A foolish letter I received about Y2K

Normally, I just ignore foolish letters I receive, or at most respond to them privately, but I'm making an exception in this case. This letter is so stupefyingly foolish that it must set a record of some kind even in the sordid annals of "attack" email. The writer's comments are shown after >, and my answers are shown without such indicators.

On Tue, 18 May 1999 15:02:28 -0600, Mike Barger  wrote:

>    I felt so incredibly sorry for Miki, the poor 16 year old who won't
>get a decent night's sleep until Jan 1st because of your assininity,
>that I had to respond.  

  No, you didn't.

>I didn't read much of your website. I couldn't.
>I could actually feel myself losing IQ points just being there.

  I agree that you shouldn't read my site then. You obviously have no
extra IQ points to spare.

>    What I did notice was the glaring consistency between your site and
>that of every other Y2K extremist on the web and planet - an absolute
>lack of evidence for your guarantees. 

  Exactly what "guarantees" have I made? I don't recall guaranteeing
ANYTHING on my WWW site.

>You expect the world to believe
>your opinion and disregard all of the factual data which points to your
>fraudulance. You might as well call yourself the Messiah. I'd be more
>likely to believe you then. "A little knowledge is a dangerous ting."

  Then I think you're safe enough, as you would have to learn a lot to
have a little knowledge.

>>From your level of danger, we can deduce your level of knowledge. You
>can write all of the programming books in the world and it still won't
>make your predictions credible without facts.

  If I had written all of the programming books in the world, I'd be a
lot richer than I am.

>    I hope all of your predictions come true for you and you alone.

  That seems very unlikely, but if it happens, I'll be prepared.

>Unfortunately, we all know that they're an impossibility anyway.

  Then why are you bothering to harass me now? Everyone will laugh
next year. Won't they?

>    By the way, I'm not a journalist. I'm asupport engineer for one of
>the world's largest PC and workstation manufacturers. I have a clientel
>of over 30 million users. Fortunately, they're all calling me for advice
>- not you.

  You must be pretty busy, if over 30 million users are calling you.
Let's see now, if every user calls you once every 10 years, then you
would get 3 million calls a year; that's one every 10 seconds around
the clock.
  I hope your advice to your users is better than your ability to
perform logical analysis of your own statements. Unfortunately, that's
not very likely.
  In any event, I look forward to your predicament next year if I'm
even 10% right about what is likely to happen.