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Message 1318240 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 17:40:14 UTC - in response to Message 1318081.  



That's perfect Julie, I want to be on that party. :))


I'd say, join the party, Grant:)
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Message 1318248 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 17:44:48 UTC




With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.
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Message 1318249 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 17:44:58 UTC - in response to Message 1318150.  

Remember Y2k

Well it's not over:

2020: January 1: Systems still using 1920 as pivot date fail; Macintoshes running System 6.0.4 or earlier - correct date can no longer be set in Date & Time Control Panel

2030: January 1: Systems still using 1930 as pivot date fail.

2036: January 1: Burroughs Unisys A Series system date fails?

2036: February 6: 2^32 seconds from Jan 1, 1900.

2037: January 1: Rollover date for NTP systems

2038: January 19: Unix: 2^31 seconds from Jan 1, 1970

2040: February 6: At 06:28:16, old Macs' longword seconds from Jan 1, 1904 overflow.

2042: September 17: IBM 370 TOD clock overflows. One source lists this as the 18th (?)

2044: January 1: MS-DOS: 2^6 years from 1980, setting the most significant bit (MSB). Signed variables using this get a negative date.

2046: January 1: Amiga system date failure

2046: June 8: Some Unix password aging fails; 62^2 weeks from 1970.

2049: December 31: Microsoft Project 95 limit.

2078: December 31: MS Excel 7.0 - the last day

2079: June 6: 2^16 days from January 1, 1900

2080: January 1: MS-DOS file dates, displayed with two-digit years, become ambiguous.

2100: Y2.1K; most current PC BIOSes run out of dates; MS-DOS <DIR> renders the file-date years 2100 through 2107 as 99.

2100: February 28: last day of February - NOT a leap year

2106: February 7: Unix: 2^32 seconds from Jan 1, 1970; time overflows at 06:28:16.

2108: January 1: MS-DOS 2^7 years from 1980; file date overflows

2738: November 28: Approximate day of A.D. 1 million (days)

4338: November 28: COBOL-85 integer day 1,000,000 (10^6) exceeds six-digit field

9999: HTTP caching fails.

10000: January 1: Y10K!! Four-digit years fail. More time will elapse between the time this document was written and this date than has elapsed from the beginning of modern human civilization until now.

29602: January 1: MS Windows NT File Systems (NTFS) fails.

29940: New Macs' signed 64-bit time fails (has been OK since 30,081 B.C.!!)

31086: July 31: Internal DEC VMS time fails at 02:48:05.47

60056: Win32 64-bit time fails (started from Jan 1, 1601)

OMG OMG OMG.........I have so many party dates to attend.......
What's a kitty to do?
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

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Message 1318264 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 18:06:30 UTC

What do the Kitties do?

Make sure there is a plentiful supply of bottle/tin openers...
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Message 1318270 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 18:18:08 UTC - in response to Message 1318264.  

What do the Kitties do?

Make sure there is a plentiful supply of bottle/tin openers...

LOL...
I actually went to market and stocked up on multiple tins of kitty food on Wednesday.

I am having some difficulty in teaching them how to open the tins themselves, however.
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

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Message 1318303 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 18:47:19 UTC - in response to Message 1318150.  

Remember Y2k

Well it's not over:

2020: January 1: Systems still using 1920 as pivot date fail; Macintoshes running System 6.0.4 or earlier - correct date can no longer be set in Date & Time Control Panel

2030: January 1: Systems still using 1930 as pivot date fail.

2036: January 1: Burroughs Unisys A Series system date fails?

2036: February 6: 2^32 seconds from Jan 1, 1900.

2037: January 1: Rollover date for NTP systems

2038: January 19: Unix: 2^31 seconds from Jan 1, 1970

2040: February 6: At 06:28:16, old Macs' longword seconds from Jan 1, 1904 overflow.

2042: September 17: IBM 370 TOD clock overflows. One source lists this as the 18th (?)

2044: January 1: MS-DOS: 2^6 years from 1980, setting the most significant bit (MSB). Signed variables using this get a negative date.

2046: January 1: Amiga system date failure

2046: June 8: Some Unix password aging fails; 62^2 weeks from 1970.

2049: December 31: Microsoft Project 95 limit.

2078: December 31: MS Excel 7.0 - the last day

2079: June 6: 2^16 days from January 1, 1900

2080: January 1: MS-DOS file dates, displayed with two-digit years, become ambiguous.

2100: Y2.1K; most current PC BIOSes run out of dates; MS-DOS <DIR> renders the file-date years 2100 through 2107 as 99.

2100: February 28: last day of February - NOT a leap year

2106: February 7: Unix: 2^32 seconds from Jan 1, 1970; time overflows at 06:28:16.

2108: January 1: MS-DOS 2^7 years from 1980; file date overflows

2738: November 28: Approximate day of A.D. 1 million (days)

4338: November 28: COBOL-85 integer day 1,000,000 (10^6) exceeds six-digit field

9999: HTTP caching fails.

10000: January 1: Y10K!! Four-digit years fail. More time will elapse between the time this document was written and this date than has elapsed from the beginning of modern human civilization until now.

