scrambling to load up on bulk food,
 generators, solar cells, and gold coins. Some of
 the products, if ordered today, won't arrive on a
 customer's doorstep until spring 1999. And
 delays are expected to grow. 

 Spikes in demand are nothing new to Portela.
 The Mount St. Helens eruption, the Los Angeles
 riots, and the last major California earthquake all
 spurred people into grabbing their credit cards
 and phoning Walton Feed. From a perch 6,000
 feet up in the Idaho mountains, the company
 has grown into one of the nation's largest bulk
 food suppliers. 

 But nervous jitters caused by those disruptions
 are peanuts compared to growing fears that Y2K
 will snarl electric power, telecommunications,
 and the banking system. 

 "Add it all together, and Y2K surpasses
 everything," Portela says. 

 This time it's not just survivalists stockpiling
 sealed barrels from Walton's extensive selection
 of wheat, rice, and other dried foods. 

 "It's common everyday folks, people just like
 you," Portela says of his customers. "We're not
 talking about any radical people." 

 Other food companies have similar bellyaches. 

 "The demand is amazing -- 99.99 percent of the
 people we deal with are preparing for Y2K," says
 Tamera Toups, office manager for
 Montana-based Peace of Mind Essentials." 

 Unlike Walton's, Peace of Mind Essentials
 doesn't boast a storeroom full of towering bins of
 grain. Instead, it places orders that are later
 filled by warehouses. Toups estimates volume
 has leapt 500 percent this year. 

 "If anyone doesn't have an order in by the end of
 April, their chances of getting it before 2000 are
 pretty slim," she said. "The window might be
 even smaller than that." 

You'll still be able to buy bulk food after next
 April, of course. America Inc., a food exporter,
 has plenty of it. But Walton Feed makes a niche
 product prized by Y2Kers: sealed 50-pound
 drums of food with the oxygen removed, a
 process that delays spoilage and eliminates
 grain-munching critters. A year's supply tips the
 scales at 600 pounds and costs $300, plus
 shipping. 

 Trying to procure a diesel generator, on the other
 hand, is shaping up to be increasingly difficult. 

 Loren Day, president of China Diesel Imports,
 spends a good portion of each day puzzling out
 how to crank out more and more generators to
 meet a swell of Y2K orders. Shipments of his
 company's most popular 8,000-watt model are
 already running six months behind. 

 "Orders are up about 1,000 percent since the
 first of the year," Day says. "And the amount of
 people who will want a generator now is nothing
 compared to the amount of people who will want
 a generator later." 

 Day, whose 50-person company is the largest
 US distributor of diesel generators, usually sells
 to rural customers who live beyond the reach of
 electric power lines. 

 "Now with this Y2K thing it's gone crazy," he
 said. He said he now has the both of the world's
 largest generator manufacturers running at near
 capacity to satisfy US demand. 

 Why don't Y2Kers simply pick up a $500
 gasoline generator at Home Depot or their local
 hardware store? Day believes they're so worried
 about the oft-criticized reliability of the portable
 units, that they're willing to pay diesel prices,
 starting at $1,750. 

 "The main thing is the longevity and fuel
 economy of the diesel," he said. Diesel fuel is
 an oil, so it keeps longer than gasoline, which
 spoils after a year. 

Those Y2K consumers who dread running out of
 fuel are also turning to renewable energy. 

 "We're totally swamped by Y2K," said Laura
 Myers, a sales representative for solar
 equipment distributor Sunelco. "We're beginning
 to see some lead times on some of our
 products. By next spring it's going to be insane."

 Sales at the Hamilton, Montana-based Sunelco
 have tripled because of Y2K, Myers said. She
 predicts that orders placed after next spring
 won't arrive until 2000. 

 "It's been a huge increase," said Davy Rippner, a
 vice president at Alternative Energy Engineering,
 a California-based firm. 

 "The things that we're out of and we can't keep
 in stock are the Baygen [hand-cranked] radios
 and the Russian-made hand-dynamo
 flashlights." 

 Then there are the full-blown home solar
 systems, which start at $3,000 and can range
 up to $30,000. 

 "A lot of small installers around the country that
 have been struggling to make a living are now
 booked for months in advance," said Karen
 Perez, who publishes Home Power magazine
 with her husband Richard from the couple's
 off-the-grid home outside of Ashland, Oregon. 

