Questions and suggestions.

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

Hello. I've been lurking for a week or two and have, hopefully not nievely, a couple of observations. They may be food for thought if not already discussed.

I have seen no mention of toilets. Where does one dump all this preserved food once it goes through that final processing. If there are no flushes coming, we certainly can't figure on just using the back yard.

Shouldn't there be supplies of quick lime layed in? Perhaps a chemical toilet or two? These can be bought or jury rigged but amount to a seat over a tank. With chemical decomposition, the resultant sludge can be delt with in several ways, including going into a covered hole in the ground. More favorably, a 55 gal drum for eventual pick up and disposal when normallity returns?

All potentially bad teeth should be taken care prior to the end of next year. I did see a mention of clove oil but would also mention paragoric if you can obtaine it. While its been twenty or thirty years, it was available by prescription the last I knew. For tooth aches, one can also often kill the pain with whiskey held around the tooth or even cigarette smoke drawn in and directed towards the cavity as much as possible. You do what you can when you need to. :-)

I'm curious about the possibility of re-doing frozen meat to a dried state. I'm thinking the previous freezing would cause some problem. If it can be done, would it be feasible to do after the grid goes down? By plain old fire if nothing else? What would the ball park times and proceedures be under those conditions?

As far as no one admitting anything. I have read/heard that corporations are afraid of possible y2k suits and so are not telling anyone exactly what they are doing or did to avoid the potential problems. Apparently, if they admit they did something that was later found to be insufficient, someone will find a reason to sue them. It was suggested that the government may want to declare corporations to be exempt from such legal action, if they do disclose their efforts.

A final question regarding "embedded" chips. I have been trying to understand just how chips operating in most of the industries and doing the jobs that have been mentioned in these posts, would know the date, or why they would need to. Automobiles certainly don't and I understand they are not carrying any such chips. Chips that need a date also need to have it fed to them or set periodically such as in a pc's bios. They are not manufactured with a non-powered, eternal clock/calendar set to the correct time and date at the moment of their creation. In addition, a sequential yearly counting chip doesn't necessarily have any concept of the past. It would simply do its incrementing and passing any carries as they occurred. After 99, these chips would likely just throw the hundreds carry right into oblivion and continue counting with 00 being the next highest number in their "two byte" minds. I can see banks, insurance companies and the like, with programs that deal with past and future; birth years, mortgage payments, etc., having a real problem, but I do not understand where a computer program that regulates a power grid needs to know what year it is. I realize my field of knowledge is miniscule compared to what is out there so I need some help with this. Would someone describe a specific situation where such a chip might originate a problem with any of the utility companies, marine freighters or what have you in any other seemingly non date sensitive application, relating to y2k?

Having been affected by the (19)62 North East grid shutdown, I do understand that it is very possible to lose it. In that case it was for 5 days if memory serves me correct. In that case, it was *only* the north east and there was lots of support from the outside. I would like to think it won't happen again but learning how to survive won't hurt me a bit. This time there may be no "outside".

Thanks for any insight.

Me.



-- Floyd Baker (fbaker@wzrd.com), October 13, 1998

Answers

Re: Embedded chips

Here's a good article: http://www.y2ktimebomb.com/Tip/Lord/lord9841.htm

One factor to keep in mind in understanding Y2K is that it's not necessary that a program or computer "need" (from a human point of view) to use a date, in order for that hardware or software to undergo a Y2K problem.

Most computer chips and their basic software have date functions as standard features. If you were ordering 10,000 chips for your company and faced the choice of a $1.00 standard chip or a $100.00 customized chip without the "unneeded" date functions, which would you choose?

And if you were a programmer wanting to calculate an elapsed time of a few seconds (you expect!), with a choice of using an already-standard subroutine that calculates elapsed time by subtracting one full date-and-time from another (e.g., "1998/10/13 20:30:44" minus "1998/10/13 20:30:23" = 21 seconds), or spending four hours writing your own customized code to use the computer's clock ticks directly, which would you choose?

It's little economic decisions like those, made over the past two or three decades, that have made Y2K vulnerability more common than it might seem at first glance. Basically, you've got to check ALL the chips, not just those that you think are the only ones that "use" or "need" the date functions.

So your automobile's computers shouldn't be *assumed* to be non-date-dependent. Maybe they really are OK, (and I'm sure that the vast majority are OK) but someone's got to check them to make sure.

And the power grid computers need to know the date so they can regulate the loads according to day-of-week (less electric use on weekends) and holidays (ditto for Christmas, etc.) ...

-- No Spam Please (anon@ymous.com), October 13, 1998.


The reason you do the math this way:

"98/10/13 20:30:44" minus "98/10/13 20:30:23" = 21 seconds

rather than just:

"20:30:44" minus "20:30:23" = 21 seconds

Is because of the date rollover. If presented with:

"24:59:55" minus "00:00:16" = ??

The answer would not be 21 seconds unless the full date were included to count for the time rollover on the next day. This is why the date rollover could cause a similar problem if 2 digits were used in the internal clock.

Sure it may shut down for one second and then figure it out, it may overflow the division and shut down completely, it may be able to be reset by powering down, it may have a battery and may not be able to have the date rolled back (no date setting capability by the end user). It is what we do not know and how badly tests of this type of equipment have gone so far that makes us all worry.

Brad

-- Brad Waddell (lists@flexquarters.com), October 13, 1998.


My math in the above example should have been:

"00:00:16" minus "24:59:55" = ??

Ambiguous numbers are the root of the Y2K problem.

Brad

-- Brad Waddell (lists@flexquarters.com), October 13, 1998.


Good observations, good questions. Thank you.

Sewage processing is 100% local: there is nothing a national "anything" can do to fix the problem. For "conventional disposal", it requires water pressure (for flushing) and control of the effluent. Flow, for th emost part, is by gravity to the waste processing facility. There, pumps, filters, regulators, processors, recorders, and treatment meters are possibly all affected by Y2K problems or failures.

Not so obviously, "bad" water (water not clean enough to drink) can be used for flushing. So, for example, assume that water pressure is lost (no power = no pumps = no pressure) for a period of several days. this will contaminate the "drinking water" supply until all parts of the system are flushed by the local water authority and certified safe. takes 2-4 days from initial loss, based on experience with large breaks in the Atlanta water system.

Toilets can also be flushed with a half gallon from a hand buckets, using for example, water from the sink after washing dishes. may need to re-teach the kids about "flushing" rules if using manual pours: "Flush only after nbr two. Wait if nbr one."

But before drinking water is certified, regular "flushing" water can be provided as soon as pressure is restored. Of course, people who drink the dirty water (becuase they have nothing else) may get extremely sick, but that's a different problem.)

Chem toilets? No experience with 'em. While camping with the Scouts, we only used the "outhouse style", which I don't recommend for anybody's backyard. Couple of people have written about a different "composting design" which may be suitable, but I can't find that thread readily.

Other comments?

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), October 13, 1998.


Bob:

In my wife's family fishing camp, the saying is:

"when it's brown, flush it down. When it's yellow, let it mellow"

cr

-- Chuck a Night Driver (rienzoo@en.com), October 15, 1998.



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