29602: January 1: MS Windows NT File Systems (NTFS) fails.

29940: New Macs' signed 64-bit time fails (has been OK since 30,081 B.C.!!)

31086: July 31: Internal DEC VMS time fails at 02:48:05.47

60056: Win32 64-bit time fails (started from Jan 1, 1601)

Pivot dates were short sighted.


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Message 1318310 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 18:52:28 UTC - in response to Message 1318149.  

They know full well that if we ever here on Seti found the WOW signal........ It would be suppressed by our government here.

And I think everywhere. The military of each country would be after reverse engineering any technology for their own purposes, and the governments would want to avoid worldwide panic and civil unrest. You've seen the world go nuts over today, without any real evidence whatsoever, just imagine the reaction to scientific proof of REAL aliens ......

@John - The Y2K scenario was a licence for all IT Directors and Managers to be given a blank cheque to update all their old kit. And most did! I was heavily involved in my own companies preparations, and I knew full well that aeroplanes weren't gonna fall out of the sky :-)

Planes would not fall out of the sky because there are humans behind the controls. However, many of the systems would have had to fall back to manual mode, and there are some systems (reservations for example) that would have failed completely. There were a couple of companies that went under because they could not fix their computer systems to be Y2K compliant. There were many problems that were fixed when fixing up the Y2K problems. The fact that it was invisible to almost everyone is a testament to the hard work of every IT department.

Yes, it involved replacing much hardware and software, however there were going to be real problems if it was not done.


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Message 1318336 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 19:19:52 UTC - in response to Message 1318332.  
Last modified: 21 Dec 2012, 19:21:17 UTC

Didn't it only affect the way that software programs stored dates? When memory was tight, dates were stored as a 2 digit year, therefore xx/yy/99 was taken to mean 1999 not 1899. When the millennium arrived the date rolled over to 2000 which was stored as 00, which programs would interpret as being back to 1900 again. The worst that could have happened is that bills were sent out for being 100 years in arrears.

Programs needed to be re-witten to encode years in 4 digits, and certain legacy systems like WFWG 3.12 needed to be upgraded to a later version.

Yes, but how dates are stored can affect a large number of calculations involving those dates. For example, if you have money in the bank in an interest bearing account, when the date rolled over from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 1900, your account would automatically have 100 years of interest deducted...

If it was just for display purposes, the humans involved would look at it and say how interesting, but anything that was then used in a calculation would cause problems.

[edit]
Or, how about an insurance company automatically stating that your pain medications could not be refilled for the next 100 years...


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Message 1318368 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 19:49:28 UTC - in response to Message 1318352.  

Well, one of my tasks at the time was to comb a large Computer centre from top to bottom listing every machine, and what was running on it. I spent weeks going through hundreds of machines, I think we found about 5 that could usefully be upgraded. Most of the 2 digit year programs had been coded in the 80's and had long gone. Although I can see that travel companies and banks might have had a problem in theory, I think they were mostly on more modern systems by then.

Quite frankly it was a massive hype, which the press encouraged. The average board of directors wouldn't have recognised a pc if they had tripped over one, but were swayed by dire warnings of impending doom if they didn't stump up lots of cash, and IT managers milked it for all they were worth.

One of my tasks about a year and a half before the deadline was to actually fix some of the programs that had 2 digit years stored.

The only reason that some of the outfits were fixed in time was that there was work that went on beforehand. Yes, there was a problem, it was not overblown by very much. The fact that it went well is precisely because there was a lot of work that went on fixing things before the s*** hit the fan.

I had a CS professor that stated "Why are you spending the space for 4 digits in the year? You will never need to have 4 digits in the year in your career." This was in 1980 at the beginning of my CS schooling. It was obvious to me at that time that my career was NOT going to end before Y2K. It is this mindset that had many programmers writing code with 2 digit years into the 1990s, until the press about the coming Y2K problem got their attention.


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Message 1318392 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 20:13:10 UTC - in response to Message 1318386.  

Reminds me of some other famous statements ... some of which are contested.

Bill Gates 1981 - "640K ought to be enough for anybody."

Digital Equipment Corp Ken Olsen 1977 - "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home"

IBM CEO Thomas Watson 1943 - "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers"

Isn't hindsight a marvelous thing?

Hindsight is 20/20 as long as you are paying attention.


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Message 1318477 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 22:18:43 UTC

Since the mayan apocalypse didn't happen at least we're on track for Judgement Day :)

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Message 1318499 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 23:05:39 UTC

You could go by my prediction. I have never been wrong.

The world will end!

I just don't set a date.
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Message 1318508 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 23:43:31 UTC - in response to Message 1318499.  

You could go by my prediction. I have never been wrong.

The world will end!

I just don't set a date.

I will. In about 5 billion years when the sun starts trying to burn iron and turns into a red giant. I don't know if humans will be around to witness it though.


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Message 1318511 - Posted: 21 Dec 2012, 23:54:36 UTC - in response to Message 1318508.  
Last modified: 21 Dec 2012, 23:56:54 UTC

You could go by my prediction. I have never been wrong.

The world will end!

I just don't set a date.

