Night Owls

quasistatic · quasistatic, as of 28 Dec 1999 at 10:28 GMT

Indeed. Confusing the retail interface with the industrial supply chain is where many of these panic scenarios originate. Electronic settlement networks and point-of-sale terminals are convenient modern conveniences, but they are entirely secondary to the physical logistics. Commercial distribution runs on long-established institutional credit, not instant transaction authorization at a till.

If point-of-sale verification falters at a petrol forecourt or grocery shop, it simply means slower queues and manual receipt imprinters. To jump from a temporary retail card glitch to empty supermarket shelves ignores the layered reality of wholesale distribution. The primary pipelines and depots will operate just fine.

Sysop_Kev · Sysop_Kev, as of 28 Dec 1999 at 10:54 GMT

Dead right. If a pump card reader throws a fit, yer man behind the counter takes cash or writes an invoice docket. Things will move slow, but they will move.

I'll be babysitting the racks in the ISP data centre myself over midnight, mostly waiting for phones that probably won't ring.

Quick housekeeping note: the board will be taken offline for about ten minutes around midnight GMT on Friday for scheduled maintenance and backups. Do not panic, the bug hasn't eaten us, it's just me restarting the daemons. Keep the discussion civil, lads. -- Kev (mod)

OffByOne · OffByOne, as of 28 Dec 1999 at 10:56 GMT

Taking the servers offline for standard maintenance is a prudent and sensible measure, Kev. A clean, controlled restart avoids ambiguous logs and protects the database tables, which is precisely how sensible system administrators everywhere are approaching the changeover. We shall see you on the other side.

quasistatic · quasistatic, as of 28 Dec 1999 at 12:31 GMT

A short, controlled downtime is standard practice and entirely sensible. If only more commentary focused on these calm, ordinary administrative precautions rather than spinning tales of technological ruin.

Incidentally, looking at the wider picture, real-world events have already offered a timely perspective. The severe winter storms across France and central Europe over Christmas cut power to millions and disconnected generating stations entirely through fallen timber and physical damage. Modern civil infrastructure is built to absorb and repair significant physical disruption under routine emergency protocols. If our grids and services can withstand violent winter gales, they can certainly weather a handful of erroneous software timestamps.

PintOfMild · PintOfMild, as of 28 Dec 1999 at 13:42 GMT

Blimey, good luck with the server restart Kev! Nice to know I won't be the only poor sod sitting around babysitting empty screens while everyone else is out singing Auld Lang Syne. If those gales in France didn't bring civilization crashing down, a couple of confused computer clocks definitely won't hurt us.

TheyKnow · TheyKnow, as of 28 Dec 1999 at 18:31 GMT

Storm damage is localized, folks... crews just drive in from the next county to string fresh wire. But if computerized controls trip across an entire region at once, there is nowhere to borrow extra men or equipment from. Paper slips and goodwill only stretch so far when the whole line goes quiet.

Punchcard · Punchcard, as of 29 Dec 1999 at 02:09 GMT

TheyKnow wrote:

But if computerized controls trip across an entire region at once, there is nowhere to borrow extra men or equipment from.

Power plants and transmission lines do not simply trip because an internal calendar turns over. The protection relays that actually isolate high-voltage lines are basic electromechanical hardware, not Windows boxes. If an automated monitoring screen complains about the year, the engineers in the control room will simply run the equipment by hand.

TheyKnow · TheyKnow, as of 29 Dec 1999 at 02:17 GMT

Punchcard wrote:

If an automated monitoring screen complains about the year, the engineers in the control room will simply run the equipment by hand.

Running an entire modern plant by hand is a whole lot easier said than done, Punchcard... Those electromechanical relays do what they are told, but the SCADA sensors and electronic governors feeding them live telemetry are tightly tied into logic chips. If an automated controller reads false line frequencies or bad data inputs, it will trip a breaker to protect the turbines before any operator even notices the dial jump. One plant drops offline, the sudden surge hits the neighboring station down the line, and suddenly the operators are scrambling to balance a whole regional load in the dark. You cannot just flip switches manually when the imbalance cascades in milliseconds.

OffByOne · OffByOne, as of 29 Dec 1999 at 06:21 GMT

Electronic governors measure rotational speed and line frequency directly as analogue wave pulses. They do not consult a calendar to calculate hertz, nor do protection relays require a valid Gregorian date to detect a phase fault. Protective systems react strictly to real-time electrical parameters, not calendar years. The turbines will remain synchronized.

quasistatic · quasistatic, as of 29 Dec 1999 at 10:44 GMT

OffByOne has hit upon the crucial point. Protection circuits and governor controls operate on immediate physical variables, such as voltage thresholds, wave cycles, and rotational momentum. They are fundamentally closed-loop analogue or micro-controller systems designed to react to instantaneous telemetry, not chronological calendars. A turbine governor does not query the year to determine whether sixty hertz is being maintained.

The logic chips handling those real-time safety functions have no practical use for date arithmetic. Conflating timestamped logging interfaces with the direct mechanical and electrical protection loops is an easy error to make, but the underlying engineering simply does not work like that. The physical grid will remain perfectly stable.

PintOfMild · PintOfMild, as of 29 Dec 1999 at 12:40 GMT

OffByOne wrote:

Electronic governors measure rotational speed and line frequency directly as analogue wave pulses. They do not consult a calendar to calculate hertz, nor do protection relays require a valid Gregorian date to detect a phase fault.

See, that makes complete sense mate. Power turbines don't give a toss what day it is on the calendar, they just spin! We had card readers throwing a strop over Boxing Day here in the UK and shops just phoned them in. Real life just carries on.

Sysop_Kev · Sysop_Kev, as of 29 Dec 1999 at 13:24 GMT

PintOfMild wrote:

We had card readers throwing a strop over Boxing Day here in the UK and shops just phoned them in. Real life just carries on.

PintOfMild has it right. Saw the news about those HSBC card terminals in the UK having a fit over the four-day window. Slowed the queues down a bit, but the shops just got on the blower for phone authorisation or tapped in a few keys to bypass it, and business carried on.

That is exactly how the weekend will go. You get a clumsy glitch on a till or a logging interface, someone applies a quick workaround, and the world keeps spinning. The sky will not fall in because a terminal needs an override.

OffByOne · OffByOne, as of 29 Dec 1999 at 15:08 GMT

Sysop_Kev wrote:

Saw the news about those HSBC card terminals in the UK having a fit over the four-day window. Slowed the queues down a bit, but the shops just got on the blower for phone authorisation or tapped in a few keys to bypass it, and business carried on.

The situation with the Racal terminals illustrates the exact nature of these defects. A minor logical flaw in a retail verification routine merely inconveniences shoppers and requires a short manual override. It does not cause a structural failure.

Similarly, when supervisory software encounters an unrecognised date format, it produces an erroneous report or an administrative error dialogue. It does not corrupt the direct mechanical governor or sever a physical connection. We must continue to separate cosmetic date-handling faults from primary industrial processes. The distinction is quite fundamental.

TheyKnow · TheyKnow, as of 29 Dec 1999 at 16:59 GMT

OffByOne wrote:

It does not corrupt the direct mechanical governor or sever a physical connection.

When telemetry drops, safety interlocks fail safe and isolate circuits automatically, my friend... no human can react that fast.

PintOfMild · PintOfMild, as of 29 Dec 1999 at 23:04 GMT

Honestly mate, you could find a catastrophe hiding under a tea cosy!