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

Answers

Monday morning quarterbacking. You always know how to win the game when the game ends. Shad-up!

-- lenny (Chmielecki@worldnet.att.net), January 01, 2000.

Yes, that is abslutely true. But what about the "professionals" who were supposed to be actually looking at the chips and testing them. How could they find failures and say things are going to come to a head when they could not even been seeing failure rates even close to what they were predicing - for example this annonymous Mr. CEO. He's just yanking everyone's cord big time allong with Jim Lord and all the "consultants" that gave the navy the info for its report (indirectly via the utilities that hired them, etc. etc.).

That's called fraud, and now they will see TSHTF in the courts.

-- Interested Spectatorq (is@the_ring.side), January 01, 2000.

IS --

You're partially right. But, you're just wrong in most of your "analysis."

Why the need to cast dispersion on others? Sounds like you're more than an interested spectator when you have to resort to such sleeze.

-- (4@5.6), January 01, 2000.

Look, I prepped like every one else. I did what I think was best based on the info I had and don't appologize nor am sorry about it.

But the so called experts: Yourdon, MR.CEO, RC's sources, Yardeni, deJager (who probably found this out and changed his tune), etc. are either fools are knew this and just wanted to cash in or get the noteriety that came with their predictions.

I'm willing to bet if you turn on 99.999% of the systems with embeds there is no place to enter a date or even set one - after all I don't see every one of these systems with a keypad or keyboard to enter a date if the current date is incorrect. These systems are black boxes like your modem. Yes they track time (with a counter) not by knowing what day of the year it is. They don't care about dates they care about durations of time and days passing.

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), January 01, 2000.

Interested Spectator, regarding the last thing you wrote, about the systems that track time, but could care less about the date, well my husband had said the SAME thing to me no more than a couple of weeks ago. And He was working on hardware years before getting into software. And I figured he was right, but I Still worried about those nuclear embeddeds. Because the stakes Were so high. And that was my main concern. That and the electricity going out. So right now I feel pretty good, but won't use all the preps just yet. I've learned a lesson that Boyscouts follow as a matter of rule. Preparedness is a good lesson, pure and simple. What I Really wish is that solar power would become economically feasible. That's where we need to be going anyway.

-- DB (tomG@h.com), January 01, 2000.

Here is my detailed explaination about IT and database systems:

Yes embeds are "non-issue" BUT IT will have its real rollover test TONIGHT here's why

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), January 01, 2000.

IS,

My sources are ordinary folks in the field reporting what they saw, heard and did plus the testing results such as the TAVA report, the US Dept of Commerce's NIST Report plus the mute testimony of some oilwells that locked up due to testing. Neither I nor my sources ever charged or made one thin dime from the Y2K issue. Furthermore, My projections were based upon risk-assessment from the previous statistical reporting of problems.

Finally see my other posted thread to know that now is NOT the time to be declaring an all-clear for oil embeddeds. That would be like Japan declaring victory after Pearl Harbor, or the Confederacy after Fort Sumter...so in other words folks doing the Polly Polka today are actually just dancing to "Dixie" and the outcomes remains to be seen.

-- RC (racambab@mailcity.com), January 01, 2000.

That is an interesting theory. Please explain why my (approx. 18 yo) Litton microwave died at rollover.

-- marsh (armstrng@sisqtel.net), January 01, 2000.

RC:

You may be absolutely correct, but I have two questions before I can take your arguments as being reasonable:

1) Could you explain to me what critical processes on an oil rig/refinery operate based on it being a certain date vs a certain time interval having passed?

2) On all these sealed boxes with boards you talk about how many have an interface or keypad that lets you set the date on the boards?

My problem is that all these experts remain anonymous. We saw much credibility given to Mr. CEO from many sources who were also supposed to be very credible, yet we can see that someone was spoofing someone big time. You may still be correct, although I'd need to know the answers to the above two questions before I could reasonably say "you have a case".

