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Big story ....CERN scientists break the speed of light

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Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭himnextdoor


    Morbert wrote: »
    Meaning you are completely misinformed about the "guys in white coats", as evidenced by all their technology you are using. You are accusing an institution who revolutionised global networks of not understanding cables.

    Which is equivalent to: the farmer feeds the flock is evidence that he won't send them to slaughter,

    To be blunt, I think you are a little naive.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,455 ✭✭✭krd


    Then either you don't understand logic or you don't understand haywire,

    No, my friend, you don't understand.
    What, in your opinion, is the worst thing that could have happened due to the 'milenium-bug'?

    And entire system grinds to a halt. Or if it's money, starting sending and grabbing the wrong money from all over the place.
    What? Someone might have received documentation that was dated one-hundred years too early?

    WORLD-STOPPING.

    No. In older software, to save memory, which was at a premium. They used the short date. Once the date clocks over from 99 to 00, any conditions in the software expecting the current date to be greater than any records created in the past will not work as expected. The latest bills will not be taken from 1900, they'll be from 1999. But you don't know how the programmer has used dates in their code. Many queries will just not work. The chronological order of the records will be wrong.

    The company I worked for, they came into work January 2000, and their entire system was dead. Dead as door nail.

    It's more than 10 years ago now, but I remember lots of work needing to be done on lots of different systems. COBOL was still very popular.

    You were, and obviously still are, a trainee.

    Mu-pah


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭himnextdoor


    krd wrote: »
    No, my friend, you don't understand.



    And entire system grinds to a halt. Or if it's money, starting sending and grabbing the wrong money from all over the place.



    No. In older software, to save memory, which was at a premium. They used the short date. Once the date clocks over from 99 to 00, any conditions in the software expecting the current date to be greater than any records created in the past will not work as expected. The latest bills will not be taken from 1900, they'll be from 1999. But you don't know how the programmer has used dates in their code. Many queries will just not work. The chronological order of the records will be wrong.

    The company I worked for, they came into work January 2000, and their entire system was dead. Dead as door nail.

    It's more than 10 years ago now, but I remember lots of work needing to be done on lots of different systems. COBOL was still very popular.




    Mu-pah

    Since I can't wait to see if someone will support you (which they shouldn't) I will deal with the memory and 'short-date' thing now. What is the difference (in bits) between 1999 and 2000?

    It was never about memory.

    Next, I'm prepared to call you out on your assertion that your company's system went dead as a result of a millenium-bug.

    I will tell you now that there was no machine that was ever produced that would malfunction as a consequence of the date. Not a computer (even by virtue of out-dated BIOS), a VCR or a toaster was ever likely to rebel against mankind because of the date.

    I will challenge any claim to the contrary.

    This thread is starting to sound like a 'God Thread'.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 11,001 ✭✭✭✭opinion guy


    Since I can't wait to see if someone will support you (which they shouldn't) I will deal with the memory and 'short-date' thing now. What is the difference (in bits) between 1999 and 2000?

    It was never about memory.

    Next, I'm prepared to call you out on your assertion that your company's system went dead as a result of a millenium-bug.

    I will tell you now that there was no machine that was ever produced that would malfunction as a consequence of the date. Not a computer (even by virtue of out-dated BIOS), a VCR or a toaster was ever likely to rebel against mankind because of the date.

    I will challenge any claim to the contrary.

    This thread is starting to sound like a 'God Thread'.


    Would you ever stop yer trolling ?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭himnextdoor


    Would you ever stop yer trolling ?

    I rather get the impression that you don't really have anything useful to say...

    ... or did you catch some kind of infection from this millenium-bug?


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  • Registered Users Posts: 68,317 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    I will tell you now that there was no machine that was ever produced that would malfunction as a consequence of the date. Not a computer (even by virtue of out-dated BIOS), a VCR or a toaster was ever likely to rebel against mankind because of the date.
    You need to stop accepting everyting the media tell you.

    You'll struggle very hard to find any serious scientific journal from the time which claimed that the machines would rise up and rebel.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,457 ✭✭✭Morbert


    Dude, your credibility just went BANG!!!

    Won't you question Wikipedia? Of course you won't question CERN..

