The Year 2038 Problem

[Keith Thompson]

Ah, at last someone gets it!

It hard to be a Troll in the City these days!

It's not about whether we get it or not. We just don't care.

You are a deliberate, self-admitted troll. It's not cute, it's not
funny, it's just irritating. You've had your fun; please go away now.
We're trying to have serious discussions here.

Incidentally, you're violating sbcglobal.net's terms of service.

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

Technologies already exist for isolating nuclear wastes from the
biosphere for that period of time. (In fact, the best of these
technologies utilizes a layered approach, in which a number of
isolation techniques are used together, each of which, by itself,
is capable of isolating the waste from the biosphere for
substantially more than 10,000 years.)

All of which is experimentally verified, of course. I am
gratified to know that my public spirited ancestors of 8000 BC
prepared those test beds for you. </sarcasm>

 

[CBFalconer]

The pure O and O2 are fed into an O2 combustion engine to generate
even more....

The word you are looking for is 'less'. The laws of
thermodynamics and of conservation of energy rear their heads,
thus making perpetual motion machines somewhat impracticable.

 

[Leor Zolman]

Ok, then: Regulate the US economy into submission.

I think our economy already /is/ in submission; they'll have to regulate us
into something else, then.
-leor

 

[Mabden]

We're trying to have serious discussions here.

Actually, it's Off Topic. You are violating the newsgroup rules.
Please don't post OT replies.

 

[jpd]

(e-mail address removed)-berlin.de wrote in message
news:<[email protected]>... [snip]
Actually , the issue is not CONCENTRATION, but RADIOACTIVITY. Nuclear
waste is, initially, much more radioactive than the uranium ore that
was mined to produce the nuclear fuel that, in turn, produced the
waste. But the most radioactive isotopes contained in the waste also
have short half-lives. The result is that if you can isolate the
waste from the biosphere for 1,000-10,000 years (depending on the type
of waste), at the end of that time it is less radioactive than the
uranium ore that was mined to produce it. (This is in sharp contrast
to, e.g., the toxic chemical wastes produced by coal combustion, which
never decay.)

Technologies already exist for isolating nuclear wastes from the
biosphere for that period of time. (In fact, the best of these
technologies utilizes a layered approach, in which a number of
isolation techniques are used together, each of which, by itself, is
capable of isolating the waste from the biosphere for substantially
more than 10,000 years.)

Which is all peachy, but ehrm. I still see two[1] problems: First; It,
to me, has too much of a /because we can/ attitude if we're to use
nuclear fuels for, how long? a few months? a couple of years, tops? then
have to sit on it for 1000-10000 years to make sure the debris of our
sitcom watching doesn't kill anyone. Even if you can use the stuff for
10 years then have to nanny everyone else to stay away for just 1000
years, there's still this 1:100 discrepancy.

Second, if you want to fool yourself you can forget about the cost of
sitting on something that you'd rather not touch (or have anyone else
touch) for a couple of aeons. However, nature will still present the
bill. The curses of our children are just extra.

Like the ads from all sorts of shady loansharks that one should really
indebt oneself just for buying a widescreen colour tv. Where, if you do,
you `buy money' but not to invest to make more money, no, just to spend
it and sit on your lazy ass and watch. That, in the end, doesn't buy
you anything. Except maybe the debts that still have to be paid off but
you still don't have the means for generating the money needed. I don't
watch tv, nevermind widescreen tv. Lucky me.

IFF we're going to use nuclear fuels, we'd better do something darn
useful with it, instead of getting comparatively small returns from
rather big waste-guarding commitments we can't fulfull in our own
lifetime.


[1] Many, in fact. I'll point out just two here.

 

[Daniel Rudy]

And somewhere around the time of 05/30/2004 10:45, the world stopped and
listened as Joona I Palaste contributed the following to humanity:

Would you believe I already knew that? I wasn't saying *I* thought
coffee makers and sparkplugs would stop working. I was saying there
were stories about people thinking so.

On re-reading your post, I see that now.

