This is nothing new. that is the way many embedded chips function, for example all of the embedded chips that we know of in the automotive field. That is why not a single car or truck failure was predicted. Other applications require specific dates, such as user specification of something happening at some specific date and time in the future such as security systems (holidays and week-ends are important to know), automated water sprinkler systems, fax machines, VCRs, etc etc etc. Whether chips use specific dates or elapsed time depends on the function. It looks like the writer of the post has "discovered" something that all of the experts have known all along. He ought to do his research better. However, we will have lots of "experts" jumping into the fray now to suggest all sorts of Monday after brilliance. Lets have all the results in first. If any of us have been wrong in a big way, you'll be seeing lots of admission of this. I've suggested as much at my website. Look for clues from Yourdon, myself, Yardeni as indicative as to whether we've misgauged the problem or not. Stay tuned. We certainly are. Thanks for sending this along. Regards, ______________________ Russ Kelly E-mail: Russ@russkelly.com Y2K Recovery, Resources & Research Visit us at http://www.russkelly.com _________________________________________________________________

Subject: Russ-anything to this? >Why nothing was ever going to happen with the embeds >greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- >-- > >After the rollover I put my brain in gear, rather than relying on the >"experts" as I have done to now about what goes in the embeds. I'm not a >hardware guy, but I went back and thought about my only hardware project from >20 years ago in university (back when memory was expensive). >Any thing that is in hardware that deals in time is going to use counters to >determine when time has elapsed. They are not going to use dates because you >have to use more memory to store it and then convert it to a number to do the >calculations and then more memory to convert the number back to a date. So >they'll count seconds or days. The point of storing a date calculation is >know when a certain amount of time has passed. If you use counters (even >thousands of seconds for many days) it is the simplest, cheapest, and bug >free way to do that - regardless of date. Now some of the more fancy hardware >that is newer may have some date functions for things like maintenance (since >memory is not a problem now) that has been arbitrarily decided to be done at >month ends rather than on a fixed interval, but my guess are those are very >few and between. > >End of story. > >IT and database are a different matter altogether and we will see those >effects start at the end of the first day, first week (a few) and end of the >first month (many) because those systmes will now be calculating things based >on days transpired which will now calculate to negative days (so we should >get interesting usage billing and interest billings). Similarly penalties >won't be applied because the number of days in the calculation will be >negative so the penalty period would not have expired yet. > >Overall I think these will be minor problems too as I don't think too many >functions will be affected (they'll be things like extra negative intererst, >no penalties, billing for execessive negative usage, etc.) > >Yourdon, I'm surprised you fell for this in such a grand way, you're supposed >to be one the "experts" who investigated all this. Why Mr. CEO said all his >teams were being sent home was because his clients along with all the other >companies with embeds found out the above and realized that the "consultants" >were swindling them by just investigating and investigating and investigating >but actually doing very little else. I'm willing to bet that 99.999% of all >embeds are like what I describe above. That's why the world could tollerate a >0.001% hiccup in the number of embeds out there and not blink at all. > >-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), January 01, 2000

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 03, 2000

Answers

Latest from Mr. Kelly

Latest Analysis: Predicted risk for North AmericaLittle risk & getting better!

Sunday, January 2, 9 PM: I am being asked by media and public alike, what is this about? Were you really that wrong? Why has everything gone so well when there were such dire predictions? My response runs along the lines of the following....

Several things caught us by surprise, but massive infrastructure failures was not among them. Many of us have long said that some things are exceedingly safe--electric power and banking for example. No, we've not seen events that go "KABOOM" in the night. Although we did see some failures in nuclear power plants, mainly in Japan but also in the U.S. Human behavior surprised us. We expected more computer virus attacks, and perhaps we yet will as we all go back to work. Some of us expected less civility especially in the larger cities. Human behavior has to this point been unashamedly admirable. And terrorism did not materialize. Yet, and hopefully not at all.

We should remember a few lessons learned from the past. First, it is early in the transition. Perhaps there were too many expectations of huge breakages and dramatic failures at the stroke of midnight. Like a nuclear meltdown or something. We're seeing failures being reported, but of the mundane type that don't get press attention. We also should remember that every company of size had a large staff on duty during the rollover. Their job--to watch and test and make sure things went right. And when they did not, to switch to backup methods and perhaps manual controls. This has been an unprecedented watch over the behavior of technology. Perhaps if technology was always so watched and small failures responded to so quickly, then just perhaps we'd never see those big failures that seems to get all of the attention and coverage. And of course most of our large plants and facilities were closed for normal operations--many ran strictly for the purposes of being watched over. Business resumption begins on Monday for much of the world and on Tuesday for the rest. Systems to this point have not been stress tested. Aviation for example has had few planes in a large sky. The risk of them running into each other under these conditions is exceedingly small according to the "big sky" theory. Aviation may not be stress tested until mid- January.

This much I believe is certain. The first ten days will see a large number of failures. Many will go unreported as they may be uninteresting for media attention, or perhaps simply fixed before anyone knows about it. But others will not escape notice so easily because of the damages they will cause. I also believe that since the infrastructure held together so well, we have the resources to deal with the smaller failures as they happen. For that reason, I am confident that Y2K will not have any significant worldwide negative economic impact. Certainly not a global recession or depression.

I'm convinced we're waiting for the first shoe to drop. And it will be within 30 days, and most likely within the first 10 days. There may even be a second shoe and perhaps a third. Let's not be prematurely euphoric, for much yet remains to be done. The laws of Murphy and of science are against us escaping the transition as smoothly as events to this point seem to suggest. Don't close your command centers yet!

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 03, 2000.

I'm certainly not closing my command centre, Andy, with its seried ranks of tuna cans stacked next to the artillery pieces for use as emergency grapeshot against advancing Polly hordes, and stakes of angled, sharpened spaghetti stuck in the ground to form an impenetrable perimeter around it. Even John Koskinen's famous and well-practiced 'irresistable spin' maneuevers would fail to breach my defences...:)

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), January 03, 2000.

LOL John, yep those cans make pretty good battlements, and the rice and beans are just like sandbags!

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 03, 2000.