 The Perez family won't do anything to prepare for
 Y2K -- except spend time handling the sharp
 uptick in recent subscriptions to their magazine.

 "We're six miles from the nearest phone and
 power line," she said. "As far as Y2K with us,
 the only thing that I'm planning on doing
 personally is getting a stash of non-hybrid
 seeds." 

 Non-hybrid seeds are particularly prized by
 Y2Kers who stay up nights worrying that
 potential widespread computer crashes could
 disrupt food distribution. Most hardware store
 seeds are hybrid varieties. They grow well, but
 they can be sterile. 

 Since seeds from hybrid plants may not
 germinate, some Y2Kers are stockpiling the
 non-hybrid varieties. 

 "[We've been] getting calls about bulk seeds and
 buying in quantities and packing them for
 storage for some period of time," said Dave
 Smith, vice president of Seeds of Change in
 Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

 "We definitely think that there will be an
 increase in sales because of this problem." 

 Burt Blumert doesn't need to speculate. The
 Burlingame, California, company he owns,
 Camino Coin, has seen sales of precious metal
 coins double from last year because of Y2K
 jitters. "It's widespread now," Blumert said. 

 In May, Blumert began to run ads for a "Y2K Life
 Preserver," a $3,500 collection of coins that
 includes British gold sovereigns, silver dollars,
 and pre-1965 silver dimes and quarters. 

 He markets the collection as a kind of financial
 Y2K insurance policy, just in case banking
 glitches or more widespread problems call for a
 permanent currency. 

 "When people buy gold, they're dropping out,"
 he said. "This is the ultimate dropout, when the
 institutions themselves aren't working." 

 Copyright (c) 1994-98 Wired Digital Inc.
-----------------------
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is
distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and
educational purposes only. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
-----------------------


****************************************************
To subscribe or unsubscribe, email:
     majordomo@majordomo.pobox.com
with the message:
     (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address

or (un)subscribe ignition-point-digest email@address
****************************************************
www.telepath.com/believer
****************************************************

Seems to me that it would have been just as easy for "believer" to send the
URL to the story as the whole thing. Same with ol'VZ.

Not only is it in poor taste, but it means less people will read the
article on wired.com, which is what pays the rent.

-Declan


At 01:28 PM 11-7-98 -0800, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
>
>From: believer@telepath.com
>Subject: IP: Crunch Time for Y2K Suppliers
>Date: Thu, 05 Nov 1998 11:22:46 -0600
>To: believer@telepath.com
>
>Source:  Wired
>http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/16035.html?3
>
>Crunch Time for Y2K Suppliers
> by Declan McCullagh 
>
> 4:00 a.m.5.Nov.98.PST
> The phones are already ringing when Steve

At 9:35 PM -0800 11/7/98, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>Seems to me that it would have been just as easy for "believer" to send the
>URL to the story as the whole thing. Same with ol'VZ.
>
>Not only is it in poor taste, but it means less people will read the
>article on wired.com, which is what pays the rent.
>

Myself, I try to mostly just snip out a few paragraphs of a story and
comment on them, fair use and all.

However, Declan's point about "what pays the rent" brings up an obvious
point: does _anybody_ look at those damned banner ads?

This is the new "blind spot"...that foveal region about a third of the way
down a Web page screen that has dancing icons, "click on me" junk, and
corporate logos. My guess is that nearly all of us skip this junk
completely, and I think marketing studies will someday confirm this. (There
have been tantalizing reports in places like the "Wall Street Journal" that
basically almost nobody sees these ads, but the full message hasn't sunk
in.)

And the advertising creeps are getting even creepier. Intel was running a
banner ad that looked like a typical Mac or Windows error/alert box,
something like "Click Here to Resume Operation." Creepy. And annoying.

And even my current favorite search engine, Metacrawler, now has banner ads
scattered throughout the search results. Tonight's ad (they change
frequently, of course) even looked like a *search script*! A field for
entering text and then an OK button...I didn't try it, but it was obviously
an attempt to mislead people--embedding a search script inside a search
result. (It was a "fake search script" to "Find people just like you," from
"PlanetAll.com")

And the common pages--Wired, Yahoo, Excite, Dejanews, .....--devote the
left third to junky promotions, the top fourth to their damned name
("Metacrawler" in 40-point type), and then scatter banned ads across a
third of what's remaining.

It's not uncommon for only 2-3 search results to come back on a screen of
1024 x 768.