 

[Flavius Vespasianus]

(e-mail address removed) (Generic Usenet Account) wrote in

As per Google's Usenet archives
[http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html], the
first discussion of the Y2K problem on the Usenet was on January 18
1985 [http://groups.google.com/[email protected]]. 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.

This problem was fixed in VMS....which used[es] 8-byte dates with mSec
resolution.

 

[Keith Thompson]

This problem was fixed in VMS....which used[es] 8-byte dates with mSec
resolution.

Do the VMS C compilers use this representation for time_t, or do they
use a Unix-like representation (seconds since 1970, either 32 or 64
bits)?

I haven't used VMS in several years, but my vague recollection is that
it uses a Unix-like time_t.

 

[leslie]

Keith Thompson ([email protected]) wrote:
: [...]
: > This problem was fixed in VMS....which used[es] 8-byte dates with mSec
: > resolution.
:
: Do the VMS C compilers use this representation for time_t, or do they
: use a Unix-like representation (seconds since 1970, either 32 or 64
: bits)?
:
: I haven't used VMS in several years, but my vague recollection is that
: it uses a Unix-like time_t.
:

From the OpenVMS FAQ...

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/wizard/openvms_faq.html
HP OpenVMS systems - Ask the Wizard

"10.22.1 Other common C issues

The localtime() function and various other functions
maintain the number of years since 1900 in the "struct
tm" structure member tm_year. This field will contain a
value of 100 in the year 2000, 101 for 2001, etc., and
the yearly incrementation of this field is expected to
continue.

The C epoch typically uses a longword (known as time_
t) to contain the number of seconds since midnight
on 1-Jan-1970. At the current rate of consumption of
seconds, this longword is expected to overflow (when
interpreted as a signed longword) circa 03:14:07 on
19-Jan-2038 (GMT), as this time is circa 0x7FFFFFFF
seconds since the C base date. (The most common
solution is to ensure that time_t is an unsigned.)

If C does not correctly handle the display of the
local system time, then check the UTC configuration
on OpenVMS-the most common symptom of this is a skew of
one hour (or whatever the local daylight savings time
change might be). This skew can be caused by incorrect
handling of the "is_dst" setting in the application
program, or by an incorrect OpenVMS UTC configuration
on the local system. (See section Section 4.4.)..."


VMS itself doesn't have a date problem until 31-DEC-9999 23:59:59.99

http://makeashorterlink.com/?E14832678

The original link wrapped to 2 lines:

http://ftp.support.compaq.com.au/pub/patches/Readmes/windows/
snsvaxeco03022.README

"PLY_WAT-VMS SNSVAXECO03022 PLY System Watchdog V2.2 VAX ECO Summary

Year 2000 concerns are now dismissed to 31-DEC-9999 23:59:59.99..."


--Jerry Leslie
Note: (e-mail address removed) is invalid for email

 

[Robert W. McAdams]

All of which is experimentally verified, of course. I am
gratified to know that my public spirited ancestors of 8000 BC
prepared those test beds for you. </sarcasm>

Well, they had find something to do after spending 710,000,000 years
verifying that the halflife of Uranium 235 is 710,000,000 years!

Of course, I'm joking. It doesn't take 710,000,000 years to verify
that the halflife of Uranium 235 is 710,000,000 years any more than it
takes 10,000 years to verify the technology needed to isolate
radioactive waste for 10,000 years.

Let's look at the technology in more detail:

The first part of the plan is to store the waste in salt deposits
(e.g., in New Mexico) that are deep underground, and therefore
isolated from the biosphere. Geologists tell us that these deposits
have been stable for a long, long time, and will remain stable for a
long, long time.

But let's imagine that the geologists are wrong, and that groundwater
begins to seep in and erode the salt before the 10,000 years are up.
How long will it take for the water to get to the waste? The answer
is: approximately 1,000,000 years. How do we know that? Because we
know how thick the salt is, we know how much groundwater there is, and
we can measure how long it takes for a given amount of water to
dissolve a given amount of salt.

