From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Thu Feb 11 1999 - 08:13:15 MST
Billy Brown [bbrown@conemsco.com] wrote:
>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!"
Just as likely it's either an unsigned variable, or the negative value is
flagged as an error. This is known to be a problem with certain pieces of
medical equipment, for liability reasons.
>Since they don't want all their equipment to fail, most
>of them have serious compliance efforts underway, and have already fixed a
>lot of the problems.
However, that's just an assertion, and not a fact. The reports I've seen
on power generation seems to show that some companies are doing well, and
others have barely started. I still don't expect a big power problem
because what resources are available will be thrown at them, and because
of workarounds (e.g. the Swedes turning their nuclear plants back to 1990).
But otherwise the power industry seems about as screwed up as the rest.
>A side note - Jan 2000 looks to be a very busy month for FedEx!
If any airports are open, planes are flying, trains are running, highways
aren't blocked, etc...
>Getting power to gas stations without any computer control wouldn't
>take more than a day or two, so the trucks will keep rolling.
As far as I'm aware most gas stations have generators, so this shouldn't
be a problem. However, the gas still has to be shipped into the country,
refined, shipped around along potentially blocked and lawless highways.
That might be a problem, might not.
>Train systems
>wouldn't be able to run as many trains on manual control, but they would
>still have more than enough capacity for food shipments.
Last I heard there was a lot of grain rotting in the US because there
wasn't enough capacity today to ship it all out. There are two big problems
with this, "Hell, we'll just go back to manual", answer. Firstly all the
people who know how to do this were laid off years ago; we don't have much
time to learn how to run it again from scratch. Secondly, in a lot of cases
it's simply impossible; on the East coast, all the big train switching yards
were eliminated years ago in favor of computer-controlled switches which
cannot be operated manually. Either the software works or we have to rip
them out and install manual switches; far from a simple job when people
are starving around you.
>Sea and air travel
>would be pretty much unaffected - although a breakdown of the FAA system is
>likely, which would greatly reduce the number of flights each airport can
>handle.
Not to mention non-compliant airports ('Sorry Sir, we think your baggage
went to the Ukraine'), lack of insurance, etc, and Lloyds say that modern
ships are full of non-compliant embedded systems as well.
>A critical point to remember in all this is that people aren't just going to
>sit around and watch civilization collapse.
That's half the problem. People who rely on government handouts to survive
won't just sit around when they stop coming; they'll go out looting and
rioting instead. How many people will go into a riot zone to fix broken
computers?
[Nazis]
>The Allies didn't want them to get off
>that easily, and thus they created a new legal doctrine of personal
>responsibility that still applies today.
Could also be because the 'following orders' arguments were just plain old
self-serving bullshit. There's almost no evidence of anyone ever being
forced to kill Jews, and plenty of evidence that many killers were given a choice. Few ever chose not to do so. Hell, some of them continued killing
Jews even after the German commanders explicitly ordered them to stop.
Mark
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:03:02 MST