    That is a very strange thing to say. The Wikipedia article describes the type of bugs experienced, the scope of the problem, and the solutions undertaken. It is well referenced, and says nothing about toasters, VCRs, or personal computers rebelling. So I cannot imagine what your above post is in relation to.
    Which is equivalent to: the farmer feeds the flock is evidence that he won't send them to slaughter

    If you want to use farm analogies, it would be equivalent to Robert Bakewell and Thomas Coke not understanding where babies come from.

    Seriously, take two seconds to understand the absurdity of your statement. The authors and technicians of this paper do not understand how cables work? Or they they are all engaged in a mass conspiracy, in the shadowy "white coat" organisation?


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,455 ✭✭✭krd


    Since I can't wait to see if someone will support you (which they shouldn't) I will deal with the memory and 'short-date' thing now. What is the difference (in bits) between 1999 and 2000?

    It was never about memory.

    Next, I'm prepared to call you out on your assertion that your company's system went dead as a result of a millenium-bug.

    I will tell you now that there was no machine that was ever produced that would malfunction as a consequence of the date. Not a computer (even by virtue of out-dated BIOS), a VCR or a toaster was ever likely to rebel against mankind because of the date.

    I will challenge any claim to the contrary.

    This thread is starting to sound like a 'God Thread'.


    Are you stupid.

    If you use a short date in your database. And a lot of old systems did. When you do a query for the latest records it's not going to show you records in the correct order if you've gone past 2000. If your system has been written in COBOL, it will now be riddled with bugs. It's not a simple as just changing the date field in the database tables. You'd have to pay COBOL programmers to go through all the code fixing anything that relied on the date, or build a new system from scratch.


    It's a long time ago. And I can't remember all the typical bugs, but there were some killers. One I've just remembered was some software took zero entries as NULL - you had to be explicit to make sure the software could accept the value of zero in a record. So you have a show stopper there.


  • Registered Users Posts: 495 ✭✭ciaranmac


    Since I can't wait to see if someone will support you (which they shouldn't) I will deal with the memory and 'short-date' thing now. What is the difference (in bits) between 1999 and 2000?

    It was never about memory.

    Next, I'm prepared to call you out on your assertion that your company's system went dead as a result of a millenium-bug.

    I will tell you now that there was no machine that was ever produced that would malfunction as a consequence of the date. Not a computer (even by virtue of out-dated BIOS), a VCR or a toaster was ever likely to rebel against mankind because of the date.

    I will challenge any claim to the contrary.

    This thread is starting to sound like a 'God Thread'.

    Plenty of software was written using dates that were two digits instead of four. If you can't figure out how "99" can be stored using less memory than "1999" then you should really stop posting in this thread and read up some more.

    In the late 90s many companies spent a lot of money auditing and fixing their own software to fix this issue, so that their software would continue to work as designed. Most of this development was carried out successfully (I'm still proud of this) and the software continued to work, which is why some people appear to think it was a false alarm.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 11,001 ✭✭✭✭opinion guy


    Why are you all feeding the bridge-dweller ?
    seamus wrote: »
    You need to stop accepting everyting the media tell you.

    You'll struggle very hard to find any serious scientific journal from the time which claimed that the machines would rise up and rebel.

    What about that well known documentary - Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines ? :eek:


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭himnextdoor


    Morbert wrote: »
    That is a very strange thing to say. The Wikipedia article describes the type of bugs experienced, the scope of the problem, and the solutions undertaken. It is well referenced, and says nothing about toasters, VCRs, or personal computers rebelling. So I cannot imagine what your above post is in relation to.



    If you want to use farm analogies, it would be equivalent to Robert Bakewell and Thomas Coke not understanding where babies come from.

    Seriously, take two seconds to understand the absurdity of your statement. The authors and technicians of this paper do not understand how cables work? Or they they are all engaged in a mass conspiracy, in the shadowy "white coat" organisation?

    I'm surprised at you. That Wikipedia article also acknowledges that the Y2K problem had possibly been overestimated.

    So, in the eighties, while people were getting 25-year mortgages - not a single report of software failing to make the correct forecast.

    Also, are you aware of how fast software is updated? Do you remember 'Wordstar'? A word-processor for BBC, the Spectrum, Commodore 64? By the time I had moved from Sinclair to Amstrad, it was up to version 5.

    Software is updated regularly for commercial reasons. Internet Explorer 5.0 was an update that needed updating as it invited 'viruses'.

