I saw Senator Bennett of Utah announce his concept for a y2k early warning system that would monitor the worldwide geographical locations that roll over prior to the east coast of the U.S., thus allowing an opportunity to see what we might expect. Also, in theory, this would allow the west coast an additional three hours and Hawaii a full day from when the first roll over to the century occurs.

Is there failure in this logic? Perhaps it's just me, but if there is a failure of communications or the grid when New York rolls over then will that not affect the central and west coast at that time? I understand the three hour time difference but if the east coast part of the grid goes dark or communications are lost what difference does it make? Wont it immediately put a strain on the rest of the grid and thus possibly cause a domin

-- Anonymous, October 03, 1998

Answers

In my opinion, when the people who are _supposed_ to know the most about Y2K start making ridiculous claims such as a "Y2K Early Warning System," it's time to buy some non-hybrid seeds, a water filter, wood-burning stove, and photovoltaic setup (hey, I'm still going to want to listen to music come armageddon! ;) ) You are absolutely right -- knowing a day in advance makes no difference at all, when those syetms that shut down int he timezone ahead of you have an absolutely realtime effect on systems in your timezone. It's called BULLSHIT, and I would even call it propaganda... let's feed the public little bits of crap, hopefully they'll eat it up and not start taking all of their money out of the banks. I say, whetever. I don't have too much personally invested in the totally messed-up system that created these problems to begin with. (Thank goodness I'm a college student, and don't have to support a family, etc.) I think many of you "adults" should start evaluating how closely you are _really_ connected to mainstream corporate society today. Do you really love your jobs? Do they supply you with a sense of meaning? Chances are, your jobs will not exist in a year and a half. Evaluate what _really_ matters to you... family, friends, having a roof over your heads, food on your table, clean water, and some source of heating to keep winter nights at bay. Obviously, we are being LIED to... I'm sorry guys, but it's OBVIOUS! Look at Presidential Directive 63 (expanding the definition of "terrorism" to inculde "cyber-terrorism," which Y2K could very easily be interpreted as). THEY ARE PLANNING FOR MARTIAL LAW. Don't buy into their propaganda... because that's what it is! What matters to you _personally_... and don't count on anybody but yourself to make sure those valuable things are still there for you come January 1, '00. -Nick

-- Anonymous, October 04, 1998

An "early warning system" for the last 24 hours of 1999 could be of some limited use to westward time zones in the cases of Y2K effects that would be triggered at midnight December 31, *local* time.

But many computer clocks are set to Greenwich Mean Time, for example, precisely to eliminate differences due to local time zones. For these, the Y2K rollover will occur simultaneously all over the world. I suspect that most networks of any type that span multiple time zones will have many of their computer clocks set to a single time standard, almost always GMT.

So those celebrating the arrival of the New Year 2000 might be well advised to watch/listen to BBC rather than any American broadcast network, because Dick Clark may be in the dark by 7:01 PM EST on 1999/12/31.

Anyway, this idea of monitoring Y2K effects in eastward time zones (starting at the International Date Line) in order to provide warnings to those farther west is applicable basically only to Y2K effects that were not foreseen earlier.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 1998