To All:
This is an article I found and thought it interesting. I sure hope it hasn't been posted:-) If so, I apologize.
Ken
Topic: Y2K News
Fear Factorial - An Embedded Developer's View
Embedded Systems Programming (Online)
March 1998 Lindsey Vereen
Fear Factorial
[An Embedded Developer's View]
by Lindsey Vereen
After leaving the Ariake station, the Yurikamome, Tokyo's new waterfront
train, glides by the Tokyo Big Sight international exhibition facility, past
Hotel Nikko and Fuji TV, and then over Tokyo Bay via the Rainbow
Bridge to the Shimbashi station in downtown Tokyo. The Yurikamome is
swift, it's smooth, it's almost always crowded, and it has no engineer at the
wheel. In fact, no one is aboard except passengers.
Automated systems that move people from one place to another are not
new. The People Mover at Disneyland has been around for years. The last
elevator operator surely retired years ago, tired of the ups and downs of his
job. More recently, transit systems sans drivers have begun to carry
passengers from airline gates to the terminal at several airports. While
many automated systems have been installed without so much as a
murmur from the public, the evolution of automated systems is beginning
to catch people's attention.
Technological advances always have a fear factor, and rightly so. The idea
of automobiles able to detect a potential collision and wrest control from
the driver to avoid it is enough to raise the anxiety level of the most
stalwart technophile. If that weren't enough, the millennium crisis has
become our latest bogeyman. We've already heard horror stories about
failed software projects and horrendous system crashes. Now we've got
the proverbial guy with a long white beard and a sign proclaiming "The end
of the world is nigh!"
Is it really? The jury is still out. In the mainframe arena, the concerns are
certainly legitimate. COBOL programmers, who only a few years ago were
yearning for a career change, are now getting all the work they can handle.
On the other hand, the embedded developers I've spoken to seem
oblivious to the Year 2000 problem.
At last fall's Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose,
the average attendance of each of the technical sessions was well
over a hundred.
The several most popular sessions attracted over 300 attendees each.
The single Year 2000 session boasted a paltry 14 people, and
not all of them stayed until the end.
Where is the concern? I've found that the people making the most noise
about the millennium crisis are the people who have the most to gain:
politicians seeking media attention,
millennium consultants, and
millennium conference producers.
One millennium consultant has suggested that elevators will be unable to
cope with the temporal change, and will at the stroke of midnight on Dec.
31, 1999 move to the ground floor and open their doors, just as they are
programmed to do in case of an emergency. But what if, asked this
consultant, someone with a heart condition is riding an elevator at the
stroke of midnight on that New Year's Eve and is mortally disconcerted by
the descent. Come on!
If you have a well developed sense of paranoia, you could surmise that
companies could be concealing problems they've unearthed, but that seems
far fetched. Despite my skepticism, I have no intention of minimizing the
significance of any potential problem. As Tyler Sperry suggested a few
issues back, if lives depend on your product, by all means have a Year
2000 audit done, if for no other reason than to protect yourselves from the
lawyers sure to perch on your doorstep following any perceived product
failure. If you find problems, or have already encountered any, let me
know so that we can give this important news a proper airing.
|