But let's imagine that that's somehow wrong, and that groundwater
reaches the area where the waste is stored. Well, then it encounters
a clay backfill that surrounds each container of waste. The clay
swells up when wet to form a tight seal keeping the water away from
the containers of waste.

But let's imagine that the water somehow breaks through the seal
created by the clay. Well, next it encounters the metal casing, which
is designed to be very resistant to corrosion. One of the favorite
materials for the casing is a titanium alloy. Tests conducted in a
abnormally corrosive solution kept at 450 degrees F indicate that it
would survive under those conditions for a thousand years, but in
normal groundwater at the expected repository temperature of 250
degrees F, the casings would retain their integrity for hundreds of
thousands of years.

But what if somehow the groundwater got past all these barriers and
actually reached the waste? That's bring us to the final barrier,
which is that the waste has been reprocessed into a glass which is not
readily dissolved. A Canadian experiment performed with waste glass
in the 1970s indicated that it dissolves in groundwater at a rate of
1/100,000,000 per year, meaning that it would take 100,000,000 years
to completely dissolve.


Bob

 

[Mabden]

created by the clay. Well, next it encounters the metal casing, which
is designed to be very resistant to corrosion. One of the favorite
materials for the casing is a titanium alloy. Tests conducted in a
abnormally corrosive solution kept at 450 degrees F indicate that it
would survive under those conditions for a thousand years, but in
normal groundwater at the expected repository temperature of 250
degrees F, the casings would retain their integrity for hundreds of
thousands of years.

But what if somehow the groundwater got past all these barriers and
actually reached the waste?

Let's imagine another scenario where humans tear apart the storage. I mean,
we are talking about 10,000 years minimum, aren't we?

I mean, have you heard the music they're playing today... ;-)

 

[CBFalconer]

Let's imagine another scenario where humans tear apart the storage. I mean,
we are talking about 10,000 years minimum, aren't we?

I mean, have you heard the music they're playing today... ;-)

[The above is about nuclear waste disposal]

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.computers 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.

 

[Dan Pop]

http://makeashorterlink.com/?E14832678

The original link wrapped to 2 lines:

http://ftp.support.compaq.com.au/pub/patches/Readmes/windows/
snsvaxeco03022.README

http://tinyurl.com provides even shorter alternatives to long URLs.

Dan

 

[Goran Larsson]

http://tinyurl.com provides even shorter alternatives to long URLs.

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:

| Hide your affiliate URLs
|
| Are you posting something that you don't want people to know what the
| URL is because it might give away that it's an affiliate link. Then you
| can enter a URL into TinyURL, and your affiliate link will be hidden
| from the visitor, only the tinyurl.com address and the ending address
| will be visible to your visitors.

Using TinyURLs will just cause many readers not to follow the link.

 

[Dan Pop]

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.computers 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.

Dan

 

[Dan Pop]

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:

| Hide your affiliate URLs
|
| Are you posting something that you don't want people to know what the
| URL is because it might give away that it's an affiliate link. Then you
| can enter a URL into TinyURL, and your affiliate link will be hidden
| from the visitor, only the tinyurl.com address and the ending address
| will be visible to your visitors.

Using TinyURLs will just cause many readers not to follow the link.

Non-issue: you either trust the person posting the link or you don't.
And if you don't, you probably don't have much use for search engines,
either...

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.

Dan

 

[Goran Larsson]

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.

Why should I accept TinyURLs, something created to con and deceive
web surfers?

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. With a TinyURL this information is deliberately
hidden from me.

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.

 

[Leor Zolman]

But TinyURL is EVIL

This must be new use of EVIL I'm not familiar with. I love TinyURL. If I
were a web designer, I'd be kicking myself for not having thought of it. I
couldn't care less whether anyone uses it to obfuscate affiliate links or
whatever; when I need it for personal use, it's great.
-leor

 

[Martin Dickopp]

But TinyURL is EVIL. It provides no way to show the destination of
a TinyURL

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.
Easily implemented in few lines of script, if you need this
functionality often.

Martin