Hi,
The Year 2038 Problem
Test it now...
steps...
Disclaimer : This is just for FYI only, Please Don't try this. This is true and if you do this then your network based applications will not work.
1. login to yahoo messenger
2. send instant message to anyone - fine its working...
3. now, change ur system date to 19-Jan-2038, 03:14:07 AM or above (as mentioned in mail)
4. Confirm weather ur date is changed
5. again send instant message to anyone...
Your YM crahes....
* * * YES ALL NETWORK BASED APPLICATION WILL NOT WORK NOW * * *
Why.....
What is it?
Starting at GMT 03:14:07, Tuesday, January 19, 2038 , It is
expected to see lots of systems around the world breaking
magnificently: satellites falling out of orbit, massive power outages (like the 2003 North American
blackout), hospital life support system failures, phone system interruptions,
banking errors, etc. One second after this critical second, many of
these systems will have wildly inaccurate date settings, producing
all kinds of unpredictable consequences. In short, many of the dire
predictions for the year 2000 are much more likely to actually occur in the year
2038! Consider the year 2000 just a dry run. In case you think we can sit
on this issue for another 30 years before addressing it, consider that
reports of temporal echoes of the 2038 problem are already starting to appear
in future date calculations for mortgages and vital statistics!
In the first month of the year 2038 C.E. many computers will
encounter a date-related bug in their operating systems and/or in the
applications they run. This can result in incorrect and wildly inaccurate dates being
reported by the operating system and/or applications. The effect of this bug
is hard to predict, because many applications are not prepared for the
resulting "skip" in reported time anywhere from 1901 to a "broken record"
repeat of the reported
time at the second the bug occurs. Also, may make some small
adjustment to the actual time the bug expresses itself. This bug to cause serious
problems on many platforms, especially Unix and Unix-like platforms, because
these systems will "run out of time".
What causes it?
Time_t is a data type used by C and C++ programs to represent
dates and times internally. (Windows programmers out there might also
recognize it as the basis for the CTime and CTimeSpan classes in MFC.) time_t is
actually just an integer, a whole number, that counts the number of seconds
since January 1, 1970 at 12:00 AM Greenwich Mean Time. A time_t value of 0
would be 12:00:00 AM (exactly midnight ) 1-Jan-1970 , a time_t value of 1
would be 12:00:01 AM
(one second after midnight) 1-Jan-1970 , etc..
some example times and their exact time_t representations:
Date & time time_t representation
1-Jan-1970 , 12:00:00 AM GMT 0
1-Jan-1970, 12:01:00 AM GMT 60
1-Jan-1970, 01:00:00 AM GMT 3 600
2-Jan-1970 , 12:00:00 AM GMT 86 400
1-Jan-1971, 12:00:00 AM GMT 31 536 000
1-Jan-1972, 12:00:00 AM GMT 63 072 000
1-Jan-2038 , 12:00:00 AM GMT 2 145 916 800
19-Jan-2038 , 03:14:07 AM GMT 2 147 483 647
By the year 2038, the time_t representation for the current time
will be over 2 140 000 000. And that's the problem. A modern 32-bit computer
stores a "signed integer" data type, such as time_t, in 32 bits. The first
of these bits is used for the positive/negative sign of the integer, while the
remaining 31 bits are used to store the number itself.
The highest number these 31 data bits can store works out to exactly 2
147 483 647. A time_t value of this exact number, 2 147 483 647, represents January 19,
2038 , at 7 seconds past 3:14 AM Greenwich Mean Time. So, at
3: 14:07 AM GMT on that fateful day, every time_t used in a 32-bit C or C++ program will
reach its upper limit.
One second later, on 19-January-2038 at 3:14:08 AM GMT , disaster strikes.
When a signed integer reaches its maximum value and then gets
incremented, it wraps around to its lowest possible negative value.
This means a 32-bit signed integer, such as a time_t, set to its maximum value of 2 147
483 647 and then incremented by 1, will become -2 147 483 648.
Note that "-" sign at the beginning of this large number. A time_t value of
-2 147 483 648 would represent December 13, 1901 at 8:45:52 PM GMT.
So, if all goes normally, 19-January-2038 will suddenly become
13-December-1901 in every time_t across the globe, and every date
calculation based on this figure will go haywire. And it gets worse.
Most of the support functions that use the time_t data type cannot handle
negative time_t values at all. They simply fail and return an error code.
A quick check with the following Perl script may help determine if
your computers will have problems (this requires Perl to be installed on
your system, of course):
#!/usr/bin/perl
# Use POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface) use POSIX;
# Set the Time Zone to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) for
date calculations.
$ENV{'TZ'} = "GMT";
# Count up in seconds of Epoch time just before and
after the critical event.
for ($clock = 2147483641; $clock < 2147483651;
$clock++)
{
print ctime($clock);
}
For example, the output of this script on Debian GNU/Linux (kernel
2.4.22)
(An affected system) will be
# ./2038.pl
Tue Jan 19 03:14:01 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:02 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:03 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:04 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:05 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:06 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038
Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901
Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901
Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901
Solution
"The best way to predict the future is to engineer it." Consider
testing your mission-critical code well ahead of time on a non-production
test platform set just before the critical date. For more general
applications, just using large types for storing dates will do the trick in most
cases.
For example, in GNU C, 64-bits (a "long " type) is sufficient to keep the
time from rolling over for literally geological eons This just
means any executables the operating systems runs will always get the correct
time reported to them when queried in the correct manner.
It doesn't stop the executables you may still want to be worried about Well-written
programs can simply be recompiled with a new version of the library that uses, for
example, 8-byte values for the storage format. This is possible
because the library encapsulates the whole time activity with its own time types
and functions (unlike most mainframe programs, which did not standardize
their date formats or calculations). So the Year 2038 problem should not
be nearly as hard to fix as the Y2K problem was.
Admittedly, some don't feel that this impending disaster will
strike too many people. They reason that, by the time 2038 rolls around, most
programs will be running on 64-bit or even 128-bit computers.
In a 64-bit program, a time_t could represent any date and time in the future out to 292
000 000 000 A.D., which is about 20 times the currently estimated age of the
universe. The problem with this kind of optimism is the same root
problem behind most of the Year 2000 concerns that plagued the software industry in previous years:
Legacy Code. Even if every PC in the year 2038 has a 64-bit CPU, there will
be a lot of older 32-bit programs running on them.
The greatest danger with the Year 2038 Problem is its
invisibility. The more-famous Year 2000 is a big, round number; it only takes a few
seconds of thought, even for a computer-illiterate person, to imagine what
might happen when 1999 turns into 2000. But January 19, 2038 is not nearly as
obvious. Software companies will probably not think of trying out a Year 2038
scenario before doomsday strikes. Of course, there will be some
warning ahead of time. Scheduling software, billing programs, personal
reminder calendars, and other such pieces of code that set dates in the near
future will fail as soon as one of their target dates exceeds 19-Jan-2038,
assuming a time_t is used to store them.
Good luck, and hope no ones flying car breaks down in 2038
