INTERESTING: DC Y2K Weather Report (Scenario, this mess, WDC Y2K, Time Dilation)
'From:
kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net (cory hamasaki)
6:34
Subject:
DC Y2K Weather Report (Scenario, this mess, WDC Y2K, Time Dilation)
Cory Hamasaki's DC Y2K Weather Report V2, # 43
"October 27, 1998 - 430 days to go." WRP99
Draft $2.50 Cover Price.
(c) 1997, 1998 Cory Hamasaki - I grant permission to distribute and
reproduce this newsletter as long as this entire document is reproduced in
its entirety. You may optionally quote an individual article but you should
include this header down to the tearline or provide a link to the
header. I do not grant permission to a commercial publisher to reprint
this in print media.
As seen in
USENET:comp.software.year-2000
elmbronze.demon.co.uk
sonnet.co.uk
gonow.to
ocweb.com
kiyoinc.com
Don't forget, the Y2K chat-line: ntplx.net
any evening, 8-10PM EST.
--------------------tearline -----------------------------
Please fax or email copies of this to your geek pals, especially those
idiots who keep sending you lightbulb, blonde, or Bill Gates jokes,
and urban legends like the Arizona rocket car story.
If you have a Y2K webpage, please host the Weather Reports.
Did you miss Geek Out?
Project Dumbass needs you.
In this issue:
1. Jo Anne's Scenario
2. How did we get into this mess?
3. This week's food score.
4. Y2K Awareness Week
5. WDC Y2K Meeting
6. Jace Couch on Time Dilation
7. DragonRanch
8. CCCC
Scenario ----------- Jo Anne's --------
Thinking About a Possible Future
by
Jo Anne Slaven <slaven@rogerswave.ca>
I think that the people in this group use the hurricane/earthquake
examples because those "disasters" are ones that the ordinary person can
easily imagine and relate to in some way. While this may be a good
starting point in explaining the possible outcome of this whole mess, I
have to agree that it's not going to be at all like that.
I picture more of a "creeping catastrophe". Putting aside the
possibility of violence and looting for the moment, here's one way I can
see it playing out.
November and December 1999 is panic time. The general public scrambling
desperately for non-perishable foods, candles, and generators. I don't
think that the people participating in the "1999 supply riots" will
necessarily be thinking long-term. But they *will* want their 2-weeks
worth of food and cash "just in case".
January 1 - 10 is blackout time for a lot of people. Obviously, that
means no banks, no phones, etc. But somehow, the brave men in the hydro
companies manage to bring power back up (sort of) in most places.
January 11 - 31 is *major* annoyance time. The ATMs are off-and-on.
Power and phones are off-and-on. Your bank may be out of business. Fuel
supplies are sporadic. Your water bill is screwed up, and you have to
spend 4 hours in line to talk to someone about adjusting it. All you can
find at the grocery store is mustard and plastic forks. The company that
you work for had declared a brief lay-off until things settle down.
February 1 to May 31 is depression time. Nobody is buying all of those
useless products on the market today (like beanie babies and leather
sofas), so a lot of manufacturers and retailers have shut down. Not to
mention hotels, restaurants and service companies. And the banks - they
won't be doing too well either. Lots and lots of people out of work.
Feb February 1 to May 31 is also Time Dilation time, when the clocks in some
older PCs start jumping forward unexpectedly. Some of these older
computers are used in process control. Could get interesting.
See nethawk.com
June 1 to September 30 is "cautiously hopeful" time. Lots of fresh
fruits and vegetables are available, and everyone is looking forward to
the abundance of foods that will be in the stores come the fall. There
won't be enough to go around, but people are ignoring that for the
moment.
October 1 to Lord-knows-when is Serious Shortage time (and a
continuation of depression time). Shoes, clothing, fresh fruits and
vegetables - anything that is normally imported from developing
countries is in *very* short supply. And expensive. Not that the
unemployed masses could afford to buy anything anyway. Perhaps more
important, raw manufacturing materials from other countries are
non-existant. As are the foreign markets for finished goods.
And so it goes on. Bad times building on bad times. And remember that I
left looting and violence out of the equation. Also omitted were martial
law, nuclear "accidents" and disease.
I could be wrong though. It could be worse. (with acknowledgements to
infomagic)
Jo Anne, who needs to buy more candles
History ----- How did we get into this mess ------
You're pretty smart... But how did we get into this mess? It's not
just denial and procrastination. There's something more fundamental at
work. At GregS90210's last Y2K lunch, Dec threw out a couple ideas, he
was working on a report on the Microsoft trial, said that he raised the
issue of Y2K in a room full of techno-reporters and was boo'ed down.