I read your reports and your latest assesment and every one of your arguments was made for utilities (end-to-end testing, lack of work done, lack of testing, etc.), all of which turned out to be false. I think largely because of my basic premise at the top of this thread. So again, the answers to the two questions are crucial for you to have a case.

BTW I thought I have read a govt report about the 4 Venezualan refineries as being non compliant and that we should exepct no oil from them eventually. Have you seen such a report or know of it?

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), January 02, 2000.

BTW I thought I have read a govt report about the 4 Venezualan refineries as being non compliant and that we should exepct no oil from them eventually. Have you seen such a report or know of it? ======================================================================

I read about it. 3 were supposed to have been shut down, with 2 more possible.

IS

You're not giving this subject time. If there are problems now in Timbuktu how would you know, unless they were kaboom type problems? Remember that these are companies in hot competition with each other, do you think now just one day after the CDC they are gonna announce from the rooftops that they are say 10% down on production?

Or do you think they would keep quiet and hope to fly in parts/experts to fix the problem?

Give it TIME.

In the meantime the following sums up what we are facing down the road. If you had read infomagic and many other commentators they've all said the same thing.

We're not out of the woods yet and it irks me that someone of your intellect should keep attacking RC and others -

What exactly have you done, IN ADVANCE of a timeline, to give folks a heads-up?

Nothing.

"Even though 10% of the world is experiencing minor glitches randomly in the basic infrastructure now, it should be noted carefully by all IT professionals and computer experts that the other 90% of the system hasn't yet been fired up in real-time testing. As people will go back to work on Monday fire up those systems and then we will soon see what kind of interconnectivity problems surface as the whole system is then put into full operation. If we start seeing snowball effects happening over the next few weeks we wil soon know how far the system can cope without collasping on itself.

The small glitches that we think are 'minor problems' now can easily at any time start escalating through the infrastructure, so its a waiting game to see how many of these glitches will surface. If there is enough of those little tiny glitches or outages happening all at once this can clog up or collaspe the infrastructure and grind it to a halt, but only time will tell if the glitches start increasing in their accelerations or remain at a stable level that the system and the programmers are able to cope with, for this is the big hidden danger of the y2k issue now.

I am sure there will be an increase in the amount of glitching when the other 90% of the code is put into operation when people go back to business as usual and with those systems that couldn't get their embeds upgraded because not enough time, in the meantime last minute fixing is probably being done during the holidays to try to turn back the glitch bomb before people go to work. We must also take into account that this is where the "non-compliant or incompleted systems" around the world start to play the part in provoking a interconnecting glitch snowball effect for nearly half the world's computer systems did not make it to the deadline of 31st Dec 1999 and so technicians hope to try to fix things in 2000 after the glitching starts for the danger is far from over, if the glitches snowball, it may outdo the number of technicians and programmers to fix it, it's just the beginning, wait and see.

Now it all depends if there is enough glitching to outdo the number of programmers patching the systems up, this will be quie interesting. The bomb has gone off, but it hasn't quite detonated fully yet, its a Year 2000 Timebomb, not a Day 2000 Timebomb. So many think that because everything in the basic infrastructure is still operational so far with only minor glitches that this y2k bomb is only a fizzler.

We will know if the infrastructure stands once it starts going into full real-time testing, we can't know if the system is going to pass the test until the whole thing is tested. Before we celebrate thining the y2k bug has been beaten, not everything was put in full operation on New Year's celebrations, because we see the power and phones still working or basic utils, this don't mean that the whole system has jumped the hurdle over y2k.

TO SUM UP =========

The immediate effects of y2k are not really immediate but over time, its a timebomb, not a daybomb. Not until the whole system is put into full real-time operation will be begin to know of the ramifications of y2k over the next few weeks. y2k is not a day event, its a year event, possibly even longer. Pollies can gloat all they like about the rollover event, for it dosen't matter to the billions of glitches and unfixed systems around the world, they don't take day events. If there are problems with embeds, they might take a while to show up. The non comp ones though would probably crash as soon as they are fired up. But the y2k in the software code plus the billions of glitches will prob slowly detonate over time.

Brent Nichols"

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 02, 2000.

