"Bill Putney" <bptn (AT) kinez (DOT) net> wrote

I think your date of 2012 is correct for the Maya predictions. There was
another
prediction recently which claimed a disaster event for 11-11-09. On that
date I
will watch "Law and Order", most likely, and go to bed.

Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer (AT) cs (DOT) nmsu.edu> wrote:
I did some cleanup work for some people who had a realtime factory automation
system written in COBOL running on a VMS machine. Don't ask how it got that
way.

Updating VMS to V5.5 fixed all of the OS-related Y2K issues, none of which
really mattered anyway since none of the code used the system date. The
code, however, accepted a human-entered Julian date in the form of two
digits for the year, then three digits for the number of days since Jan 1.
It treated the Julian date number as an integer and the only acceptance
testing it did on the date was that it couldn't be lower than 85000. Which
of course was a problem when the date turned to 00001.

Nobody had any of the source code for this mess, so I patched the binary
so it compared it with 0 instead of 85000. Problem solved. Actual coding
time about 10 minutes, time to figure out what the code actually did (a
combination of the operators really having no clue how the system worked
and a lack of documentation) about two weeks.

If I'd had the source code, it wouldn't have been a big deal to fix it
so it calculated the actual Julian date from the system date, but I really
didn't want to work with this stuff any more than necessary.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Matthew Russotto wrote:
I have HIR's in one of my Concordes. Apparently they haven't caught on
yet. I think they even quit making the hi beam (9006) bulb in it. But
I do have a spare on the shelf (actually was planning on putting that in
my second Concorde, but haven't gotten aroundtuit since the headlight
assembly has to be modified slightly to accept angle-based bulbs).

--
Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

Matthew Russotto wrote:
Hah! Yeah - that one's really got me worried. Something tells me there
will be bigger things to be worried about by then - or maybe all
problems will be over by then.

--
Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

Matthew Russotto wrote:
Well that whole theory that a tankful of leaded fuel protected the
valves forever was crafted in hindsight, after it became clear that old
engines were not burning valves with unleaded gasoline as had been
predicted.
If you do research you might look at the studies done by those who
build engines designed to run on LPG. What those studies demonstrated
is that soot makes some difference in wear on valves. Hardened valves
were used in LPG engines long before they were used in gasoline engines
because LPG engines eat valves more than gasoline engines. The reason LP
gas engines erode valves faster is because they burn so cleanly. The
valves erode because of the clean metal on metal contact. Tests have
shown that you can counter the valve wear problem in LPG engines by just
burning a tiny amount of oil along with the LPG. The soot produced
protects the valves. It should be obvious that 1960's gasoline engines
did not have this problem of burning fuel too cleanly.

If you do your research you will note that the tests that showed the
benefit of lead were all done under very extreme conditions where
engines were run at extremely high rpm high load conditions. It has
never been demonstrated that lead makes a noticeable difference in valve
wear under normal driving conditions.

Where TEL did make a clear difference was in oil refinery economics. It
allowed the oil companies to produce and sell the mix of products that
maximized profits. In simple terms, it was a way to increase demand
plus lower production cost.

Another big difference that has resulted from removing lead from
gasoline is engines last longer without lead, oil change intervals can
be made longer and spark plugs last considerably longer. Those changes
have been documented in side by side comparisons of the same engines on
the 2 types of fuel. Those differences are directly related to removing
lead from the fuel and not changes in engine design or changes in
materials used.

-jim

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091011/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_apocalypse2012




"hls" <hls (AT) nospam (DOT) nix> wrote

The major disaster that will happen on 11-11-09 is that almost everyone will
forget the anniversary of the armistice. People need to remember what happens
when countries get embroiled in badly-thought-out wars. That's what the day
is all about...
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 11/6/09 6:48 PM, in article 7ljudvF3di77pU2 (AT) mid (DOT) individual.net, "Bill
Putney" <bptn (AT) kinez (DOT) net> wrote:

My personal feeling, based on observation, is that the world was and is at
much greater risk due to unspec'd, untested & unverified software being
hacked out in third world countries than anything we could ever conceive
related to two digit date years. All that Y2K hype sure did keep a bunch of
SW people employed for a year or so though.

"hls" <hls (AT) nospam (DOT) nix> writes:

You say it like you're disagreeing.
--
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
and this we should do freely and generously. (Benjamin Franklin)

"Joe Pfeiffer" <pfeiffer (AT) cs (DOT) nmsu.edu> wrote

Microsoft was thought to be the cream of the crop by many people. It isnt,
and they
arent even the lowest bidder.

If software had the same sort of exposure that medicine had, these people
would
perfect their crappy code before maneuvering people into a position that
they
practically are forced to buy it.