OK, they're just reporters and couldn't make round two of MVS Jeopardy,
"Security for $400" "CA7 and the INTRDR" -bzzzzzt- "What are two
computer viruses?" but they are smarter than the average bear, so why
the razzing?
We have side impact airbags and grants to molecular biologists to find a
cure for AIDS. How did we get these things? These are subtle and not
directly connected to need and positive results.
We have these because each base problem has been an issue long enough
for advocates to rise up and for industry to recognize that they can
make a buck. It's two things, make a difference, make a buck.
The problem with Y2K is that there aren't a noisy bunch of survivors
and relatives of victims who have organized themselves into a cause.
Y2K doesn't have a sad-eyed emaciated poster child... the closest we
have are a couple big dollar consulting companies that didn't
make their revenue projections.
Things like heart disease, cancer, on the job safety, and defending the
U.S. against Moamar Gadaffi, uh, Quadaffy.... ah shit, I can't spell
it... anyway, what's his face over there in Libya, they've been around
long enough that we have a groups of people who have strong feelings
about the issues.
This isn't about the merits of funding space research v. your local
volunteer fire department. These causes have afficionado's to champion
the cause as well as those who stand to make a buck off it.
Y2K doesn't really have either a victims advocate or a well funded
industry lobby group.
In time, in 10 or 15 years, there might be someone who speaks for the
people on Y2K. There isn't now. There are several candidates
but no one is in the position of big dog of Y2K.
Y2K is a leaderless, come as you are, crisis. ...and for this reason,
it will be far worse than it should have been. I'm trying my best, as
are dozens of others. But it is not enough, flat not enough.
Y2K doesn't have the support, the leadership, or the time to develop
either. We have 430 days left; I started writing the WRPs almost two
years ago. We don't have the time now. Times up, rules changed.
A big problem now is management hysteria... They're bailing out. We've
already seen Emmet Paige and his "real brave" staff, squeal in terror
and run for it, frothing at the mouth, not on my watch, I'm scared,
maaaaa...
The good news is that hard times will forge new leaders, that
which does not kill you, makes you stronger. I look forward to a new
management that is not contaminated by pop-biz-psych-jive. A world
without TQM, PPBS, matrix management, and the biz-fad of the month.
The bad news is that people will go hungry, kill, and die.
Another fundamental problem with Y2K is that it is technical and there
are layers of technical issues. Although the basic problem is simple,
the ambiguity of two digit years, understanding the technical and
technical management issues requires significant expertise.
Until you can post one word jokes in comp.lang.asm370 or
bit.listserv.ibm-main, and have someone reply, "good one", you're not
up to the technical challenge of Y2K... on the mainframe, enterprise
systems side.
C.s.y2k had a full discussion on SVC-11 over a year ago.
It's a nasty problem, it will kill people... although I don't know who
or when. C.s.y2k explored it from all angles, put the problem to bed.
So last month, comp.lang.asm370 started in on SVC-11 again and
last week Big Arnie, reported on a live, subtle SVC-11 problem.
I won't go into SVC-11, TIME DEC, and R0/R1. 90 percent
of the c.s.y2k'ers and WRP readers aren't sure exactly why I was raising
a ruckus about these and tm_year... why it was an issue.
The problem is, 90 percent of the Y2K leadership does not understand
these issues... which is OK but unless it's within your experience, it's
hard to know how afraid to be... ...and that's the problem with
Koskinen and the others. and that's why when SHMUEL says, a 5%
probablity that it's worse than milne is prepping for, I get chills.
You denial-heads, check out SHMUEL in comp.lang.asm370 and
bit.listserv.ibm-main. ...or even better, subscribe to both groups and
argue with him there, show both groups how tuff *you* are.
Preparedness ------- This week's score --------
The local grocery store, Giant Food, had Campbell's Chunky soup on sale,
the 19 oz cans were $1.12. I got 20 cans, bunch of different kinds.
The checkout lady recognized us from the Y2K-Wise conference, she gave
us the "I know what you're up to" eye. I winked back. Giant also had
regular Campbell's on sale, 4 cans of chicken noodle, $2.00. French cut
green beans were 1/3 off. I loaded up.
One can of Beef Pasta soup has 280 calories, 22 grams of protein and
120% of your RDA for vitamin A and 4 % of vitamin C. Not exactly a full
balanced meal but, toss in a can of Del Monte French Style Green Beans,
that adds 70 calories. Add a cup (precooked measure) of rice, that's
680 calories. The total is about 1,000 calories, a fair dinner for two.
