Anyone Aware of The Year 2038 Problem?

I've been quite skeptical of the 2012 thing but I'm not saying any of the information concerning it isn't credible, although with people suggesting explanations such as; Maybe the Mayans just got tired of continuing the calender, or just gave up.


But knowing me, my curiosity ran a little wild and I wanted to see how far our digital calenders would go and I was amazed that not only my computer's calender ended 2038 but so did the 3 cell phones calenders I tried, one of which was a blackberry I mind you, but never the less all of them stopped at 2038. (maybe technology got tired of going ahead?)


So I Googled it and low and behold they have already came up with something called

The year 2038 problem (also known as Unix Millennium bug, or Y2K38 by analogy to the Y2K problem, known as the millennium bug)

And what's scary about it even Google is predicting something themselves....

Wikipedia 2038

2038 Bug

Techies working Against 2038

Google Talking About 2038

And Wikipedia has another page concerning 2038 which really was a big "W.T.F.?!?!?" for me when it revealed...

2038 (MMXXXVIII) will be a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar.

Fictional events

* September - According to the film JFK, previously classified documents relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy will be released to the public. However, the actual date is 2017.
* In V for Vendetta, the Palace of Westminster in London are destroyed by V on November 5 with numerous, powerful, homemade explosives delivered by a tube train on the District line. At the same time, V's name is signed in fireworks in the sky.
* The 1989 Japanese movie Gunhead takes place in this year.
* According to Futurama the Petroleum reserves run dry during this year.
* The Video game Hellgate: London takes place in this year.

2nd Page For Wikipedia 2038

Hmmm....

[edit on 21-5-2009 by anarcissus]

Agreed it may be a problem.

But because my Quickbooks will stop working we should go into global panic?

this is quite unrelated, but rather parallel, so i will mention it here;

When i started my work in 2007 i noticed most of my files had A "kill date" of jan 1st, 2010. essentially, the company that produced our software had used that date as a seemingly random variable while writing the software. Had i not had to preform a system purge recently, ( and subsequently addressed the date problem) I would be SOL a little after Christmas Time this coming year.

I just checked my cell phone calender ends on 2100.
I've yet to see any cell phone that ends at 2038.

reply to post by anarcissus


Yeah and we may get hit by a meteor in 2038 according to NASA. Looks like a tough year.

I'm not too sure this will be a huge problem because my computer goes to 2099 before it starts over again at 1980. some how I don't think i'll have a problem tho as I'm sure that a. I'll probably won't be alive by then and B If I am then I'll probably have a new computer
I can sort of understand stopping at 2099 but why does it loop back around to 1980? That seems like a random year.

ETA that I'm running windows XP because yeah my computer is that old
Also I found my cell phone this morning and it goes all the way to 2100 and then starts again at 2008. so I think even older systems are probably fixed and certainly newer ones. I don't think there will be a problem

[edit on 22-5-2009 by FunSized]

I stayed up all night on Y2K, monitoring my company's systems only to see nothing at all (except for one single SSL cert). Good thing I brought wife and wine in on the event)

2038 will be much of the same for those who chose to stay up that night. Hopefully I will be here laughing at the event.

[edit on 22-5-2009 by Zarniwoop]

Im running windows 7, and I stopped going foward after 2090 something, so looks like maybe in windows 7 they fix it?

reply to post by anarcissus


Anarcissus when John Titor the Time Travelor first came here, he stated that the he came back for the IBM 5110 in order to recode the UNIX in 2036 before it dies in 2038.

I have windows vista my calendar scrolled past 2038 no problem, possibly old problem, but it's fixed now?

Newer operating systems probably correct for this problem, but wikipedia explains the issue:

en.wikipedia.org...

Modern OS's should be fine, but there are a LOT of BIG businesses out there that are still running and relying on mainframe tech from the 70's and 80's that very possibly will have to deal with this.

Like others have probably stated, my laptop scrolled right passed 2o38. I do have an LG Scoop and it scrolled passed 2o38 as well.

reply to post by FunSized

I can sort of understand stopping at 2099 but why does it loop back around to 1980? That seems like a random year.

I believe after 2099 the reason it goes back to the 1000's is POSSIBLY there will be a new B.C./A.D. type thing, so most likely it's going to start over, I dunno...and maybe it's just t-mobile phones that are behind because that's the company the phones I used are from.