    The Ferguson 3V23 VideoStar VHS video recorder had no problem going to the year 2000. Computer programs that have a problem with dates are due to bad programming. If it was the case that programmers had screwed it up then they should have been held responsible. No-one was.

    Would it help if I wore a white coat?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭himnextdoor


    krd wrote: »
    Are you stupid.

    If you use a short date in your database. And a lot of old systems did. When you do a query for the latest records it's not going to show you records in the correct order if you've gone past 2000. If your system has been written in COBOL, it will now be riddled with bugs. It's not a simple as just changing the date field in the database tables. You'd have to pay COBOL programmers to go through all the code fixing anything that relied on the date, or build a new system from scratch.


    It's a long time ago. And I can't remember all the typical bugs, but there were some killers. One I've just remembered was some software took zero entries as NULL - you had to be explicit to make sure the software could accept the value of zero in a record. So you have a show stopper there.

    Yep, that was it; programmers in the eighties were too stupid to suss out possible date problems. And of course their software was never tested for things such as 'divide by zero' calculations and infinite loops. (How were they discovered?)

    And no, I'm not stupid; I was programming the 6502 and the Z-80 in the early eighties.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭himnextdoor


    ciaranmac wrote: »
    Plenty of software was written using dates that were two digits instead of four. If you can't figure out how "99" can be stored using less memory than "1999" then you should really stop posting in this thread and read up some more.

    In the late 90s many companies spent a lot of money auditing and fixing their own software to fix this issue, so that their software would continue to work as designed. Most of this development was carried out successfully (I'm still proud of this) and the software continued to work, which is why some people appear to think it was a false alarm.

    What software was 'fixed' by companies? By 'their own software' do you mean not Microsoft Office, etc.? And who fixed the software? The post-room boy?

    You obviously have no clue as to how COBOL and Pascal was implemented through the eighties. The date was not a problem then nor was it in the nineties.

    Also, assuming that memory came as 7-bits per byte then 99 would be just as easy to represent as 127. 99 is not a special number. But even back then memory was arranged as 8-bit bytes - with 256 possible arrangements.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,455 ✭✭✭krd


    What software was 'fixed' by companies? By 'their own software' do you mean not Microsoft Office, etc.? And who fixed the software? The post-room boy?

    No. There used to be - there still are - a lot small companies around writing bespoke systems for businesses. A lot of this stuff can be bought off the shelf now days, but there was a time people would buy in systems that had been written completely from the ground up.
    You obviously have no clue as to how COBOL and Pascal was implemented through the eighties. The date was not a problem then nor was it in the nineties.

    It's not the languages that are the problem. It's what programmers will do. And many professional programmers with years of experience can be awful. They create systems that work, but are laden with bugs. Sometimes even, programmers will work for years and still not be able to get what should be a relatively straight forward database project to work.

    Programmers are still crap. They'll take something like IBM's DB2, and write millions of lines of Berkeley standard code in C, and create a mess that's unmaintainable and impossible to upgrade.
    Also, assuming that memory came as 7-bits per byte then 99 would be just as easy to represent as 127. 99 is not a special number. But even back then memory was arranged as 8-bit bytes - with 256 possible arrangements.

    If you want to use the long year, you'll have to use more than 8 bits. The year after 1999, or 99, is not 100.

    If you use the short date, you can fit day, month, year, all into 16 bits. If you want to use the long date, you're looking at using 32 bits. 8 for the day, 8 for the month, 16 for the year.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭himnextdoor


    krd wrote: »
    No. There used to be - there still are - a lot small companies around writing bespoke systems for businesses. A lot of this stuff can be bought off the shelf now days, but there was a time people would buy in systems that had been written completely from the ground up.



    It's not the languages that are the problem. It's what programmers will do. And many professional programmers with years of experience can be awful. They create systems that work, but are laden with bugs. Sometimes even, programmers will work for years and still not be able to get what should be a relatively straight forward database project to work.

    Programmers are still crap. They'll take something like IBM's DB2, and write millions of lines of Berkeley standard code in C, and create a mess that's unmaintainable and impossible to upgrade.



    If you want to use the long year, you'll have to use more than 8 bits. The year after 1999, or 99, is not 100.

    If you use the short date, you can fit day, month, year, all into 16 bits. If you want to use the long date, you're looking at using 32 bits. 8 for the day, 8 for the month, 16 for the year.

