As per Google's Usenet archives
[ http://groups.google.com/googlegroup...ounce_20.html], the
first discussion of the Y2K problem on the Usenet was on January 18
1985 [ http://groups.google.com/groups?thre...0%40reed.UUCP]. That
is a good 15 years before the problem manifested. Even then, it
turned out, we were scrambling for cover when the D-day was
approaching.
Although the Y2K scare turned out to be vastly overblown, we do have a
massive problem ahead of us ------ the Year 2038 problem. On Mon Jan
18 21:14:07 2038, the Unix seconds-since-epoch count will "roll-over".
After that, the time on the Unix systems will read as Fri Dec 13
14:45:52 1901.
IMHO, if we want to avoid the last minute panic that we witnessed
towards the end of the last millennium (while pursuing the Y2K
problem), we should begin the process of debating the viable solutions
to this problem NOW. It will take a long time for the consensus to be
built, and to come up with a solution that most (if not all) people
find acceptable. We also need considerable time to test out all
possible solutions in the real world, to decide if the solutions
really work as expected. We may also need to develop a suite of
recovery strategies should the problem manifest in some system on that
fateful Monday morning. All this takes time. So, as the late Todd
Beamer would have said: Let's roll.
Bhat
Nov 14 '05
248  10550  ho*@invalid.inv alid (Goran Larsson) wrote: But TinyURL is EVIL. It provides no way to show the destination of a
TinyURL and give the following as a reason to use TinyURLs:
From http://tinyurl.com/bill ...
$ telnet unicyclist.com 80 <- I typed this
Trying 66.98.140.48...
Connected to unicyclist.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /tinyurl/redirect.php?nu m=bill <- I typed this too
Location: <snipped> <- Here it is.
Bill, dancing.
In article <cu************ *@zero-based.org>,
Martin Dickopp <ex************ ****@zero-based.org> wrote: If you really must know the redirection destination in advance, just
make a TCP connection to port 80 of tinyurl.com, type two lines of
HTTP protocol, and read the HTTP headers coming back from the server.
I know I can find out the destination this way, but why should I? It
is much easier to just ignore this kind of links.
--
Göran Larsson http://www.mitt-eget.com/
"Dan Pop" <Da*****@cern.c h> wrote in message
news:c9******** **@sunnews.cern .ch... In <40************ ***@yahoo.com> CBFalconer <cb********@yah oo.com> writes:
Now consider the recently passed Y2K problems, which largely
revolved around software written and used for 25 years, with
source and documentation forgotten.
More likely, with source not available in the first place.
Look at people trying to find
20 year old software on alt.folklore.co mputers and comp.os.cpm.
I.e. software irrelevant to the current computing community. The one
that is relevant has been carefully kept and maintained. I don't know if
CERNLIB is still maintained, but its origins can be easily traced to about
40 years ago.
Do you really think that knowledge about care and treatment of
nuclear dump facilities is going to last for 10,000 years?
Why not, as long as the information is relevant to the people
responsible for environment protection?
Should
any posted signs survive, the language in which they are written
probably will not.
No one expects any posted signs to survive, merely to be carefully
maintained. This would also take care of the language issue.
Of course, one could imagine scenarios involving the catastrophic
destruction of the current civilisation and its replacement by the
descendants of a few tribes of bushmen that survived the catastrophe
by chance. But, barring such scenarios, we have the technology necessary
to preserve the information about nuclear waste dumps *and* the motivation
for preserving it, as long as needed by the radioactivity level of the
nuclear waste.
I still say that humans are their own worst enemy. At some point someone
will re-open the containers. Perhaps is will be military, perhaps
ignorance. Either way, the "Do Not Open" sign on Pandora's box will be
ignored.
--
Mabden
>> Of course, one could imagine scenarios involving the catastrophic destruction of the current civilisation and its replacement by the
descendants of a few tribes of bushmen that survived the catastrophe
by chance. But, barring such scenarios, we have the technology necessary
to preserve the information about nuclear waste dumps *and* the motivation
for preserving it, as long as needed by the radioactivity level of the
nuclear waste.
I still say that humans are their own worst enemy. At some point someone
will re-open the containers. Perhaps is will be military, perhaps
ignorance. Either way, the "Do Not Open" sign on Pandora's box will be
ignored.
Any sign on something that looks well-secured might as well say
"Steal Me". Some people have used this to advantage to have their
trash picked up during garbage strikes by wrapping it up pretty
and locking it in their car parked in the mall.
Where is the data from the people responsible for the protection
of the environment from early Egyptian times? While we don't know
whether there is anything really dangerous in those pyramids (like
Goa'uld in stasis and the Stargate), it seems the early Egyptians
tried to keep people out with physical barriers, sometimes even
physical traps, and writings about curses. So what did archaeologists
in the last century or two do?
Gordon L. Burditt
Gerry Quinn wrote: But anyway, the disagreement also shows that the effects of moderate
amounts of radiation are far from devastating, or we *would* know!
What would happen the world if we detonated 500 nuclear weapons in the
atmosphere with an average yield of about 1 megaton? Nothing much,
apparently, because we have done... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation
Look especially at the table somewhere in the middle, the human
body can withstand quite large doses of radiation it seems.