Oh and we're eating the soup already. Even though the expiration dates
are in spring and summer 2000, a can of soup makes a cheap lunch and
there's lots more where that came from.
Another benefit of the $20/week plan is, we're buying what we eat rather
than picking up caselots of things we might eat from the warehouse
stores.
National ---------- Y2K Awareness Week -----------
How did it go where you are? Were the parades well attended? Did the
mayor cut the ribbon on the Y2K Success! Warehouse? Did your
neighborhood spend one night off-grid, grilling steaks and going door to
door to simulate neighborhood check-ups? Did everyone start their
generator, check their flashlight, and light a fire in their fireplace
or woodstove? Did the cubscouts put on a "Kick Your Door in and
Confiscate Your Supplies" morality play... with the den mother dressed
up as Janet Reno?
Or did Y2K Awareness Week fizz out, no interest, no notice.
International ----- WDC Y2K Meeting ----------------
I got there early and had a chance to chat w/ Bruce. Bruce and Helen
run the meetings. Bruce is doing some research on Surviving Y2K. We
knocked around some ideas.
C.s.y2k'ers attending included Jay, DD, Gregs90210, Rick Cowles,
Jonathan (a lurker), Perky, BarbKE, and late as usual, phystad. I took
pictures of everyone except DD.... DD doesn't cast a shadow or
show up in mirrors, why is that?
I got a bunch of signatures for BarbKnox's prize for winning last year's
Y2K song contest. The prize was a rare, limited edition print of the
Lockheed U-2. It includes a brief history of the plane and the "Skunk
Works"
The following speakers addressed the evening's topic, Y2K and the World.
Carlos Guedes, Deputy Controller, Inter-American Development Bank
Harris Miller, President, Information Technology Association of America
Bill Piatt, Chief Information Officer, Peace Corps
Joyce Amenta, Y2K Program Coordinator, The World Bank
The general sense of the speakers is that the third world is tanking
without Y2K problems, we will be severely affected by developments in
Brazil, Malasia, Japan, China, Russia... you may have heard of a few of
these places.
Brief: the World Bank is on schedule to complete their remediation
by June 1999, leaving the rest of 1999 for testing. The Peace Corp is
not concerned about their internal systems, they're worried about the
safety of their volunteer workers overseas... what if they can't wire
the monthly living allowance to the workers? Two speakers mentioned
that the solution is not to run away to the woods and take up arms...
don't do it, they said....
..when they start screaming, "Nobody Panic!!" I'm running for the
hills ... they were close to doing that.
One attendee did some good natured baiting of the ITAA rep. He took
a, what if little-ole me -bats eyelashes- can't understand the high
falooting talk of the big boy bankers? The ITAA rep was in "no
problems mode", just ask your bank about their compliance and if they
won't say, ask a government regulatory agency.
..then the attendee turned over his ID badge, it read... F.D.I.C.
WDC Y2K is a tuff crowd. Some attendees run hundred million dollar
Y2K remediation programs, are VPs at Fortune 500's. Then there's DD and
me, we hang in the corner and critique the food. The pastries, this
time they had killer pastries.. Kiwi tarts, oh my. Sushi, stuffed
mushrooms, cheese, fruit, grape leaves, dim sum.
After the meeting, the C.s.y2k'ers had a post-mortem at the Georgetown
Starbucks. The concensus - they lied to us. They know it'll be bad but
but they don't want to say so. We had coffee, Jay stuffed his face,
hugs all around, it was surreal. By the way, it turns out that
phystad is cute. ...but hey, that's just me, I watch Baywatch, I'm a
sucker for blondes.
Hardware ------- Jace Crouch on Time Dilation ----------
General information about the current state of TD research is available
at:
intranet.ca
or
nethawk.com
TD, Time Dilation, the Crouch-Echlin Effect or CE/TD is an elusive
but serious aspect of the larger Year 2000 issue that was discovered by
Jace Crouch and Mike Echlin and first reported on the newsgroup
comp.software.year-2000.
Specifically, TD refers to the time and date instabilities that will
occur in the year 2000 and beyond on some personal computers and some
embedded systems. These time and date instabilities occur when BIOS time
and date routines improperly access a non-buffered RTC during startup,
resulting in a personal computer or an embedded system that has
difficulty calculating or retaining the correct time and/or date in the
year 2000 and beyond.
On these systems the time and/or date will intermittently and abruptly
"leap" forward (or occasionally backward) when the system is powered
up, not only causing the system to display and store an incorrect time
and date, but also leading in certain instances to the failure of com
ports and hard drives, cmos scrambling, the OS ceasing to function
properly because it is suddenly operating at a date beyond its original
design parameters, and occasionally resulting in a system that will not
boot up, or even make it out of POST.
