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Sunday, January 21, 2007 |
Do you use, or are you thinking about using, wireless sensor networks of any kind? The SP100 committee of the ISA is conducting an end user survey. Please click this link and give them your thoughts. It will be a big help as they endeavor to develop a standard that everyone can live with.
3:27:25 PM 
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Are you prepared for the impact of the US Energy Policy Act of 2005? It mandates that beginning this year daylight savings time will start the second Sunday of March and end on the first Sunday in November (a few extra weeks of supposed energy savings). I have a contact within EDS, who shared some information she received about things to be aware of in your operating systems and applications. Shades of Y2K all over again.
Here are some quotes from a document she shared. I have not checked these out, but I suggest that we all take steps to assure no problems come March.
Operating system generally maintain their own internal time in GMT/UTC (Greenwich Mean Time/Coordinated Universal Time). Time-aware application programs generally use local time rather than GMT/UTC time. While it is the application[base ']s responsibility to convert from GMT to local time, most applications rely on library functions provided as part of the operating system distribution to retrieve time information from the operating system and convert it to local time. Library functions perform this conversion based on the local time zone settings and information found in the time zone rule database.
At a minimum, an operating system's time zone rule database will need to be updated to reflect the new rules.
This link summaries summarizes the patches require to update time zone rules databases on Solaris 8, Solaris 9, and Solaris 10 (SunSolve Document ID 102178).
Microsoft has committed to make patches available before the transition takes place.
Well behaved applications which use standard, operating system provided library functions will require no additional, application specific modifications. Of course, it is impossible to tell which application are "well behaved" and which use their own internal time zone conversions. For example, Microsoft[base ']s Exchange Server will require patching. As will Microsoft's Outlook.
The Java runtime environment (JRE) performs its own time zone conversions, maintaining an internal version of a time zone rule database. Since the JRE maintains its own time zone database, these internally maintained time zone databases must also be updated to reflect new DST rules. Sun recommends upgrading the JRE/JDK to a version supporting the new rules.
Additional resources are available here and here.
Thanks to the EDS folks for this awareness. If anyone finds any automation specific problems or fixes, please comment.
3:02:48 PM
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Do you know the ancient Greek legend of the rise of The Phoenix from the ashes? Well, in a modern twist to the tale, Nematron is attempting a resurrection from the near-dead. Greg Chandler, who was a founding member of Nematron in the early '80s has returned as president and CEO. Joining him is Ralph Damato--who has worked for Xycom Automation (bought by Pro-face America, bought by Schneider Electric)--as vice president of product management. Nematron was rescued from bankruptcy by a private equity company and sold its HyperKernel real-time operating system component to fund it. It does retain the rights to resell the HyperKernel. A look at the Web site reveals a line of HMI products, control and I/O products from Optimation (purchased by Nematron before its difficulties hit) and HMI/SCADA software partnership with InduSoft. Nematron was a leader in the 1990s heyday of PC-based control. It will be interesting to see how the company evolves in the face of strong competition not only from the major control companies, but also from companies such as Phoenix Contact, which itself bought up former PC-based control leader Entivity (the combination of Steeplechase and Think-and-Do), Wago and others.
2:42:47 PM
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I have heard about Eoin Ó Riain for years and finally met him in Bologna at the Emerson wireless press event. Here's his take on the news.
Andrew Bond from England was also there, and his commentary is here.
I appreciated finally meeting Eoin and seeing Andrew and other European editors again. Great bunch over there.
2:22:32 PM
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© Copyright 2007 Gary Mintchell.
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