for
the pain that they will certainly experience, and desire to help them
any way I can. When a big hurricane heads your way, do you stop
preparations just because the weather service says it "probably will
miss you"?
Actually, it depends on the probability.
When the strike probability
drops below a certain threshold, I DO stop preparations. I depend on
the experts to have the right information, even though to some degree
my well-being may depend on it.
I have complete confidence in the Lord's ultimate provision
for His people and innocent children, but lack of planning will cause a
lot of unnecessary pain.
Of all issues, I believe electric power to be the most critical,
because it is the foundation of our society, from a purely physical
standpoint. Computers, banking, transportation, commerce,
telecommunications, and even water - all depend directly on electricity.
Even electric power production depends on electricity.
Agreed - that is why I'm focusing on power.
You appear to contradict yourself in the sentence where you say
"Computers are used for the monitoring and control of these systems, but
like water treatment, the systems are capable of functioning without
computer assistance." If computers CONTROL, they also can SHUT DOWN
power generation!
Sorry if this is unclear.
Simply put, there is a manual mode of operation.
Computers normally control these systems because it is so much less
labor intensive. That doesn't mean that it is the ONLY way to control them.
Has anyone actually tried turning off the computers,
and seeing what happens to the power?
Yes! The very heart of the power control system is SCADA and we have
had it down for days at a time here in FL - but the power service was
not interrupted. It just meant that FPL had a lot more manual work to
do, and things weren't as efficient as they normally are.
Chrysler tried setting their
computers ahead to 12-31-99, 23:59, then letting them roll into 2000.
The result was a TOTAL shutdown of everything - the failsafe modes were
invoked, all the doors locked from both sides, all the elevators went to
the bottom and opened up, all air movement systems quit, and all
communications went down, both internal and external.
I would REALLY be interested in some firsthand information on
this.
Can you explain to me why an elevator has a date dependency? How do you even
set the date on an elevator to Dec 31, 1999?
If you haven't
actually shut down or caused a Y2K glitch in the computers at the power
plant, all your confidence is only based on nebulous and ill-advised
conjecture.
No, it is based on real-life tests run by power generation experts.
Peoples' lives may hang in the balance because of arrogant
foolhardiness.
I also wonder just exactly what kind, and how much experience you
have with embedded chips. Do you realize that most chips are made with a
large variety of functions, in order to be marketable? When a company
needs one or two functions out of fifty or more that a given chip was
designed to perform, it matters little that the selected uses may not be
date sensitive. The chip keeps merrily performing all the designed
functions, whether they are used or not.
But if the date function on the chip is never used by the application,
then the chip will not even have the correct date. There will not be
anything special about Jan 1, 2000 to the chip. (Some readers may be
thinking that the date is set at the factory, but in order for the
chip to keep the date it must continuously have power and a timing
source to maintain the current date - this simply does not happen
for chips not used in date dependent functions.)
If ANY of those functions are
date sensitive, the whole chip may go down, just like when your PC locks
up, and loses everything that was in process, even though those
processes were not related to the problem.
I would like to have an example of a specific case where a chip
function does not have a date dependency, but the builtin but unused
date capability causes a malfunction. Do you have any references?
There is so much bad information out there that I have made it my
policy to work with first-hand only information.
Because of what's at stake, I believe your web site to be
irresponsible, and a disservice to the well being of the public. If
people listen to you, and a fraction of the Y2K predictions materialize,
you will be indirectly guilty of harm to those who took your advice, and
could rightly be sued for giving misleading professional opinions.
I thought it would be irresponsible to sit by
and say nothing to all the misinformation I'm seeing about Y2K and power.
I'm only talking about electrical power.
I expect quite a few of other Y2K predictions to come true.
Even
in your self-defined area of expertise (power generation), you fail to
address several major problems with the reliability of power plants. I
think I've heard from enough people that 20% of this nation's power is
from nuclear plants - Is that true?
Yes.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission
will most likely shut these down because they cannot be SURE of safety
any other way.
No. Nuke plants are being taken offline one by one and tested for Y2K
operation in a safety-controlled domain. The first plant was done in
November and it passed with no problems. As of December 1999, 31% of
our nuclear plants are Y2K Ready and will be cranking out the megawatts
come Jan 1. Once plants pass the test, they are
allowed to stay online. (If you would like to read about the details
of the testing of the Monticello nuclear plant,
click here.) They might not all make it, but it seems that
most of them will. Only 20 have been identified as not being able
to make the July 1999 deadline.
Do computers not also control the delivery of coal, which
is the source of the majority of the non-nuclear electric power, and dam
sluices, which are the source of the rest?
For a discussion of coal, refer to
my response to Don Crowe's letter.
The basic answer is manual control. Do you really think there are dam
sluices out there that cannot be moved without a computer?
I agree that individuals do not need to provide alternative power in
most cases. There is very little life threatening in the average home
that depends directly on electricity. Possible exceptions would be
refrigeration of critical medicines, and heater blowers in northern
climates - which make the whole heating system inoperable. However, the
indirect results of loss of power are very life threatening. Without
power, NO computers will work, and no telecommunications, even if they
are y2k compliant. That means production and delivery will likely stop
for food, fuel, and other necessities. It also means that 40 million
people who depend on welfare and 30 million who depend on Medicare, will
suddenly be cut off. Considering the riots and destruction after the
Rodney King trial, and others less famous, what do you suppose poor
people will do when their money is cut off?
