Michael, does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?
Seriously, you raise good questions to ask in "Is there any reason that this system should care what time or day is is?". As I non-engineer, I would add year to your question and might follow that with "is there any reason why the designers of the processor/system might have included the capability to reference the year rather than just the day of the week or time of day?"
Elevators, as CatLady pointed out, may not be the best example, but don't be so sure just because some Otis customer service or PR person said so. After all, MSFT and NSCP also claimed they had no y2k issues, yet they did. In the case of elevators, the possibility of programming in holidays might have been considered a cheap way to add a saleable feature that the competition didn't offer.
But enough about elevators. Will your VCR be able to record the bowl games on 1/1/00 while you are sleeping off the party?
Seriously again, while I think worrying about whether your Mr. Coffee will work is silly, I'm sure there are lots of embedded systems where one might think the year doesn't matter, but it is part of the programming anyway. On the subject of office buildings, a much bigger energy hog than elevators is HVAC systems. I'd bet on them being year sensitive.
Of course, none of this means that little $45 million revenue magic bullet sellers are worth several times that amount. After all, much more than the rest of the world, US companies and government agencies recognize the problems and are spending big dollars on it now. My guess is that any US company with a real solution would be showing meaningful revenues from it by now.
BWDIK?
Bob |