I will. In about 5 billion years when the sun starts trying to burn iron and turns into a red giant. I don't know if humans will be around to witness it though.

I am sure THIS human shall not be here.
Unless the things I read about vampires are true.
I don't sleep much, that's for sure. And I have been known to look at younger women like they are lunch. One almost came at me the other day when I got my hair cut. Not sure if she wanted a date or if she was afraid I was a sleeze and just wanted to eyeball me on the way out....LOL.

In either case, I am taken by Lori, and did not wish to make a scene.
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

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Message 1318541 - Posted: 22 Dec 2012, 1:07:26 UTC - in response to Message 1318508.  
Last modified: 22 Dec 2012, 1:13:43 UTC

You could go by my prediction. I have never been wrong.

The world will end!

I just don't set a date.

I will. In about 5 billion years when the sun starts trying to burn iron and turns into a red giant. I don't know if humans will be around to witness it though.



Very slim chance on that one.
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Message 1318564 - Posted: 22 Dec 2012, 1:52:23 UTC - in response to Message 1318541.  

You could go by my prediction. I have never been wrong.

The world will end!

I just don't set a date.

I will. In about 5 billion years when the sun starts trying to burn iron and turns into a red giant. I don't know if humans will be around to witness it though.



Very slim chance on that one.

Yep, this type star can't make iron, thankfully, since to fuse iron is impossible, when a large star tries(like a blue giant), it goes kaboom!!
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Message 1318569 - Posted: 22 Dec 2012, 1:58:59 UTC - in response to Message 1318564.  

You could go by my prediction. I have never been wrong.

The world will end!

I just don't set a date.

I will. In about 5 billion years when the sun starts trying to burn iron and turns into a red giant. I don't know if humans will be around to witness it though.



Very slim chance on that one.

Yep, this type star can't make iron, thankfully, since to fuse iron is impossible, when a large star tries(like a blue giant), it goes kaboom!!

It isn't impossible, but it doesn't generate any energy either.


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Message 1318584 - Posted: 22 Dec 2012, 2:13:50 UTC - in response to Message 1318569.  

You could go by my prediction. I have never been wrong.

The world will end!

I just don't set a date.

I will. In about 5 billion years when the sun starts trying to burn iron and turns into a red giant. I don't know if humans will be around to witness it though.



Very slim chance on that one.

Yep, this type star can't make iron, thankfully, since to fuse iron is impossible, when a large star tries(like a blue giant), it goes kaboom!!

It isn't impossible, but it doesn't generate any energy either.

*calls Scotty on the intercom*
I need more power
*Scotty says something about the laws of physics*
Now or we're all dead!
*scotty does something with the warp drive that saves the crew*
Woohoo! :)

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Message 1318588 - Posted: 22 Dec 2012, 2:22:09 UTC - in response to Message 1318569.  

You could go by my prediction. I have never been wrong.

The world will end!

I just don't set a date.

I will. In about 5 billion years when the sun starts trying to burn iron and turns into a red giant. I don't know if humans will be around to witness it though.



Very slim chance on that one.

Yep, this type star can't make iron, thankfully, since to fuse iron is impossible, when a large star tries(like a blue giant), it goes kaboom!!

It isn't impossible, but it doesn't generate any energy either.


Main Sequence Yellow Dwarf stars like the sun, don't go boom, at best a white dwarf...
The common use of dwarf to mean main sequence is confusing in another way, because there are dwarf stars which are not main-sequence stars. For example, white dwarfs are a different kind of star that is much smaller than main-sequence stars—being roughly the size of the Earth. These represent the final evolutionary stage of many main-sequence stars.


Supernova=kaboom...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_II_supernova
Massive stars generate energy by the nuclear fusion of elements. Unlike the Sun, these stars possess the mass needed to fuse elements that have an atomic mass greater than hydrogen and helium, albeit at increasingly high temperatures and pressure, and for increasingly shorter periods of time. The degeneracy pressure of electrons and the energy generated by these fusion reactions are sufficient to counter the force of gravity and prevent the star from collapsing. The star fuses increasingly higher mass elements, starting with hydrogen and then helium, until finally a core of iron and nickel is produced. Fusion of iron or nickel produces no net energy, so further fusion is unable to take place, leaving the nickel-iron core inert.

When the mass of the inert core exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit of about 1.4 solar masses, electron degeneracy alone is no longer sufficient to counter gravity. A cataclysmic implosion takes place within seconds, in which the outer core reaches an inward velocity of up to 23% of the speed of light and the inner core reaches temperatures of up to 100 billion kelvin. Neutrons and neutrinos are formed via reversed beta-decay, releasing about 1046 joules (100 foes) in a ten-second burst. The collapse is halted by neutron degeneracy, causing the implosion to bounce outward. The energy of this expanding shock wave is sufficient to detach the surrounding stellar material, forming a supernova explosion, while the shock wave and extreme conditions briefly allow the production of elements heavier than iron.[3] Because of the underlying mechanism, the resulting variable star is also described as a core-collapse supernova.

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Message 1318593 - Posted: 22 Dec 2012, 2:43:15 UTC

So our sun won't go "kaboom". Phew :)

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