Declan's own site, Wired.com, runs junk across the top, junk on the left
side, junk on the right side, and doesn't even use the screen real estate.
His story on Y2K, for example, is crammed into about a column inch or two
in the center.

This is what we've come to. Beautiful high resolution screens with junk
filling them.

(Yes, I tried the utilities which purport to flush banner ads, but they
didn't work well (long delays, cruftiness).)

Friends of mine routinely turn off all graphics, a point I'm about to reach.

So, Declan may think the banner ads at Wired.com pay the rent, and the bean
counters may think this is so, but I doubt any of us are looking at the
ads. Except the dummies.

--Tim May

Y2K: A good chance to reformat America's hard drive and empty the trash.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.

I like the wired.com site and hit it almost daily. I consider
it one of the highest quality sites on the net, and their
system of linking to other daily articles on other sites
I really like. (wish they would summarize their articles
better though before you click through-- something that
they have resisted for a long time but for what reason
I have no idea)
I do look at banner ads but rarely click on them.

regrding copyright issues on the web, there is an
interesting article in an old CUD called "the cyberspatial
copyright" that captures my own thinking on the subject,
for anyone with the lack of laziness to seek it out <g>

it would have been nice if Declan identified his affiliation
with Wired in his complaint.. 

a nice post TCM, you have written on the idea of
the worthlessness of banner ads long ago. but you've
been way wrong too (er, ah, more diplmatically, "off")
based on your old posts. I recall a post, I think, in which
you predicted that ads would eventually be thrown 
away on the net after proven worthless.  your current
msg contains a similar theme.

clearly
the absolute opposite has happened. ads are successfully
funding the net and entire new cool and innovative
startups such as "doubleclick" etc. that are in many
ways "virtual businesses" that run on information flow.
3rd wave, alvin toffler, is definitely HERE.

TCM, you appear never to have worked in advertising.
advertisers do not put out ads so that every person
who reads it buys the product or clicks on the ad.
they are satisfied with 1/100 "click thrus", and that's
exactly what they get. online advertising is very,very
cost effective if done properly. it can really be
"microtargeted" in a way existing advertising isn't.

so TCM, you are confusing two issues. advertising in
general is annoying, ubiquitous, in-your-face in our
culture. some estimates are that 1000+ ads are seen daily
by each individual when you look at tv, magazine, outdoor,
etc.   online advertising shares all these traits. 

however, online advertising does not have to be a miracle cure.
it only has to be as good (but idealy better) 
than *existing* advertising systems
in use. and they are very inefficient and wasteful at times
if you are aware of that industry. online advertising is
downright streamlined compared to other forms that have
preceded it.

consider the breakthrough of geocities in which entire free
*personal* (not corporate!!)
web sites are supported by advertising solely!! geocities is
a small cyberspace miracle unappreciated by many. they are growing
insanely and their quality is getting to be really top notch.

personally
I think online advertsiing is really cool because it is funding
the civilization of cyberspace. it's annoying and tacky and
in-your-face, but it pays the bills, and is doing more so
every day. it will get less obnoxious over time in some ways
as you begin to run into only the ads that interest you based
on "microtargeting" so to speak. 

you buy stuff, right TCM?
well online ads may get to the point where you stop complaining
and find them a very valuable resource to make your buying
decisions--even objectively (for example an ad could link
to an objective 3rd part like "consumer reports"). 
I think this day is not too far off. in many ways it is already
here.

On Sat, Nov 07, 1998 at 11:50:05PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
 
> Myself, I try to mostly just snip out a few paragraphs of a story and
> comment on them, fair use and all.

I particularly dislike articles that are things forwarded from other
lists without comment (IP seems a particular offender here).  These are
rarely interesting.

> This is the new "blind spot"...that foveal region about a third of the way
> down a Web page screen that has dancing icons, "click on me" junk, and
> corporate logos. My guess is that nearly all of us skip this junk
> completely, and I think marketing studies will someday confirm this. (There
> have been tantalizing reports in places like the "Wall Street Journal" that
> basically almost nobody sees these ads, but the full message hasn't sunk
> in.)

Click through rates are something like 2%, so most are screening them out.
I rarely noticed what the ads actually said.

> (Yes, I tried the utilities which purport to flush banner ads, but they
> didn't work well (long delays, cruftiness).)

I don't know which ones you have tried but junkbuster 

http://www.junkbuster.org/ (a proxy on port 8000)

works _very_ well on my linux system, particularly with the "blank gif"
patch.