Wasn't trying to freak people out or say I was buying that there was a 2038 problem just thought I'd bring it to peoples attention that there are folks discussing it.

very nice...i think its a good topic...rather then the same same same thing/mysterious about 2012...
you have become a prophet!
lol

The 2038 issue won't effect people too much because by then most people would've switched to 64bit systems, which are immune to the 2038 bug. It doesn't effect modern windows System because the system it uses is different. :/ And not all electronics it be effected either, just unix or unix-like systems, and maybe other OSs which use a similar system in their programming.


And Y2K was a real problem, just grossly exaggerated from what I read and all the bugs were fixed by then. :/ Or so I read, it really wasn't so bad, worst comes to worst, the calenders time may be wrong, thats it.


Not sure about the accuracy of all this though.

If you don't believe all of these bugs will be fixed within 29 years, you guys will believe anything. Guys, 29 years in the tech age is an obnoxiously long time. This aint gonna be anything.

Originally posted by animeking
The 2038 issue won't effect people too much because by then most people would've switched to 64bit systems, which are immune to the 2038 bug. It doesn't effect modern windows System because the system it uses is different. :/ And not all electronics it be effected either, just unix or unix-like systems, and maybe other OSs which use a similar system in their programming.

Having a 64-bit CPU doesn't really matter. The issue is that the clock uses a 32-bit signed integer to count the number of seconds since 1970. Even in systems that have it properly setup as a 64-bit integer now, there is still software that truncates that to a 32-bit, since that's how we've done things for decades. That 32-bit value is usually a signed integer, so it's really only like having 31-bits, and that overflows in 2038. That is a problem for more than just reporting or processing the current date, because programs and operating systems also use this value behind-the-scenes for various things that the average person wouldn't expect. This affects a number of systems, not just Unix variants and Windows, but the impact on consumer and office stuff is small. Worst case, set the date back a year or so, and reboot. The concern is really more for big servers and mainframes because of their dependence on timing, and using a false past date causes things to get messy.

The good news is that this is very very fixable, and some work has already been done. It's just not fixed in everything yet, and we still have tons of time. As I said in one of the Titor threads, a competent programmer could fix this 10 years ago, today, or in 27 years... There are quick-and-dirty ways to fix this in software in an emergency, as well as proper long-term solutions. Also, an IBM 5100 has nothing to do with it, and the System/360 mainframe that it functioned with has long been obsolete (it's from the 60's), and the very few that are left in existence today aren't working. The last one was in a museum, and that is its only value anymore. A 15 year old 486 has more computing power than one of those anyway, and it takes a lot less energy to run. Titor's story is just a mix of fiction with obscure computer trivia. I'd even bet that a System/360 is immune to 2038 anyway (but likely has issues with other dates), because that problem affects systems that start counting at 1970, which was after the System/360 had already been out for several years.

Y2K was a bunch of BS too. I said it back then, but no one believed me, and they chose to listen to the ignorant media and get all panicked over it. You know, I'm just a silly software developer who has actually had his hands on this kind of stuff... What do I know? Clearly, the "expert" on the news is the smart one, and the world will in-fact end in 2000! 2038 will be no different... people will fear-monger in order to make a buck.


[edit on 27-7-2009 by TurboDC4]

Well, just for kicks, I set my date to 2056.

Windows XP did not like it.

After setting the year, nothing seemed to be wrong. So, I decided to change it back. Double clicked on the date in the lower right hand corner, got the hourglass, then nothing. Back to the cursor. Did it again, same thing.

I figure a restart would fix this glitch. Nope. First, it didn't want to shut down (had to do it manually). Then, it came back on, but only to my desktop wallpaper. Nothing else. Did another restart...same result. Then, an error pops up...something about the system shutting down in 60 seconds...save all work...blah blah lsass.exe blah blah...So, I let it shut down and restart. Back to the wallpaper.

Went into the BIOS, reset the date to 2009 and bingo. Back to normal.

Like sh1fty said before, by 2038, this will be a non-factor. Still, it was interesting to see the results when tried.

The final value of a 32-bit integer landing on 2038 is a complete no-issue. How a CPU counts time will be drastically different by then. I'm sure we'll be well into quantum computing and virtual realities by then. We'll likely be on forums joking about how a 2038 cell phone has more processing power than the entire north american defence grid from 2009.

Complete no-issue.

Let's worry about it in 2037. Just like we did in 1999.