The effect of GPS rollover not done yet.. Over weekend Japan suffered 100,000 GPS failures.

LINK HERE

Article as follows;

Tokyo traffic chaos in GPS date rollover

By Andrew Cornell, Tokyo With a mix of right and left-hand drive cars, narrow, unnamed streets and distractions like televisions and microwaves inside the vehicle and giant, animated neons outside, traffic in Tokyo tends to be chaotic.

On Sunday it was more so when the GPS navigation systems many drivers rely upon froze or went blank as the system rolled over into its new time sequence.

The four major manufacturers of the systems received several thousand complaints after the switch, which occurred at 9am Sunday in Japan.

"I was taking an office worker home after an all-night party, he wasn't happy when I got lost," said Masahiko Abe, a Tokyo taxi driver whose system froze.

Police and Maritime Safety Agencies reported no serious incidents stemming from the failures involving an estimated 100,000 systems in Japan that had not been modified to handle the rollover. Pioneer Electronics, the GPS market leader in Japan, had 450 staff rostered on to handle inquiries and help restore communications.

Pioneer became aware the problem would affect older units early last year and had been advertising to notify customers. Of 270,000 systems sold between 1992 and 1996, the company had replaced or adapted 210,000 by the weekend.

The most common problems encountered after the rollover were screens freezing or going blank.

So.. even though none of this was life threatening.. it's a good indication of the volume of failures that can be expected in these situations. Now change this from Taxi Cabs, vehicles and boats being lost to chemical plants exploding, trains derailing or ATMS and banks shut down.

-- Slammer (Slammer@Slamma.Ramma), August 30, 1999

Answers

So.. even though none of this was life threatening.. it's a good indication of the volume of failures that can be expected in these situations. Now change this from Taxi Cabs, vehicles and boats being lost to chemical plants exploding, trains derailing or ATMS and banks shut down.

Oh sure, the laziness of taxi drivers in not updating their recievers is certainly equal to the saftey measures in in chemical plants, and trains derailing and what the hell does this have to do with banks closing?

Talk about reaching... Individual drivers compaired to major industries is rather a weak arguement. Actually it is a pathetic attempt.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoom.com), August 30, 1999.

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), August 30, 1999.

OOPS, NOT a null post, just cleaning up a few tags.

C

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), August 30, 1999.

Cheri:

Maybe the taxi drivers were not lazy. Maybe they did update their receivers.

My husband updated his receiver on Friday before the rollover. It worked fine after he installed the update. After the rollover, the receiver no longer works.

My husband emailed support at the company from which he bought the receiver and has not yet had a reply past, "we got your email."

Huh? Huh?

-- Sally Strackbein (sally@y2kkitchen.com), August 30, 1999.

Well,

Cherri.. The same type of failure that can cause a GPS reciever to not work, can cause a valve not to open or any other host of other mechanical servo's, timers or a myriad of problems. This simply proves conceptually that date errors can simultaneously effect many devices. Although its true its not the exact same situation, just like the lack of brake fluid can cause a car to crash, lack of hydraulic fluid can cause a plane to crash. Is it the exact same thing.. No.. does it illustrate conceptually that something as simple as fluid levels can effect a wide spectrum.. Yes.. I really don't believe that most of the readers here are as unintelligent as to NOT see the implication.. If anything the GPS example was limited to a known application (navigation). Whereas the Date Logic problem from the rollover has no such limitation and could effect a vastly greater and much more sensitive/devastating number of items. I believe you can understand this. What I don't understand is why if you didn't know this you would attack so harshly with your words. If you disagree can you indicate your feelings and thoughts without attack. The only reason I can conclude you would do this is to try to silence me by intimidation. This doesn't change the fact. 100,000 devices were effected and that effected navigation and traffic flow. Prepare yourself Cherri. If you haven't done so I will say a prayer for you and your family.

Yours in humility.. slammer

-- Slammer (Slammer@slamma.ramma), August 30, 1999.

So, the GPS turnover failures did occur, as expected here.

Not too many failures affecting newer receivers, as expected here.

Not a lot of impact of power and bank transactions (good!) - evidently these were either not impacted; impacted but were part of a newer receiver process (or the receiving program) had been re-programmed to "expect" the rollover, or were simply impacted but did not cause an effect. Again, mostly as expected here, although some were more concerned than others.

As expected here, despite massive public warnings, many in the public in Japan simply ignored the warnings and got hit in the face with technical failures that didn't care about preserving the user's vanity.

Again, and again as expected here, some more careful users, who did try to "follow the manual" and "anticipate the change" - got affected anyway, and their elctronics failed despite the best word from their vender. Further, these "venders" are still unable to restore service: failure will come from unexpected sources and from companies and agencies that "thought" they were compliant.....

Also as expected here, failures were "local" in occurring. The impact in Japan was certainly more than that (publicized) here in the US.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), August 30, 1999.

"What I don't understand is why if you didn't know this you would attack so harshly with your words. If you disagree can you indicate your feelings and thoughts without attack. The only reason I can conclude you would do this is to try to silence me by intimidation."

Slammer,
If I might make an observation, as a relative "newbie", it just seems to be the way the prevailing winds blow, around here. There's an abundance of adrenaline junkies who like to get juiced up on polarized arguments. They want everyone to fall solidly into one camp or another, so they can experience the uninterupted thrill of a screaming match, which is full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing. Name calling, intimidation and exaggerating the other camps position is all a part of the game, and woe unto anyone who believes that both camps have some valid points to make.

GPS failures do show that systems can be affected by date rollovers. The lack of catastophic failures from GPS rollover does not mean we can all breath a sigh of relief about Y2K. GPS receivers do not broadcast corrupt data to other systems. The thing that remains to be seen is, will corrupt imported data, in computer systems domino and amplify, as it passes from machine to machine. I don't worry too much about "yes it will - no it won't arguments", because we do have the "luxury" of having a finite amount of time, till when we will get the real answer.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), August 30, 1999.