re: Y2k nonesense ( -long posting- )
I agree that lot's of the Y2K stuff is ridiculous.
There are, however, some problems that are date-related, and not
just of the alleged-millenium.
I worked on the mainframe at bellcore / darpa, and the stuff we
designed was perfect. (smiles with pride |-)
The core is that the original design models were supposed-to-be
"bullet-proof"; ie, a maximum of 30-minutes of down-time in a
twenty-year-period, with eight multi-levels of dual-redundancy,
sanity-timers, stuff like that.
The problem is, ITT did <not> implement the programs the way we had
written them, for a variety of reasons.
So, the nice original prototype model, never got "into production".
The DOD finally left the darn project for that reason.
A real-world example of how this can affect you is this:
A few years ago, the <entire> telco network went-down, in the
financial-market area of NYC.
TPC (The Phone Co.) could have instantly switched to a backup
secondary system, but, unbelievably, they did not.
Instead, they (TPC) left that whole area with-out phones, while
teams of debuggers went through the 2.3 million lines of code,
until they found the ":" where the ";" should have been.
I don't know how many traders on wall street had heart-problems
for those two days, but I'll bet it was a few.
Why the Rambling Diatribe tm?
Because, to show the attitude of the people / entities involved;
They <could-have> "fixed-it", or worked-around-it, but, didn't;
at other peoples'enormous financial cost.
Ergo:
I am sure that there are <some> problems associated with the
date-and-time, not just in computers, like laptops or desktops;
But in embedded-chips, tele-communication networks, banking/wire-
transfer-systems, air-traffic-control, defense-attack-simulations,
GPS; some of which were designed many years ago, and are critical-
systems; which are <still> operating.
There is also the problem of multiple "layers" of systems:
I'm now writing this "in" dos, on a pc, then I'll send it via a
unix-server, which is running on top of telcos' system, which will
change when you listers' get it, etc.
The Govt. here (in the US) has already stated that it will take
until 2005 to "straighten-out" the year 2000 problem.
While this is some-what bureaucracy, all of us know enough about
computers to know there are lots-and-lots-of-bugs, just waiting
to, well, "hatch".
Gee.. on that rather dark and fore-bode-ing note, I think I
should go to the bank today, open a savings account, with $ 1 ,
and wait-and-see what happens to the interest...
Regards, Gregory.
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