--
Thomas.
In article <40************ ***@yahoo.com>, cb********@yaho o.com says... Now consider the recently passed Y2K problems, which largely
revolved around software written and used for 25 years, with
source and documentation forgotten. Look at people trying to find
20 year old software on alt.folklore.co mputers and comp.os.cpm.
Do you really think that knowledge about care and treatment of
nuclear dump facilities is going to last for 10,000 years? Should
any posted signs survive, the language in which they are written
probably will not.
If the waste is buried deep underground, sealed, and forgotten, people
aren't going to be digging it up, are they? And even if they do, waste-
filled glass would be bad for you, but it doesn't emit a mystical green
cloud that turns villagers into zombies overnight.
People would learn that using it for bedwarmers makes you sick. And
they would probably stop, eventually, and bury the stuff again, except
the bits they are trying to make Philosophers' Stone out of.
I doubt it would cause death on anything like the scale of the natural
non-radioactive mineral asbestos, also found underground, but not
carefully sealed, or marked with signs.
- Gerry Quinn ho*@invalid.inv alid (Goran Larsson) writes: In article <cu************ *@zero-based.org>,
Martin Dickopp <ex************ ****@zero-based.org> wrote:
If you really must know the redirection destination in advance, just
make a TCP connection to port 80 of tinyurl.com, type two lines of
HTTP protocol, and read the HTTP headers coming back from the server.
I know I can find out the destination this way, but why should I? It
is much easier to just ignore this kind of links.
Sure, you are free to ignore them. I didn't mean to imply that this
isn't perfectly your right.
Martin
--
,--. Martin Dickopp, Dresden, Germany ,= ,-_-. =.
/ ,- ) http://www.zero-based.org/ ((_/)o o(\_))
\ `-' `-'(. .)`-'
`-. Debian, a variant of the GNU operating system. \_/
In <Hy********@app rove.se> ho*@invalid.inv alid (Goran Larsson) writes: In article <c9**********@s unnews.cern.ch> , Dan Pop <Da*****@cern.c h> wrote:
Non-issue: you either trust the person posting the link or you don't.
How do you know who to trust on the Internet? I do, however, know that
I shouldn't trust those who post links using TinyURL.
Bullshit. Plenty of perfectly honest people use TinyURL to abbreviate
long links. There is no a priori reason not to trust them.
Why should I accept TinyURLs, something created to con and deceive
web surfers?
Bullshit. This is not the primary purpose of TinyURL. Just because a
tool can be misused doesn't automatically mean that *any* use is a
misuse.
And if you don't, you probably don't have much use for search engines,
either...
With a search engine I can see the URL and perhaps make an educated guess
where the link will end up.
Most of the time you cannot make any educated guess. If you were familiar
with the site in question, you wouldn't be using a search engine in the
first place.
With a TinyURL this information is deliberately hidden from me.
More bullshit, as others have already pointed out. It doesn't matter if the URL is spelled in its full original format or
in its abbreviated format provided by TinyURL: you don't know what's
inside before actually going there.
If a link is posted with the comment that an interesting article is
available on CNN, then the difference between a genuine cnn.com link
and a deceiving TinyURL link is obvious.
What is the *obvious* way to tell whether a TinyURL link is a legitimate
abbreviation of a cnn.com link or something else? Concrete example: http://tinyurl.com/ys356
I've lost the count of TinyURLs I've used without having any problems.
All of them pointed exactly where they were advertised to point.
If you're paranoid, thoday's Internet is not the right place for you...
Dan
--
Dan Pop
DESY Zeuthen, RZ group
Email: Da*****@ifh.de Da*****@cern.ch (Dan Pop) writes: In <40************ ***@yahoo.com> CBFalconer <cb********@yah oo.com> writes:Should
any posted signs survive, the language in which they are written
probably will not.
No one expects any posted signs to survive, merely to be carefully
maintained. This would also take care of the language issue.
Of course, one could imagine scenarios involving the catastrophic
destruction of the current civilisation and its replacement by the
descendants of a few tribes of bushmen that survived the catastrophe
by chance.
If there are a few tribes of bushmen, what is the chance they'll
wander through several hundred kilometers of desert to find the
respository? And that they'll be able and willing to dig through
hundreds of meters of backfill? And crack open thick steel
containers? And grind the glassy waste to powder and spread it around
or ingest it? Although we shouldn't stop thinking about such things,
the repository seems okay.
-paul-
--
Paul E. Black (p.*****@acm.or g)
Mark McIntyre writes: You can pretty much emulate what happens when you fill a plastic bag
with, say, natural gas and hold a flame to it.
No you can't, and for goodness sake don't try this at home. Hydrogen
diffuses into the surrounding air VERY quickly, and burns almost
immediately. Did you never set fire to a test-tube of the stuff in school?
Almost.
Had a fun/goofy JHS science teacher who once gave a demonstration on
cracking water. He collected the H in a test tube and then clicked a
Bunsen burner igniter near the mouth.
Made a nice, startling "POP!"
Then he decided to try collecting the H in a beaker.
He (and we!) were all VERY surprised.
--
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