It blanks out 99% of banner gifs, which makes pages like metacrawler and
wired look more visually attractive and load faster.

Until I lost all the banner ads I hadn't realised how distracting all those
animated gifs at the top of the screen were and its now much faster and
easier to read the info you want, without them.

> Friends of mine routinely turn off all graphics, a point I'm about to reach.

I tried this but found it made the net too hard to use.

> So, Declan may think the banner ads at Wired.com pay the rent, and the bean
> counters may think this is so, but I doubt any of us are looking at the
> ads. Except the dummies.

It would give a brave browser manufactor (Opera?) quite an advantage if
they built the banner ad killer into the browser directly.

-- 
1024/D9C69DF9 steve mynott steve@tightrope.demon.co.uk http://www.pineal.com/

    i'm a programmer: i don't buy software, i write it.
    --tom christiansen

Tim May wrote:
> This is the new "blind spot"...that foveal region about a third of the way
> down a Web page screen that has dancing icons, "click on me" junk, and
> corporate logos. My guess is that nearly all of us skip this junk
> completely, and I think marketing studies will someday confirm this. (There
> have been tantalizing reports in places like the "Wall Street Journal" that
> basically almost nobody sees these ads, but the full message hasn't sunk
> in.)
> 
> And the advertising creeps are getting even creepier. Intel was running a
> banner ad that looked like a typical Mac or Windows error/alert box,
> something like "Click Here to Resume Operation." Creepy. And annoying.

Yep, I ignore them completely.  A few of those search here type things did
catch my attention.  My basic hatred of these isn't that they exist, but that
they're large, annoying, and animated.  Typically, soon as I see the page fully
load I hit ESC or the Stop icon to prevent these evil horrors from popping up.

A much more evil thing that I've seen when visiting pages of tripod or other
free web site members and now warehouse.com are actual Java Japplets or
JavaScripts that pop up another window with an advertisement.  Tripod or one of
those (I tend to try and forget the ads as hard as I can) has also taken to
putting a TV like lower right corner logo that hangs around, even when you
scroll the window -- what's really nasty about these fucking things is that
they scroll a bit with the window, then jump back to the bottom.

What's next?  In your face pop up Gif89 movies with AU/WAV sound tracks that
can't be dismissed until they play completely before you get to see the content
pages?

Some places (like Wired?) are annoying since they have a window that's 1/3
content with ads on top and on the side and bottom.  I'm trying to read the
fucking article, not trying to be distracted by the flashing, flickering eye
sores to the right and left. :(

Some of the really fucked up sites actually have porno ads with porn in them,
which makes them real welcome if I ever visit a page from my work.  I wouldn't
mind the pr0n if I was at home, but such things are frowned upon at work, and
fuck, I didn't even ask to see the shit... :(

Talk about feeping creatureism.  This is about as bad as flashing HTML was in
its inception.

Sure you can disable JavaScript, but if you do some sites won't work at all.
Ditto for Japplets.

Might be nice to have some sort of filter list for browsers that says "If GIF89
and (it's linked elsewhere, or to a CGI or at the top of the page)" don't show
it.  I guess it's time to do some Mozilla source hacking...


-- 

=====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos==============
.+.^.+.|       Sunder       |Prying open my 3rd eye.  So good to see |./|\.
..\|/..|sunder@sundernet.com|you once again. I thought you were      |/\|/\
<--*-->| ------------------ |hiding, and you thought that I had run  |\/|\/
../|\..| "A toast to Odin,  |away chasing the tail of dogma. I opened|.\|/.
.+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"|my eye and there we were....            |.....
======================= http://www.sundernet.com ==========================

In <36471E6E.3E8E96D4@brainlink.com>, on 11/09/98 
   at 11:55 AM, Ray Arachelian <sunder@brainlink.com> said:

>Might be nice to have some sort of filter list for browsers that says "If
>GIF89 and (it's linked elsewhere, or to a CGI or at the top of the page)"
>don't show it.  I guess it's time to do some Mozilla source hacking...

Rather than hacking nutscrape you might want to run through a modified
proxy and have it filter all such garbage.

This stuff is not a problem as I only run textmode for http with no
java/javascript. If I can't navigate a website that way it is their loss.


-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.openpgp.net
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 5.0 at: http://www.openpgp.net/pgp.html
---------------------------------------------------------------