Re: DST and related foibles

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Sid Karin <skarin () ucsd edu>
Date: March 9, 2007 3:32:10 PM EST
To: Bob Frankston <Bob2-19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Cc: dfarber () cs cmu edu
Subject: Fwd: [IP] DST and related foibles

Bob,

Forgive the familiarity as we don't know each other,  but I have
enjoyed and learned from your many posts to IP.

You may find my little story amusing in light of your DST post.

I live in a little town just north of San Diego called Solana Beach.
The adjacent town is Del Mar.  My small corner of Solana Beach is
served by the Del Mar post office.  Solana Beach has a separate
post office and a separate zip code.  If you send mail to me at
Solana Beach, using the Solana Beach zip code, it gets returned
as no such address.   My postal address is in Del Mar.  I vote
in Solana Beach.

Several years ago I received a letter from the local phone company,
now called AT&T.  The letter said that if I didn't pay my overdue
telephone bill in 10 days they would cut off my service.   I was
surprised because I am in the habit of paying my bills when I receive
them.  I looked through my checkbook and noticed that while I had paid
my mortgage, electric & gas, trash collection, etc. bills,  I had  
indeed not
paid a phone bill for several months.  It was immediately clear to me
that I hadn't been receiving bills from the phone company.

To make a long story short, it turns out that someone had "corrected"
or "updated" or "rationalized" the data base that was used to send out
the bills with some data base of addresses and political boundaries.
After about ten years of successfully sending me bills at the Del Mar
address they decided to send them to an address in Solana Beach and
the bills started getting returned.  The address for the threatening  
letter
came from a different data base.

I pointed out of course that they were the *phone* company and perhaps
they might have called me.  Or maybe left a message, since I am a  
customer
of their voice mail service.   They agreed to not ding my credit and
to send my bills to the correct address again and all has been well  
since.

Except a couple of weeks ago the trash company went through the same
exercise.  At least they were insightful enough to call me and it got
straightened out quickly.   I think.

None of us in this neighborhood really want this fixed as the Del Mar
address has non trivial (and positive) impact on real estate values.

I'd love to be around in a couple of hundred years to see how the
advent of pervasive and ubiquitous computing is viewed by
historians.   Will they think we made a bunch of primitive errors
that have long since been fixed or (more likely in my opinion) will
they see these annoyances as the ongoing norm?




        Cheers,

                        .......Sid


P.S.  Dave, OK for IP if you like.



> Delivered-To: skarin () ucsd edu
> From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: [IP] DST and related foibles
> Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2007 13:31:30 -0500
> To: ip () v2 listbox com
> Reply-To: dave () farber net
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> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Bob Frankston <Bob2-19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
> Date: March 9, 2007 11:23:42 AM EST
> To: dave () farber net, ip () v2 listbox com
> Subject: DST and related foibles
>
> DST is the real test for Y2K fears -- it's a question of how  
> resilient we are. At least we don't have warnings about planes  
> falling out of the sky.
>
>
>
> The problem is that the DST change is exercising systems that have  
> accumulated implicit assumptions. It's useful to have such traumas  
> as a way to force learning -- or else don't have them at all. At  
> least we've been used to DST so we don't make the naïve assumption  
> that every day is 24 hours though on the average we can still  
> assume it's true.
>
>
>
> But leap seconds are far more perverse -- we can't assume that we  
> know how long a minute is nor predict future time spans. Unlike DST  
> we can't deal with it so go into denial and pretend leap seconds  
> don't exist.
>
>
>
> The DST change reminds me of the years it took to recover from  
> having my zip code changed -- some credit card companies got very  
> confused.
>
>
>
> A different kind of systemic failure occurs if your nickname has a  
> different initial from your formal name as in Robert/Bob --  
> airlines use algorithms from the 1960's and R Frankston cannot be  
> matched to B Frankston. Of course they still don't handle hyphens  
> or anything beyond the old 6 bit codes.
>
>
>
> Today's Globe had a story about the unanticipated consequence of  
> opening up a new runway at Logan Airport. The approach patterns for  
> two runways now pass close enough to trigger collision alerts even  
> though there is no real danger. I presume that the landing control  
> systems will now have to have a model of the collision avoidance  
> systems so as to avoid trigger them inadvertently while not putting  
> in too much slack lest the landings get delayed.
>
>
>
> These are relatively minor compared how the presumption of scarcity  
> in tele-communications leads use it impose QoS regimens whose  
> effect is to assure scarcity and how the presumption that  
> everything has to be billable locks us into schemes that are  
> frightfully expensive lest a bit go unmetered which creates  
> expenses that Š
>
>
>
> These interactions abound --- too bad there seems so little  
> interest in understanding them. The solution is looser coupling  
> and, to a large extent, that's why Y2K couldn't have been as bad as  
> many feared. But DST will provide us with lots of "morning-after"  
> amusement if not worse. That's why doing it over a weekend is so  
> wise - Sunday will be learning-day.
>
>
>
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--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
     Sidney Karin, Ph.D., P.E.       858-534-5075 (voice)
                                        858-822-5443 (fax)
                                        skarin () ucsd edu
     Professor,
     Department of Computer Science and Engineering
     Director Emeritus
     San Diego Supercomputer Center
     University of California, San Diego
     9500 Gilman Drive
     La Jolla,  CA  92093-0505




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