    No. You don't understand how computers work out the date. Did you ever notice that you don't have to specify the day? That's because the software works it out. Short date, long date; there is no such thing; there is a program that works out the date from stored and constantly updated date. There was never such a shortage of memory where one extra byte would have to be saved and necessitating the need to write a program to deliberately become redundant after the year-count reaches 99. The same number of bytes could have taken us from 1900 to 2028 - the year 2000 was not a special year from a binary point of view.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,457 ✭✭✭Morbert


    I'm surprised at you. That Wikipedia article also acknowledges that the Y2K problem had possibly been overestimated.

    So, in the eighties, while people were getting 25-year mortgages - not a single report of software failing to make the correct forecast.

    Also, are you aware of how fast software is updated? Do you remember 'Wordstar'? A word-processor for BBC, the Spectrum, Commodore 64? By the time I had moved from Sinclair to Amstrad, it was up to version 5.

    Software is updated regularly for commercial reasons. Internet Explorer 5.0 was an update that needed updating as it invited 'viruses'.

    The Ferguson 3V23 VideoStar VHS video recorder had no problem going to the year 2000. Computer programs that have a problem with dates are due to bad programming. If it was the case that programmers had screwed it up then they should have been held responsible. No-one was.

    Would it help if I wore a white coat?

    Again, I find this strange. First you say wikipedia is wrong, then you say it supports what you have been saying. Is this an admission that you are wrong?

    I do not remember Wordstar. I did not exist when such programs were released, but anyway: Of course it is a case of programmers screwing up.

    http://articles.cnn.com/2000-01-03/tech/japan.nukes.y2k.idg_1_nuclear-power-plant-tokyo-electric-power-tepco?_s=PM:TECH

    (An example of Y2K+10 bug)
    http://www.crn.com.au/News/163864,bank-of-queensland-hit-by-y201k-glitch.aspx

    and of course it is not a world-stopping problem. I never made such sensational comments. I said it was an issue that (most but not all) companies avoided by taking action.


  • Registered Users Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    Dude, your credibility just went BANG!!!

    Won't you question Wikipedia? Of course you won't question CERN..

    Had to comment on this. I'd have to say in terms of credibility Morbert's is quite high. With regards to CERN this excellent blog post should give a friendly impression of the intricacies involved in particle physics and measurement.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭himnextdoor


    Jernal wrote: »
    Had to comment on this. I'd have to say in terms of credibility Morbert's is quite high. With regards to CERN this excellent blog post should give a friendly impression of the intricacies involved in particle physics and measurement.

    Yes. I agree.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭himnextdoor


    Morbert wrote: »
    Again, I find this strange. First you say wikipedia is wrong, then you say it supports what you have been saying. Is this an admission that you are wrong?

    I do not remember Wordstar. I did not exist when such programs were released, but anyway: Of course it is a case of programmers screwing up.

    http://articles.cnn.com/2000-01-03/tech/japan.nukes.y2k.idg_1_nuclear-power-plant-tokyo-electric-power-tepco?_s=PM:TECH

    (An example of Y2K+10 bug)
    http://www.crn.com.au/News/163864,bank-of-queensland-hit-by-y201k-glitch.aspx

    and of course it is not a world-stopping problem. I never made such sensational comments. I said it was an issue that (most but not all) companies avoided by taking action.

    Fair enough but you also fail to acknowledge that the Y2K bug was nothing more than a money spinner. If you think that programmers in the eighties didn't realise that the 'short year' format was rapidly coming to its sell by date then you underestimate the intelligence of those programmers.

    Sure, there may have been software houses that said 'don't worry about it; we can charge fifty quid to 'fix' it but I never came across any BIOS in even the oldest IBM machine that didn't report the correct day for the first day of January 2000. Nor did I find a problem with any VCR that I came across at that time.

    In other words, I made a conscious attempt nearly twenty years ago to show that the Y2K bug was nothing more than an exercise in scaremongering.

    And I can assure you that I am arguing from a position of authority in this case.

    In the mid-nineties my local newspaper had a two-page centre-spread written by the head of technology of Leeds City Council that claimed that all modern equipment from toasters to washing machines, from irons to computers were susceptible to the millenium bug.

    Yet, not a single report of a toaster or washing machine or computer going wrong. Despite what krd claims.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭himnextdoor


    Morbert wrote: »
    Again, I find this strange. First you say wikipedia is wrong, then you say it supports what you have been saying. Is this an admission that you are wrong?

