From: Bill Putney on
Vic Smith wrote:
> On Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:37:36 -0600, Steve <no(a)spam.thanks> wrote:
>
>
>> It amazes me that anyone today doesn't realize what a massive effort
>> went into fixing all the possible Y2K problems before they happened. I
>> guess thats gratitude for you.... :-(
>
> I see some still deny it was a big issue.
> They obviously don't know how most mainframe systems with mmddyy
> dates did date calcs.
> I remember seeing it as a looming problem in the distance when I
> started programming in 1980. I was happy that I would be gone
> from that business by then. I put in century checks anyway on
> anything I wrote and anything I maintained doing date calcs.
> Still couldn't cover everything, most obviously birthdays.
> And I was still there when it came about. Not doing the changes, but
> marveling at what a boondoggle the contracting firms "specializing" in
> providing Y2K changes were pulling off.
> What a clusterfuck. But business began selling off their
> responsibilities in the '90's by paying premium prices for others to
> do the work and take the fall for anything that went wrong.
> Part of the "shareholder value" fantasy.
> Without widespread system changes which began in 1998 the major
> insurance company I worked at would have ground to a halt.
> I imagine there were plenty of other companies that would have
> suffered the same fate.
>
> --Vic

Of course, idiots think that that type of work creates/increases wealth,
when in fact it drains wealth. Just a variation of the "merchant's
broken window" economic false-philosophy that a lot of idiots today,
including, unfortunately, voters and Congressmen, believe in.

--
Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')
From: jim on


Bill Putney wrote:
>
> jim wrote:
>
> > ...the breaker point ignition always meant that the engine
> > spent a considerable amount of its life with late timing due to breaker
> > points wearing down...
>
> Hmmm - Being that the spark occurs when the points *open*, worn breaker
> points would make the timing advanced (reduced dwell, but advanced
> timing). Unless you're going to say that the wear block wears down
> faster than the points burn back - which I don't think is generally the
> case.

I see what your saying, but it doesn't work that way.

Try checking the timing on an engine with well used set of points. Or
just observe the gap of a worn set of points - is the gap wider or
narrower? And yes I suppose wear to the rubbing block accounts for most
of it - transfer of metal plays a role too.
-jim


>
> That's my buttal. Do you have a rebuttal?
>
> --
> Bill Putney
> (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
> address with the letter 'x')
From: Joe Pfeiffer on
"hls" <hls(a)nospam.nix> writes:

> "Steve" <no(a)spam.thanks> wrote in message
>>
>> It amazes me that anyone today doesn't realize what a massive effort
>> went into fixing all the possible Y2K problems before they
>> happened. I guess thats gratitude for you.... :-(
>
> I think you are right in a sense. There is no gratitude. Did we not
> see the
> millenium coming for the entire history of modern computing???

For a programmer in the 1960s, trying to save space (which cost lots of
both money and time) in a program *today* was important. The idea that
the same code might really still be in use in 2000 -- when the
programmer would be long retired -- was remote enough not to worry
about. I haven't seen any real figures on percentage of new code
needing fixes, but I expect somewhere around 1980 it probably started to
decline, and aroung 1990 to decline sharply. Any programmer who wrote
anything after about 1995 that needed to be fixed should be taken out
back and shot.
--
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
and this we should do freely and generously. (Benjamin Franklin)
From: Brent on
On 2009-11-07, Bill Putney <bptn(a)kinez.net> wrote:

> IOW - the Mayans had only gotten that far in extending their calendar
> when their own civilization collapsed and they stopped adding to the
> calendar - but when "modern" man looks at that in retrospect, his
> interpretation of that observation is that the Mayans stopped updating
> the calendars at the point because they "knew" things were going to end
> at that point - i.e., there was no more work needed on the calendar,
> their work was finished.

Actually it's not where they just randomly stopped. It's the end of a
cycle. The calendar is driven by astronomy with short and long cycles.
It is a greater knowledge than conventional thought believed possible.
These larger cycles were not unique to Maya but appear in many cultures.
Anyway, the end of world as many people put it isn't so much the end of
the world, but at worst the end of the world as we know it. The old
cycle will end and the new cycle will begin. This may be about as
eventful as new years' eve.

What people fear is that solar system is entering into a 'bad
neigborhood' as it moves through the galaxy and that with it perhaps
some event which we will have no power over will occur. We shall see :)

Some others think it will just be some sort of spirital change in
society, again sparked by whatever 'neighborhood' the solor system is
moving through.

The funny thing is, the sun is behaving rather odd already. Whatever is
coming it's based on the movement of this planet through the universe
and there ain't anything to do but ride it out :)




From: Joe Pfeiffer on
Brent <tetraethylleadREMOVETHIS(a)yahoo.com> writes:
>
> Practically any critical system could have been put back in operation by
> having the date set to something like 1-1-1970. The data to be fixed
> could easily be identified by the date and fixed later once patches were
> done.

Like banking systems, where the rules to apply depend on the date? Set
back to 1970, and refigure retirement year maybe?

> Now the real event comes in 2038 ;) time() returns 2147483647
> ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem )

Both from picking 1970, and from mentioning the Y38K problem, it sounds
like you're a Unix guy (as am I, by the way, which is why I'm quoting
statistics rather than regaling you with war stories) -- very few of the
serious problems were in the sort of scientific and server enviroments
where Unix is commonly used. It was in legacy databases.
--
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
and this we should do freely and generously. (Benjamin Franklin)