This is a very interesting question. I have other Y2K contacts that are
working on this. I'm doing power, so I have no clue about the riot
possibility, and don't have the time to do an in-depth investigation.
For individuals, food and water storage seems to me to be a necessity,
and heat for most of the country. Perhaps beefing up the locks on your
doors might help, too.
Your initial premise suggests a narrow goal - "I have decided to
focus all of my attention on answering the question of electric power
service . . ", but later, you expand the scope to include all Y2K
subjects, when you give opinions on the book "The Millennium Bug". I
challenge your expertise and qualifications to go beyond power
generation subjects. I respectfully believe that you are out of your
element in these other areas.
You are correct - I am neither qualified nor informed enough to
speak authoritatively on the general Y2K problem. However,
when I leave that section out, people invariably ask me, "so what do
you think is going to happen?" I'm just trying to give my opinion on
that question. I will try to strengthen the language that states
that non-power issues are beyond my scope and realm of expertise.
You pose the question "Where should we get the best information?",
but then you don't answer it !
I'll have to rewrite that part then. It should tell you that the
best information is first-hand information. The best information is
not from profit-making Y2K book-writers.
Information on what - power generation,
or all Y2K subjects? For Y2K in general, in my opinion, the answer goes
like this:
1)- People who have at least ten years experience in programming, and
have been in at least 5 different KINDS of businesses are qualified.
Others are not, because they haven't been exposed to enough experience -
their perspective is too narrow to be accurate. Even ten years and 5
kinds is very marginal.
2)- People who are professors - not programmers, are not qualified
because they do not have any inkling of how the real business world
functions.
3)- Supervisors, managers, presidents, and other officials that do not
meet criteria #1 are unqualified for that reason.
Yes - I agree. I'm amazed at how many
economist and historians out there are suddenly power generation experts.
You say "Why are people close-minded to accurate information if it
is good news?".
What you call a closed mind, in some cases, IS NOT! Could it be that
YOUR mind is closed, because you think you have everything figured out,
and your confidence in your own conclusions has deceived you?
This is something I really have to watch. It
is not in our nature to be objective. I certainly have accused others
of the same thing. In other Y2K material on the Internet,
I have found some amazing twists and spins on facts
to support a foregone conclusion. If you ever find me doing this,
please point out a specific example, and I will recant.
In my case, the negative response to your so-called "good news" is
based on facts that conflict with your opinions. If someone has terminal
cancer, and a well-meaning doctor tells him he's going to be okay, is it
a closed mind to doubt the doctor, since all other facts deny his
diagnosis? I have lots of facts that seem to say you're wrong. I
believe the biggest holes in your logic come from your lack of
experience in a wide variety of applications. Every shop does business
differently, is organized differently, and is therefore subject to
different kinds of problem situations. You may have worked in a few that
were run very well, so you don't realize that most are not. From what I
have seen in my work experience with government, telecommunications,
banking & securities, loan & finance, the insurance industry, the oil
industry, medical providers, retail businesses, and various job shops
and computer services companies, (IBM, EDS, Affiliated Computer
Services) - the preparation for Y2K is spotty at best. Almost no one is
really ready, as of December 1998 - too late to finish on time.
I absolutely disagree! We know so much more about this problem
than we did just 1 year ago. We have more remediation tools available now
than ever before. We have more people working on the problem than ever
before. I don't buy this "it's too late to finish" at all. By "finish"
I mean certain programs, not the whole universe of Y2K. I KNOW that
there will be many programs that are NOT finished, but just because
a program isn't finished in Dec 1998, does not mean there is no hope
for finishing that program before Dec 1999! Because of the tools and
knowledge that we have accumulated, I predict that we will make more
Y2K remediation in 1999 than in all previous years combined. And
because of the testing and remediation performed so far in the power
industry, I believe that they will be Y2K ready long before December 1999.
Without going into detail, I challenge your opinion on the
inaccuracy of some of the statements in "The Millennium Bug" book, ...
Will you please go into detail? I want the paper to be accurate!!
...and I
consider it to be ill-advised, that you present yourself as an authority
in areas where you have less experience than the author. Personally, I
believe some of your opinions to be in total error.
Well please tell me what they are so
I can correct them!
You say "This report is written to spare the fearful from unnecessary
expense." Since your whole paper is written as an authoritative,
not-open-to-comment, final conclusion, I wonder if your real motive is
to be a hot-shot know-it-all. You don't even offer an e-mail address for
critics' responses - are you afraid of other opinions?
My mistake. From now on, my email address
will be included in the paper and on my web site.
Again, I am open to your opinions, and welcome the chance to learn
from you. If you have hard facts to the contrary of anything I've said,
PLEASE DO enlighten me. I am not interested in unfounded speculation
that can have adverse effects on peoples' lives. I also am not
interested in an endless debate about unimportant issues or details, but
I am very interested in the TRUTH and FACTS as they apply to life
threatening y2k problems, or the reasonable chance of them.
Thank you for taking the time to read my comments.
Alan Fountain
Fountain Technologies, Inc
alan@fountaintech.com