Hi Andy,

Good to hear from you. Thanks for the compliment and let me see if I can clear this up. I do not wish to have people think ill of me and my critisims are very focused along with some opinions I'm now willing to put on record. I'll eat my crow gracefully if I'm wrong - I expect no less from others if they are wrong and judge people's professionalism by the grace with which they accept they have made a mistake or that it seems very likely they are incorrect which is why I'm putting them on the hot seat. We are all on the hot seat right now with our friends etc. so why should RC and others not be also put on the hot seat by being called upon to demonstrate a little more evidence to support their predictions.

I have separated my comments about what we have seen so far into 2 issues the embeds and the business/IT/database systems. WRT to the latter see the link I provided above to my opinion. In summary I agree these systems have time to still play out for the reasons I give above and I fully expect there to be siginficant problems with them. If we will hear about them is another issue.

WRT to the embeds, as I state my opinion is that 99+% of these systems do not use dates, they count time. Those that use dates are still in play and can fail - hence the challange to RC to bring us some fundemental source information from which we can begin to move from speculation based on third party opinion to educated guesses we can make for ourselves. Given all the dire predictions particulary by Mr. CEO, who was reputed as being in the know, we can say they are either very naive about understanding what was being told to them by his engineers or he knew otherwise. Given the amount of embeds that were in play during rollover in all the systems that were live around the world, we don't need to give the embeds time. I think statistically we have proven the predictions were off base. My opinion about why is that those doing the testing had to know this was the case, otherwise they are incompetant. I mean if you test something for date functionality and there is no way to set the current date, I think you can assume there are no dates calculations happening inside. Those embeds with dates, as I say are still in play.

RC says the oil rigs fail 31 days after rollover, that suggests they have dates so all I ask is to give some examples of what those systems are, why they are critical, and why is their operation based on the date rather than a duration of elapsed time like *must* be the case in the billions of other embeds that didn't fail during rollover.

WRT to my contributions prior to rollover. I contributed nothing, and I am very greatful for those such as RC, Mr. CEO and so forth that did. I do not appologize nor regret preparing based on the information they provided.

I am now doing a postmortem on what happend to correct the original procedure we all used to originaly used (i.e. relying on third party opionions) to assess the situation, as it was obviously flawed, to a better more reliable procedure (i.e. have those in the know answer some fundemental questions that would lend credibility to their opinion) so we can all have better assesments.

Professionals will always evaluate past performence on a prject, analyse it and then use the results to improve future performence. As they say those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Do we wish to repeat very poor performance in assessing the situation again? I'd like to try and not do that in 31 days. I'm focusing on RC because he's got the main emebed prediciton that is yet to play out according to him. I'd like him to provide some info that would let us all say, "Yes RC has a very good ponit" or "RC's case has problems with it and here they are, would you care to clarify some more RC".

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), January 02, 2000.

I thought I just add this in here for referecne. It was posted in reply to another post of mine on another thread.

IS,

I happen to be one of those utility company Y2K project team members. We examined and tested over 6500 systems with embedded chips. About 95% of those turned out to be exactly as you have speculated - no date/time function or only elapsed time or day counting. However, until we did the testing, we had no way to know this. Most systems were put into service years ago with no documentation about how dates were caculated. We spent 80% of our money testing and documenting systems and only about 10% on remediation. As it turned out, there was only one critical system that would have failed and that would have knocked 15 megawatts off-line. Since we produce about 3000 megawatts on average, we barely would have noticed it. If we would have known this two years ago, we could have saved a lot of time and money but we didn't, and there was no way anyone could have known.

We told everyone we could find that there would be no problems with power on Jan 1. We told everyone we were Y2K ready. We set up a monitoring center because, although the probablityo f problems was very low, it was not zero. As it turned out, we were right and I'm happy. What disturbs me is that some people either never listened to us or assumed we were lying. We worked hard and that's one of the reasons we're all able to get on the net tonight and post messages.

Happy New Year to All.

-- (Someone@somewhere.com), January 03, 2000.

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), January 04, 2000.