It's been rumored that on Thu, 11 Feb 1999, Billy Brown wrote:
>Paul Hughes wrote:
>> Without further information, I still doubt your assessment. It is my
>> understanding that they use embedded chips for maintenance
>> and shut down cycles. In otherwords, if a particular power station has
>> not received a checkup after a certain period of time it *shuts down*.
>> So if it read 1/1/1900, the station will think it hasn't had a checkup
>> in 100 years, and it will shut down. If this is true, then if a
>> critical minimum of them shut down they should take
>> the rest of the grid down with it.
>
>Depends on how the program is written. Just as likely, it will say "this
>year is 00, my last checkup was in 99, so its been (99 - 00) = -99 years
>since my last checkup - that's less than my 5-year checkup interval, so
>everything is OK!"
But can we really rely on each computer performing the same error in calculation? ;)
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