72 replies to this topic

[Voidless_Shadows]

I was watching the news the other day and they where talking about a similliar crisis to the year 2000 Y2K bug, but this time it's the Y2.038 bug! New and improved.
I didn't catch all of it, but it has something to do with 32-bit systems...No network-oriented programs will work...
Test, it out, change your date to January 2038 and try to run something...like something running of a network...lol
Yeah... didn't catch it all, but I googled it and am about to read this site:
http://www.2038bug.com/

[unicornrose]

I am quite skeptical about this because the Y2K turned out to be no real problem. I am guessing since there is prior warning the bugs will be fixed and it will be a few minor glitches here and there. I am not worried about it lots of things like this are false alarms.

[Voidless_Shadows]

Oh no, this will cause real problems, after reading it and trying it out, this does cause all network-oriented programs to cease to work, but by then nobody will use any of the technology that is related in this bug...
Y2K was because PCs didn't store the century, I.e. it would think 1901 and 2001 are the same year, which is sketchy.
Well... it's hard for me to explain bacause I'm not very good with computers to begin, so I'll just quote.

Quote

The year-2038 bug is similar to the Y2K bug in that it involves a time wrap not handled by programmers. In the case of Y2K, many older machines did not store the century digits of dates, hence the year 2000 and the year 1900 would appear the same.

Of course we now know that the prevalence of computers that would fail because of this error was greatly exaggerated by the media. Computer scientists were generally aware that most machines would continue operating as usual through the century turnover, with the worst result being an incorrect date. This prediction withstood through to the new millennium. Effected systems were tested and corrected in time, although the correction and verification of those systems was monumentally expensive.

There are however several other problems with date handling on machines in the world today. Some are less prevalent than others, but it is true that almost all computers suffer from one critical limitation. Most programs use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to work out their dates. Simply, UTC is the number of seconds elapsed since Jan 1 1970. A recent milestone was Sep 9 2001, where this value wrapped from 999'999'999 seconds to 1'000'000'000 seconds. Very few programs anywhere store time as a 9 digit number, and therefore this was not a problem.

Modern computers use a standard 4 byte integer for this second count. This is 31 bits, storing a value of 231. The remaining bit is the sign. This means that when the second count reaches 2147483647, it will wrap to -2147483648.

The precise date of this occurrence is Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038. At this time, a machine prone to this bug will show the time Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901, hence it is possible that the media will call this The Friday 13th Bug.

Y2K was LARGELY hyped by the media, and alot of systems did have to be upgraded/changed to avoid failure.

[dontmaimyourself]

Well thats interesting, it definitely fills my 'you learn something new everyday' quota. Anyway I managed to get 2 programs to die due to this (Opera and Google Talk), although I was admittedly not very thorough in my testing. Anyway I'm sure most will fix this in the 22 years they have to do so. It's really weird how it makes affected machines display Friday 13th, get kind of cool. Anyway Y2K was seriously over hyped so I don't see this causing too much of a problem.

[heavensounds]

Interesting but i think that if we know it, programmers and other people that should be concerned knew about that a lot earlier than us. So this is not going to be a problem, a few updates and everything will work fine + 22 years is a lot of time. MAybe new systems will come, internet might be totaly renewed by than and many other things are sure to take place before this date so any panic is totally unnecessary.

greetz

[Voidless_Shadows]

Yeah, by the year 2038 we won't have anything to worry about (until somebody comes across another appolypse year ) programming and computers in general will have a much more efficient and complex structure and be immune to this if not all year/date related failures.

[Dooga]

I highly doubt that I would still be using this computer in the year 2038... A computer that would work properly in this year probably costs as little as 30 bags of chips (as opposed to comparing to what gas prices caused economic inflation's monetary value).

[Plenoptic]

Well, that is a really interesting bug. I tested it on my computer and nothing happened that I know of. Everything ran fine that I tested and that included the internet, MSN Messenger, and AIM. I don't think this problem will occur on this computer but it will probably be dead by then anyway. I think that like others have stated new computers will come out anyway and no one will have the problem unless your computer can last another 32 years.

[Voidless_Shadows]

I'm not sure how MSN messenger or AIM work, whether they are network based or what. But they could already have revised coding that is impervius to this bug, but I know that a majority of network based programs are affected by it.

[braitt]

yeah, yeah. yeah.. another date bug among computers..

i learned my lesson, before the year 2000 started people are always talking about the y2k bug. and believe me, the people isn't just talking of a simple computer bug but instead they were super exaggerating it. They think that all the computers would stop functioning.. they were mainly talking about the computers in the bank, in the power stations, in the security systems whatsoever.. and by that, they think when it happens, the people wouldn't be able to get their money from the banks, no business will happen and then it all ends up in great chaos thus the beginning of the end of the world. people started to stock food and all they need to survive in their homes and it was just crazy.

and by being just a kid, i believed the adults and the media. so i was scared then.

but then the year 2000 comes and then tadah! nothing happened.

so now that i'm no longer a kid, i wouldn't believe such crap anymore. and will carefully learn and understand things first before i believe them.