These time and date instabilities can occur after the year 1999 because
the BIOS then takes longer to access and process data obtained from
the RTC, and on systems with a non-buffered RTC the BIOS may do
this while the data is incorrect. In the era 20xx, a non-buffered RTC
accessed shortly before the update flag is set may return bad data
because the time and date calculations take longer than 244
microseconds in the era 20xx and the calculations may extend into the
period when the RTC is in update status.
If this occurs when the RTC is accessed during POST, Time and Date
instabilities can occur not because this incorrect data used to
calculate time and date for the software clock, but also because the
incorrect time and date may get written back to the RTC/CMOS, thereby
sustaining the time and date errors until the RTC/CMOS is reset by the
user or by remediative software.
Occasionally (but devastatingly), the events that result in TD
also result in CMOS corruption and/or hard drive boot sector
corruption. For a detailed description of how this works, see
<http://www.nethawk.com/~jcrouch/second.htm>.
As you know, Mike and I have been working very closely for the past
year with Mark Slotnick and Barry Pardee of Compaq Services /
Digital on this troublesome Year 2000 time and date instability issue.
Here's the official word from Barry Pardee:
"We at Compaq and Digital have confirmed that
the Crouch Echlin Effect, also referred to as
Time Dilation (TD), is real and is a potential
threat to PCs, servers, and embedded systems
that use unbuffered real time clocks."
Also, Mike Echlin's long promised software suite, TD Tools, is finally
available. A detailed description of TD Tools is available at
<http://www.nethawk.com/~jcrouch/#TDTools-info>. Simply put, the
presence of a non-buffered RTC and susceptibility to TD can be
detected and evaluated using Mike Echlin's tdtest.exe and tdfind.exe.
The time and date instabilities associated with this phenomenon can
be corrected with Mike Echlin's tdfix.exe.
For worldwide corporate or government inquiries about obtaining 50+
licenses of TD Tools directly from Compaq Services / Digital, people
should contact Tanya Bellamy <tanya.bellamy@digital.com>, and include TD
in the subject line.
For individual and small business and corporate or government inquiries
about obtaining licenses of TD Tools in Europe, Africa, and the Middle
East, people should contact Dave Eastabrook, of Elmbronze Ltd.
<TDsales@elmbronze.demon.co.uk>.
Mike and I are about to announce a distributor for individual and small
business and corporate or government licenses of TD Tools in Canada, the
United States, and Mexico, as well as a distributor for Australasia, but
until those arrangements can be made public, interested persons should
contact Dave Eastabrook <TDsales@elmbronze.demon.co.uk>.
-Jace Crouch
Preparedness ------ DragonRanch --------
I spent 9 hours on DragonRanch horsing 50 lb sacks of concrete, fussing
with the Type-2 hitch/PTO on the Jolly Green Giant, the 4WD tractor made
by John Deere Werke, Mannheim.
The Baron spent $800 on concrete and 6x6 pressure treated. ...all the
time muttering, we're out-a time. But this isn't about money, the
Baron has been working on DragonRanch for over 10 years. He's well
heeled, he's got a half million in DragonRanch. I help him because he's
a pal and I learn about construction, farming, machinery, and survival
issues.
Clueless ---------- CCCC --------------
On Mon, 26 Oct 1998 20:52:50, "Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" <nospam@nsf.gov.invalid> wrote:
> cory hamasaki wrote:
>
> > 1900's seem OK to me, especially if we can salvage the bits and pieces
> > of the modern infrastructure. The 1850's would be a problem.
>
> Can you say Influenza?
>
Considering that I've been nattering in c.s.y2k about the Spanish Lady
Flu and the CDC morbidity and mortality stats, I guess I have to try...
in-flu-en... lemme try again... in-flu-en-ah... almost....
in-flu-en-zah! There. I said it. ...now why was I supposed to say it?
> Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
SHMUEL, are you suggesting that I've forgotten the pandemic after WWI
where the Spanish Lady Flu killed tens of millions of people world-wide?
My expertise is not in Infectious Disease... although I have done the
heavy lifting for epidemiologists and ID, internal medicine docs. I
spent a couple years writing a system that encoded antimicrobial
resistance into a 2D vector where:
dcl 1 patrec,
2 patname char (32),
2 date /* non-Y2K compliant date stamp */
2 organism char (24),
2 sensitive(3,20) char (01);
sensitive(1,*) = 1 char name of the antimicrobial
sensitive(2,*) = 1 char 2^N concentration of the antimicrobial
sensitive(3,*) = 1 char S/R indicating sensitive or resistance.
