Caution

[ArwenEvenstar]

I hope my mom doesnt read that. She threw our microwave out when she found out that it changes things in your food. If she got read of the toaster I'd cry! I need carbs to live!

this is off topic, but when did we get an evil grin emot?! I just noticed it. . .

[cassiopeia]

Lin, I watched something similar on Today Tonight -- obviously TT and ACA are copying each other again. A girl had her bed close to the power box, but she couldn't sleep. When they moved the bed to the other side of the room she could sleep. I wouldn't like to sleep close to a power box, but I wouldn't worry about a toaster. You would only be standing close to it when it's on for a few minutes a day. I'd be more worried if you sat close to a computer for hours a day (which I do!) I think it's best to be cautious. It's probably best not to put your head next to the toaster or microwave when it's on (you'll probably get burnt anyway! ) or sit close to the TV. But I wouldn't stop using those appliances. What about mobile phones?

[Embladyne]

This is all so interesting, and reminds me an awful lot of the scare that Y2K caused some people....and all of us who were kids just sat back and giggled at the senseless fright it seemed to cause.

I have pretty good ears, and can hear electric appliances, so I had to change my alarm clock to a battery run one so that it wouldn't keep me awake....however, I've never really felt that the electricity itself prevented my sleeping, just the noise that the electric parts made...just like the static of TV screens...actually, if those are in the room i'm trying to sleep in, even when they're turned off, if they're plugged in, I can still hear the noise they make. It's pretty darn annoying....

[Nurvingiel]

Yeah, I definitely think you can take caution too far. Maybe cellphones are an exception though. I think people who spend excessive amounts of time on their phones run some small risk of getting a tumor, or something. I think most people have better things to do though.

What about all those stupid warnings you sometimes see? Like because of that idiot who sued McDonald's over the hot coffee, many companies now write "caution, hot beverage" on their cups. If my coffee wasn't hot I'd be making trouble.

It was pointed out earlier that driving is far more dangerous than toasting bread or using a microwave. Something that is truly dangerous is what should be focused on, to minimize the risks.

Instead of panicking about West Nile Virus, people should make sure they have enough warm clothes, food, emergency blanket, whistle, and water, even if it's just a day hike. etc. etc.

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

this is another case of 'quick, wrap yer kids in cotton wool'
which is IMHO ridiculous

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Embladyne

This is all so interesting, and reminds me an awful lot of the scare that Y2K caused some people....and all of us who were kids just sat back and giggled at the senseless fright it seemed to cause.

Y2K wasn't a disaster because programmers did their job. It was a very serious thing. I worked on several Y2K projects. It was absolutely imperative that all the reprogramming and testing was complete by new years eve. From here people in the non-computer field - I don't think they really understood.

having said that - some of the media was putting out scenarios - that of course if the companies did nothing - they could have happened. But there was not one company I knew fo that wasn't spending millions of dollars to make sure everything worked when the date went from 1999 to 2000 (or as the computer would see it - 99 to 00)

[Insidious Rex]

Agreed. The biggest legacy of Y2K was that it opened up the tech boom beyond our (american) shores. And was really the beginning of the end of the tech job bubble here.

[Nurvingiel]

IIRC some things did go wrong anyway. I heard that there was a computer program that would cancel a shipment of a chemical company automatically if the chemicals were older than say, 5 years. When the clock rolled over it cancelled everything because it thought they were all from the 1890s. That would have cost the company millions.

Imagine if banks hadn't updated their software. Each customer would have gotten 100s of dollars in interest, and this would cause huge, huge problems, obviously.

That being said, even in the worst possible scenario, I never saw any reason to stock up on tinned food and bottled water and hide out in a bomb shelter.

Besides, we knew that companies were doing something about it, so why worry?

[The Gaffer]

Yes, that actually happened several years before Y2K, because of the particularly long "shelf life" of the products.

[jerseydevil]

Y2K however has now produced an even worse problem. Companies as well as departments handled the problem differently. Some recoded the systems to have anything that is 35 and lower mean it is in the 21st century - while 36 - 99 is considered 20th century. Others broke it up between 49 and 50. Still others did it another way. Everyone had better hope that these systems are either not around - or that the companies remember what calculation they used. With Y2K it was relatively easier - since all computers basically assumed that it was the 20th century since computers weren't around in the 1800's and they didn't didn't need to keep track of transactions from back in the 1800's. With y2k - companies faced the problem of having to keep track of transcations from both centuries. Personally - I have always developed mine systems with a 4 year date, but some of the old computer people are annal about saving space.

[Embladyne]

I wasn't laughing about the computer problems. It was the other scenarios that people imagined would happen. Like the end of the world, or everyone acting like the sky would fall as soon as the year 2000 came around. I very much understand that people put a lot of time and effort into making sure that computer systems worked properly. That was a reasonable cause for distress. It was the doomsday predictions that were so unfathomable to me.

[EarthBound]

This thread reminds me of the old MAC screensaver . . . the flying toasters!

They're coming!!

I've heard about the burnt toast, also burnt meat is a big no-no.

[Andúril]

I tend to be cautious about unplugging plugs from power outlets. I always flip the swtich to the off position before removing a plug.

I've done this ever since I was underneath a desk trying to disconnect a modem's AC adapter from a multiplug. I suddenly realized that I was on the other side of the (albeit small) room. My hand was black, and there was smoke everywhere. It seems my senses had received an electrocution induced temporary shutdown.

[Embladyne]

Originally Posted by Andúril

I tend to be cautious about unplugging plugs from power outlets. I always flip the swtich to the off position before removing a plug.

I've done this ever since I was underneath a desk trying to disconnect a modem's AC adapter from a multiplug. I suddenly realized that I was on the other side of the (albeit small) room. My hand was black, and there was smoke everywhere. It seems my senses had received an electrocution induced temporary shutdown.

Reminds me of the time I was 5, and almost was electrocuted by a tv. It just so happened that my mother had left two glasses of water on top of the television, with one being smaller than the other. I was bored, so I started pouring water from one glass to the other, back and forth. Somehow, I managed to spill the water on the tv, and it basically shorted out. I was really scared, by amazingly not hurt. And we didn't have a tv in the house for another 10 years 'cause my dad refused to fix it, and didn't really want us to buy another one. That was a pretty wise choice, now that I look back on it...because who knows if I would have found Tolkien so early had i been glued to the tv...!

[BeardofPants]

I don't get why people are so concerned about microwave radiation. We get exposed to more harmful radiation every day (UV for a start). IIRC, microwaves are one of the more harmless forms of electro-magnetic radiation.