Klarinet Archive - Posting 001002.txt from 1999/11
From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Off-topic: Y2K stuff
Date: Thu, 25 Nov 1999 12:34:21 -0500
Mark Charette wrote,
<For those of you who'd like some reasonably reliable info, the Computer
Emergency Response Team (CERT - they do all the security advisories sent to
Sys admins around the world) at Carnegie-Mellon have a pretty good page at:
http://www.cert.org/y2k-info/ >
Thank you!! That reminds me: What's best for this list at the end of next
month? Some of us won't know for sure that our computers will work. My
husband hopes he can fix his computer well enough so that we can continue to
send and receive e-mail and connect with the Internet, but if his fixes don't
work, I don't want to contribute to clogging up your computer with bounced
messages. But if a bunch of us unsubscribe at the last minute, could we foul
things up that way, too? Is it better for you if those of us who don't know
what to expect unsubscribe well before January 1? If so, how soon?
On the "Dichotomitis (rant)" thread, Mark wrote,
>The Y2K thing isn't a hardware thing, folks. It's a software thing, and in
most cases on older PCs it's going to be an annoyance more than anything - my
486 is going to be running just fine, I'm just not going to pay attention to
the date (I don't anyway - the clock was running slow, so I just keep it back
at 1995).>
Since old hardware won't run the new Y2K-compliant software, because each
generation of new software is so much more grossly bloated and memory-greedy
than the previous version, for practical purposes, Y2K is also a hardware
problem. For instance,WordPerfect, AOL and the makers of all my other
software have long since quit supporting the versions that will run on my 486
and will not provide Y2K fixes for those versions. The new versions need
resources my old machine hasn't got. I've looked at the instructions for
some of the do-it-yourself fixes and can't understand them. It would/will be
cheaper, not to mention simpler and probably more reliable, for me to buy a
whole new box than to kludge together enough memory, new graphics card, sound
card, etc. etc. incrementally (let alone make it all function together) to
run the newer programs on a machine as old as mine.
Since I never use this machine for spreadsheets or other date-sensitive
applications, I'm going to try to buy time and keep the dinosaur alive
anyway, by setting its calendar back to 1971 on December 31, so that it
thinks it's rolling over to 1972. The leap year and days of the week are the
same for 1972 (also 1944 and 1916) and 2000, so in theory the automatic
dating will continue to work correctly except for the year.
Bill Hausmann wrote,
>>I utterly amazes me the way people overblow the Y2K thing. I have a 386SX
on my desk at work (my old one from home, actually) that I use for word
processing (and playing computer bridge while I eat lunch). I expect that
after January 1st, I will lose the automatic document date function, but,
other than that, I expect it to work just fine. What is it supposed to do?
Boot up on January 3rd, notice that it is now "1900," realize that computers
have not been invented yet and vanish into thin air?>>
For a pesticide manufacturer using a machine like yours or mine to time a
chemical reactor, an error in the automatic date function could cause a
reactor to fail to shut down on schedule, as happened in the Bhopal disaster,
where the timer failure resulted in a chemical explosion. The consequences
there included immediate fatalities and long-term environmental
contamination. That's why my husband has to work on New Year's. He's the
E.P.A. Pesticide Division's contact person for manufacturers that experience
Y2K-related problems. The people who make the decisions at some of these
companies think the E.P.A. people are a flock of clucking Chicken Littles
anyway and agree with you that "people overblow the Y2K thing." Therefore
some pesticide manufacturers refuse to take the precaution of standing down
over New Year's. They say they're absolutely positive they know what they're
doing. I sure hope they're right.
Mark Charette wrote,
>Lelia's complaint about having to upgrade all the time is a bit specious
IMHO - if it was "good enough" 5 or 6 years ago, why isn't it "good
enough"today if you're using it for, let's say, word processing? Oh - you
mean you want to surf the Web now? You want that word processor with more
goodies? That accounting program to keep track of all those royalty dollars (
:^) ?>
>Oh - you mean you want it to do _more_ than it did 5 years back? Ahhh -
there's the rub!>
If I ever get "all those royalty dollars," a pocket calculator will probably
suffice to keep track of them. :-)
Point taken, however. You're right, I do like the "goodies" -- as long as I
own them and not the other way around. How about 17 years back? For word
processing, an ASCII-based shareware word processing program called PC-Write
did all the basics, on my 1982 IBM-PC, which I eventually upgraded to 640K
RAM with two 5-1/4" floppy drives and no hard drive. I never felt deprived
with that system, though I'd probably feel deprived now if I had to go back
to it. The printer broke down for the last time in late 1994 or early 1995
and the old computer couldn't run any printer then on the market. Once Kevin
and I bought a faster computer and started doing business with more
computer-savvy people, who keep asking *their* stuff to do more, they started
pressuring us to keep up with the Joneses so that our upgrades could use
their upgrades. If we don't do that, we're inconveniencing them by forcing
them to accomodate "antiquated" systems. I think we reached the point of
diminishing returns some time ago.
Lelia
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Back up my hard drive? How do I put it in reverse?
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