Bubba's Revenge

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Here is Bubba's Revenge:

Terry Pickl
tpickl@cyberkatz.com

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Monday July 14 10:13 AM EDT 

Low-Tech May Rule After Year 2000

By Neil Winton, Science and Technology Correspondent 

LONDON - What do paraffin stoves, candles, cash, bycles, tins of food, bottles 
of water, typewriters, and ladders have in common? 

None of them depend on computer chips, and all are likely to be in desperate 
demand after clocks strike midnight on December 31, 1999. 

Since the early 1980s the computer chip has been quietly taking over even the 
most mundane and basic needs of everyday life. 

And according to experts, we are likely to wake up with a shock on the first 
morning of the next century to find out just how dependent we have become. 

The fear is that millions of microprocessors fail and basic needs like 
cooking, heating, and lighting will be jeopardized. 

Chips controlling power station operation, telephone exchanges, lifts, 
heating, sewage, water, oil refineries, railway signals, traffic lights and 
automated bank tellers are at risk. 

And all because computer programmers in the 1970s and '80s tried to save what 
was then valuable computer memory by abbreviating dates to the last two 
digits. 

They hoped that, because of the pace of technological advance, the use of 
shortcuts like "82" and "97" would be a thing of the past by 2000. 

But as the new century dawns, this innocent short cut will explode inside many 
computers and chips which will read 2000 as a meaningless "00." 

Mainframe and personal computers programmed in this way at least can be 
repaired. 

But the tens of millions of chips which control all these processes hide their 
properties with an opaque shield. 

You can't just look into a microprocessor to see if it will work. It has to be 
tested. And often batches of chips which appear to be identical perform in 
different ways. 

"These embedded chips, even top computer analysts find a bit of gray area. 
Nobody really knows what will happen. 

"It doesn't matter that much with video recorders and washing machines, but 
crucial areas like power stations and telephone exchanges, people shouldn't 
assume that these will all work," said Jonathan Crabb of high technology 
consultancy Spikes Cavell. 

Computer solutions company Millennium UK Ltd agrees. 

"The problem is these chips are all-pervasive. Hitachi makes programmable 
controllers called the H8 series. I'm not saying they aren't (millennium) 
compatible, just that Hitachi sells 12 million of these things a month, and 
they are only one of four big manufacturers," said Gary Easterbrook, 
operations director at Millennium UK Ltd. 

According to Britain's Institute of Electrical Engineers these chips, known 
also as embedded systems, are integrated into equipment, machinery, or plant 
and control their operation. 

Their presence is far from obvious. Even a skilled observer might take some 
time to figure out if a chip was involved in the functioning of machinery, 
according to the Institute. 

A single microprocessor might control a switch to start or stop and machine, 
or operate a valve to control fuel in an engine. 

Technology columnist Guy Kewney from the Ziff-Davies magazine said these 
microprocessors were potentially a big problem because you might buy a batch 
of 1,000 but, because their components came from widely varying sources, they 
might not all work in the next century. 

Cars pose a big problem. 

"Cars with engine management systems, suspension management, the average brand 
new executive car has about 20 personal computer level processors. Some are 
simple, but which are the ones that will malfunction?" Kewney said. 

"You could check out your systems and be clean, but if your computer interacts 
with outside data, that also could infect your computer," Kewney said. 

Millennium UK's Easterbrook said there is a significant problem with embedded 
systems and agrees that the use of a wide variety of components makes it 
impossible to assert that even a batch of chips with the same model number are 
millennium compliant. 

Because it would be impossible to check every chip, companies must decide 
which operations are critical. But even the failure of the mundane can turn 
into a crucial problem by its sheer scale. 

"If a lift fails, so what? But if thousands of lifts fail across the UK, how 
soon can they be reactivated? This is one of the unknowns. 

"How many devices might fail? There is not much hassle factor in walking up 
the stairs for one day, but imagine if it lasted for a month?" Easterbrook 
said. 



Copyright, Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved 

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