Hi Jim,
Nice to hear from you again.
You asked, "Since we had virtually no GPS problems (except for some cars in Japan), do you feel more confident now that the embedded chip "problem" will not be serious"
Yes and no.
I was very pleased to see that there were no false earthquake or volcano alerts issued. GPS is used extensively by these monitoring systems. Because no false alerts were issues, I assume that contingency plans were in placed and that the people monitoring these systems were adequately trained and prepared. I hope that the "Y2K rollover" teams that are being assembled are equally well trained, ...and prepared.
I was also very pleased to see that there were no problems with the electric power grid and telecommunication systems. GPS is used by these systems to accurately determine the current date/time. The telecommunication switches have two backup methods to get the correct date/time if the GPS has problems. I assume that some GPS failures have occurred in the past and that the backup systems worked properly, but this is the first time that all GPS's could have had a simultaneous failure, and no problems have been reported. This made me feel better about the ability of backup systems to handle problems.
I wanted to see how the GPS reacted at the rollover, so I had my GPS on during the rollover as well as friend's GPS. I have a 6 year old hand-held Garmin and he has a 9 year old Magellan. Both were turned on during the rollover. My Garmin "lost itself" and had to perform an auto-search to relocate itself. This took about 20 minutes and it successfully relocated its position.
My friend's Magellan (not a hand-held) seemed to handle the rollover flawlessly. Although I wasn't watching it the minute that it rolled over, it didn't seem to have any problem at all. This somewhat surprised me because even though this is a more expensive model than my Garmin, it is older. GPS manufactures did warn us that the hand-held models were more vulnerable than the regular models.
I was very disappointed with the car problem in Japan. They were warned for a full year and free upgrades were available, but most people did nothing. This concerns me.
We have been warned about Y2K problems for years and yet many people are either completely ignoring it or are going to fix on failure. The Japanese will not have to fix their GPS systems - the GPS will simply have to perform a 5 - 10 minute auto-search function for a short period of time (usually less than 1 month) and then should function properly. Embedded systems that fail with a Y2K error must be fixed, scrapped or replaced. If enough people/organizations put off repairing their systems until next year, there could be a huge backlog of customers waiting for upgrades.
The GPS rollover problem was also easier to manage. Remember that the GPS problem was only a very small subset of the much larger embedded systems problem and was a "self-correcting" problem.
It is also possible that we have not seen the full effect of the rollover yet. If there were any problems with the banking system or with the data collected during the rollover, these problems won't surface until this data is reconciled. I will be watching for any tell-tell signs over the next month or two. If any problems are subsequently reported, I will be VERY concerned. Contingency plans should be in place to catch any errors.
So, overall, I do feel better about the Y2K embedded system problem, but I am still very apprehensive. Final results from the GPS rollover aren't in yet, but the preliminary results do look good.
And, if organizations are going to attempt "fix on failure", this is still a VERY SERIOUS problem. The organizations in industries that were exposed to the GPS rollover problem seem to have done a good job so far, but I don't know about other key industries.
Regards,
B.K. |