The S/R is not an indication of the vendor so much as the mindset of our
users. Some epidemiologists think in terms of sensitive/resistant at
2^N concentration, others simply in terms of a simple S/R.
A second system used the definition:
char well[***][7]; /* note the language switch */
Where well defines the titration plate of a densitometer vendor. The
*** is a specific value. As vendors use 48, 96, 128 and other counts of
wells and specific geometries, I've left out the specifics that identify
the manufacturer.
The optical densitometer (controlled by firmware running on an 8085)
returned a vector containing light transmission at various Angstroms.
The machine uses a regulated, calibrated light source and swings a
filter bank into the light path.
Our code matched the vector with a titration plate definition, well 5
contains such and such reagent at 2^N concentration in micrograms per
deciliter. The autoinnoculator adds a small amount of the organism to
each well.
Plate nnn is associated with patient xyz; everything is date stamped,
everything is an official record in a hospital microbiology lab. ...and
not Y2K compliant.
The densitometer itself does not have a Y2K issue. The external
processor, some kind of DOS based PC, does.
Such systems will produce incorrect and unpredictable results when the
century rolls over. The questions are, How has the antimicrobial
resistance drifted over time? Compare this year against the historic
baseline resistance. Date questions...
(HB, don't bother trying to base a Y2K article for Westergaard on
the above. I haven't revealed enough of the specifics. Unless you get
a real expert, a computational infectious disease specialist, it'll be a
garbled as the other one.)
My point is 1) in a past life I did substantive work on a couple
biomedical instrumentation systems, 2) I acquired some familiarity with
infectious disease and trauma issues, 3) my interest in mortality isn't
morbid curiosity, my team was building code to save lives, 4) I'm doing
something else these days but if you're working on hospital systems,
crank code.
I know how long it takes to build organism identification and
antimicrobial management systems and how hard it is to deploy changes
to databases scattered around the world.
Real coders who are familiar with hospital and biomedical systems
know what is at stake here. Crank code, please, I'm begging you.
As for the rest of you... *don't* get sick around New Years Evil.
Responding to fedinfo@halifax.com
> We are not on a 'knife's edge' where we could go either way, as Cory Hamasaki
> puts it. We are already on the other side falling down. Pollyannas just don't
> have the mental accumen to recognize it yet, because they don't want to.
> They live in cities and refuse to leave or prepare. But it will be too late
> for them. Too late for all the maroons who want to start preparing in June of
> next year, AFTER the panics have already begun.
paul, (and you too timmy burke.) the knife edge isn't:
everything's fine Oops, I'm outa steaks.
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It's:
simply Horrible Yahhh! Infomagic _was_ wrong!
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Loony pollyanna that I am, I'm hoping that things are just simply
horrible, you know, Edwards 3-4, company closings, riots in the usual
places, a couple hundred thousand people on critical care die as the UPS
running their respirators goes dim. Minor small arms action but not in
the suburbs. The sheeple bleat and trade blows in the grocery stores.
..and it gets worse before it gets better.
..but it does get better. After a few months, we venture out. Commerce
restarts, the mail comes back, phones work. I get a couple contracts
fixing software and they pay in silver.
In the Edwards 3-4 scenario, I'll do just fine in suburbia... I'll be
cooking yummy food, drawing water from a river less than a mile away.
Like others, I'll be watching the action on a battery powered pocket
LCD TV, tossing a log onto the fire, the house will be cool but we can
snuggle in front of the fire. I'll have my 2 meter and HF SSB/CW rig on
the air on solar battery power.
That's Edwards 3-4. If it goes Infomagic, well... I'll try to log on
the internet to download the "cory, you butt-head pollyanna!"
messages that you and timmy burke will be sending out.
> Too bad. I'll be having roast pork, baked with carrots and potaotes from the
> garden. Oh yeah, and nice hot brown gravy. MMMMMMMMM.
> Paul Milne
I don't disagree with paul milne and Infomagic. The issue isn't how
much of our infrastructure will fail, it's how badly do we need the
infrastructure. I expect the failures to be stranger and more
widespread than the domain experts are predicting.
But do we need 20,000 SKU's in a store or are 100 enough? Can you live
on pasta and beans, beans and rice?
And how nutz will people get when the infrastructure fails? Here's the
bad news, no only has the technical remediation failed, but the
contingency efforts are floundering. National Y2K Awareness Week
fizzled out.
cory hamasaki 430 Days, 10,343 Hours.
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