    I do not remember Wordstar. I did not exist when such programs were released, but anyway: Of course it is a case of programmers screwing up.

    http://articles.cnn.com/2000-01-03/tech/japan.nukes.y2k.idg_1_nuclear-power-plant-tokyo-electric-power-tepco?_s=PM:TECH

    (An example of Y2K+10 bug)
    http://www.crn.com.au/News/163864,bank-of-queensland-hit-by-y201k-glitch.aspx

    and of course it is not a world-stopping problem. I never made such sensational comments. I said it was an issue that (most but not all) companies avoided by taking action.

    I find it strange too: I think that you are clever Morbet but that doesn't mean that I am stupid. Wikipedia is not a convincing argument for anything but it can set you off on a journey toward truth. I would merely point out that Wikipedia often contradicts other accepted works or references; it not not immune to error any more than you are.

    All that I have suggested, in a nutshell, is that CERN or those under the umbrella of CERN have a vested interst in how funding is allocated. By opening up the question of FTL, CERN have guaranteed that research will be carried out into the implications of FTL travel. Others will try to reproduce the experiment and CERN know that they will come to different conclusions: They have to put their hands up to getting this wrong because it will come out when no-one else can achieve FTL travel and BANG goes CERN's credibility.

    This is a valid argument and so far in this thread, no-one has shown that this is not the situation. In fact, most posters here support my view judging by the comments that have been thanked.

    Remember, there is a lot of money in science and where you find money you will find corruption. It's a human thing.

    Wordstar was one of the first word-processors available to the general public; I had a copy for my Spectrum but it was also available for the BBC model B, the Commodore 64, etc. It went through a number of updates and each one dealt with 'bugs' or, as they actually were, a lack of functionality. The date was never a problem for Wordstar.

    I will go and look at the links you posted.

    I must point out; I love the difference between discussions here and on the Christian forum; it kind of makes me glad to have an open mind. :)


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭himnextdoor


    Morbert wrote: »

    Okay, do you seriously want to analyse this article?

    In case you do, what do you make of the bit where it says 'the cause of the problem is still under investigation'?

    I said that I was arguing from a position of authority so could you point out why the date would be set to Feb 6th 2036 by virtue of the Y2K bug?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,042 ✭✭✭himnextdoor


    Morbert wrote: »
    (An example of Y2K+10 bug)
    http://www.crn.com.au/News/163864,bank-of-queensland-hit-by-y201k-glitch.aspx

    and of course it is not a world-stopping problem. I never made such sensational comments. I said it was an issue that (most but not all) companies avoided by taking action.

    I see the problem; it is a failure to distinguish between a 'virus' that has a particular effect at a particular time by design and a problem that could occur due to some kind of 'short-date format'.

    Any computer problem could be put down to a Y2K bug by this kind of misunderstanding.

    I don't accuse you of sensationalism but you seem to fail to acknowledge that many companies avoided Y2K problems by taking no action at all.

    Have you heard of the 'placebo effect?


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,537 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Also, assuming that memory came as 7-bits per byte then 99 would be just as easy to represent as 127. 99 is not a special number. But even back then memory was arranged as 8-bit bytes - with 256 possible arrangements.
    In fairness BCD was used a lot so 99 was the highest number you could store in a byte

    but the real problem was programmers and those higher up in the food chain being lazy or budget concious - 9/9/99 was used as a "forever" date on some systems , understandable back in the 1950's and perhaps 1960's when memory was expensive and the century wasn't going to happen until long after you and the systems had expired. Totally unforgivable in the 80's


    dow jones hitting 10,000 was a biggie that happened before Y2K people were worried that automatic trades might be triggered ..


    Lets hope we can all survive excel & Co. crashing and burning at 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038.



    Of course the really big issue is what happens any machines still running VMS at 02:48:05.47 on 31-JUL-31086

    or if we are still stuck with 64 bit times on our existing 64bit OS's at 15:30:08 on Sunday, 4 December 292,277,026,596

    but by then we will know a lot more about the shape of the universe as we'll see stuff even further away by then


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,064 ✭✭✭Gurgle


    Lets hope we can all survive excel & Co. crashing and burning at 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038.
    <New plan: retire December 2037, need to increase pension contributions>


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