http://www.webpal.org/Beach2.htm

-- lilsparky (GI@last.com), May 08, 1999

Answers

This revelation causes me pain. A silent prayer:

"Please, God, don't let the earth be destroyed because of something called a "beach bug."

AAAACCCCKKKK!

I predict a new flame war.

:(

-- FM (vidprof@aol.com), May 08, 1999.

Beach has lots of credible backing here. I would(am) studying his paper carefully. This will serve to illustrate the massive problem we face.

best to all,

Bob P

-- Bob P (rpilc99206@aol.com), May 08, 1999.

Arlin, Nikoli, zog et al, ya might wanna read this paper, he has three scenarios leading to nuclear holocaust...

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 09, 1999.

Credible backing!? Excuse me? I had to laugh at that list - it is full of people like Paula Gordon - yes she has a PhD - in something totally non technical. (I think political administration or something like that - go look it up for I did not care enough to remember exactly what it was in.) I know of no technical person who is taking Beach seriously at this point (except Cowles - he would listen to a parrot that was trained to squawk "DOOM"), even Cory Hamasaki, in a post on this forum, said that he did not buy what Beach is selling.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), May 09, 1999.

Could someone PLEASE put a link on this . It's late , and I am havig a problem getting it . Thanks a whole bunch ! Eagle

-- Hal Walker (e999eagle@freewwweb.com), May 09, 1999.

Paul

I know your vies on Beach's interpretation of the embedded chip problem, but what's your take on the nuclear angle he has set forth?

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 09, 1999.

Beach's Nuclear War Scenarios

-- Nabi Davidson (nabi7@yahoo.com), May 09, 1999.

I can't comment on Beach's bug as I don't know whether he is correct or not. I've heard good arguments from both sides, but the discussions go over my head in technical details before I can reach a conclusion. I think he is right about the threat of war, obviously. But He is seriously misinformed on the survivability of nuclear war, and if anything this causes him to err on the side of caution. The actual threat is far greater than he represents. He has also greatly overestimated the survivability of the American nuclear arsenal against an all out first strike by the Russians.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), May 09, 1999.

these things really, REALLY suck

-- humpty (no.6@thevillage.com), May 09, 1999.

Beach must think everyone is gullable~~

His "essay" is so full of holes a mouse would starve if it were swiss cheese.

****** he writes

Knowledgeable programmers wanted to use a 4 digit year field and in 1967 and again in 1970

2. A gigabyte of RAM at that time cost over 3 million dollars as compared to less than $5 today.

********

A GIG??? of RAM??? in 1970??? Can you say core memory (if you were working for someone big) and THAT was pushing it. Come on all of you old programmers on this list... Just how much memory did those old drum memories hold? Are you going to just sit there and let him make a fool out of you and everyone else who reads his garbage?

**********

More of what he writes and expect people to believe...

2. The Frautschi Bug is the Century Bug in Embedded Processors

In early 1998 Dr. Mark Frautschi published a theoretical speculation

http://www.tmn.com/~frautsch/y2k2.html

that an even greater problem with the Century Bug would be found in embedded processors which are used, for example, in all sorts of industrial machine and control applications.

*************

Now does this Beach person REALLY expect anyone to believe that Mark Frautschi "discovered" embedded chips and systems in 1998 and that it is NAMED after him?

Umm..Ask Ed Yourdon about this one and he will tell you that this guy is full of it. As a matter of fact I think most of the peiople who post here, even if they feel they do not know enough about Y2K to know what will happen for sure, knows more than this Beach guy. He wrote a load of caca, argued about it on this board, and suddenly those here who admit they do not have the background but were willing to listen to him have been "quoted" from this board and are in his latest "paper".

Come on Sysman... Don't you feel even a little bit .. USED? Everyone here is pretty good at going after people they do not agree with. Why don't you give him what he deserves? I think this is one thing that every one, get it's, don't get it's, got it's, had it's and want it's *grin* can all agree on for once. This man does NOT know what he is talking about.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), May 09, 1999.

Many experienced people agree with Beach, and he includes quite a few references in his essay. I am only about half way through his article and have not yet read the part about nuclear war. However, it seems that he has presented enough evidence that the secondary clock issue should be given serious consideration.

-- Dave (dannco@hotmail.com), May 09, 1999.

The early use hypothesis is disproven by history - nuclear stockpiles have been reduced from their peaks in the early 70's, not increased. If there was anything to early use, then we would have had a war, not SALT.

Besides, who would start a major war with defective weapons? Or with weapons that will become defective during the war? Neither the Russian nor the US military believe a nuclear war will be "over in 20 minutes". That is a thing the new outlets have pushed constantly - but it just doesn't fly.

Moreover, there is nothing in a nuclear weapon trigger that is date sensitive as far as I know - the original triggers were designed in the 40's and 50's for goodness sakes! We are not talking about some kind of time bomb here. Also, missles do NOT get positioning info from satellites - they are totally internalized and manuever by inertial guidance. In other words, they know where they are starting from, and they have internal sensors that tell them with great precision EXACTLY what accelerations and manuvers they have undergone during flight. (I have seen some that were surplused out and sold, marvels of mechanical ingeniuity) Yes, those sensors report to hardware that does time vs acceleration processing - but not any sort of DATE processing.

As for his ABM thing - the guy that report comes from is a flake. There is one ABM site in Russia - it protects Moscow. Now unless you want to believe that Russian technology is so far in advance of the US that they can build thousands of missiles with technology we can't match - well you will just have to explain to me how they could do that and then collapse the way they have. And then be begging at our door for Yankee technology. And Star Wars is credited with being a large part of what caused the collapse. Think about it!

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), May 09, 1999.

Star Wars caused the collapse of the USSR? LOL Paul! We can't even reliably hit a Scud with the Patriot! Star Wars is, was and always will be a pipedream of the war mongers.

The USSR collapsed from failure to adjust to internal and external economic pressures, much like the US is in danger of doing in the next year.

-- a (a@a.a), May 09, 1999.

It was the spending a - they spent themselves broke trying to keep up with Star Wars. Didn't mean for you to take it that Star Wars blew them up or something.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), May 10, 1999.