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Time's Up: 2^30 Seconds Since 1970
An anonymous reader writes: "In Software glitch brings Y2K deja vu, CNET points out a small wave of Y2K-like bugs may soon hit, though it gets the explanation wrong. It will soon be about 2^30 (1 billion, not 2 billion) seconds since 1970 (do the arithmetic). Systems that use only 29 bits of a word for unsigned/positive integers, or store time as seconds since 1970 in this format, may roll back to 1970. (Many systems that do not need full 32 bit integers may reserve some bits for other uses, such as boolean flags, or for type information to distinguish integers from booleans and pointers.)"
This is the biggest computer-related time event since Y2K, which begun on January 1, 19100!
SOCIETY AS WE KNOW IT WILL COLLAPSE!!!! I have to get bottled water and batteries ready! This will be a complete disaster--just like Y2K!
Oops!
y2.003k?
...Run for the hills!
find / -name "*.sig" | xargs rm
My two-bit computer ran out of time the moment it was turned on...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
With some of the fashion's today (bell bottems, et al.)
this has been a problem since 1970. is it news that c-net realizes it?
If 1K = 1024 then Y2K is 2048. We still have a ways to go on that one! :)
...is 2.6 affected by the bug??
The IT section color scheme sucks.
I was born just before 1970.
I'm a billion seconds old.
Holy shit.
How many of you programmers are storing your years using 4 digits? Yeah, that's what I thought, all of you. What happens when it's January 1, 10000? Hmmm? Yes, that's right, your software will fail. It will roll back to 0, which wasn't even a year!
Now, I know what you're thinking. "There's no way someone will be using software I'm writing 8000 years from now." Yeah, and that's what programmers said 30 years ago about the year 2000. Be smart, and play it safe. Use a 5, or better yet, 10 digit year. What's a few bytes?
IIRC, bugger all went wrong. No nuclear weapons randomly fired off in any direction, no computers melted (well, none of mine)
There was no reply, though. His computer probably thought my letter was from a century ago.
So if your still using UnixWare, you may be in trouble.
So that means Linux is affected also, since its mostly copied from Unixware, right?
Its epoch is midnight 01-Jan-1904 and it uses an unsigned 32-bit integer to count seconds since then. That means it will run out at 06:28:15 09-Feb-2040.
:P
But, I'm sure Apple will have released a new Newton by then!
(I don't suppose anyone's ported the Rosetta writing recognition system to other PDA's, just in case?)
I plenty left over from Y2K. For those who did not prepare for Y2K and laughed at all the suckers who stockpiled and hid in bunkers, Ha! I will finally have the last laugh! - going into my bunker now....
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Thanks for you're advice, which I will follow from now on.
Can you roll over?
Infuriate left and right
Parametric Technologies has this problem. Seems they were trying to insert the year 2038 bug into their code, but the messed up and got the year 2004 bug instead.
Nah, why take away the thrill and jobs of our childrens,childrens,childrens,childrens,childrens, childrens,childrens,childrens,childrens,childrens, childrens,childrens,childrens,childrens,childrens, childrens,childrens,childrens,childrens,children?
So does this mean we can sue SCO if our systems crash?
maybe a midlife crisis is just our internal clocks rolling over.
Nah... no way will any of these systems still be in use in 30 years time...
bash-2.05b$ perl -e 'print "seconds left: ", ((2**30) - time), "\n"' seconds left: 1686570 bash-2.05b$ octave GNU Octave, version 2.1.44 (i586-mandrake-linux-gnu). Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 John W. Eaton. This is free software; see the source code for copying conditions. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; not even for MERCHANTIBILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. For details, type `warranty'. Please contribute if you find this software useful. For more information, visit http://www.octave.org/help-wanted.html Report bugs to . octave:1> 1686570/60/60/24 ans = 19.520
There was once a COBOL programmer in the mid to late 1990s. He became a private consultant specializing in Year 2000 conversions. He was working 70 and 80 and even 90 hour weeks and travelled through 20 different countries, but it was worth it.
Several years of this relentless, mind-numbing work had taken its toll on Jack. He had problems sleeping and began having anxiety dreams about the Year 2000. He must have suffered some sort of breakdown. Jack decided to contact a company that specialized in cryogenics. He made a deal to have himself frozen until March 15th, 2000. This was very expensive process and totally automated. The next thing he would know is he'd wake up in the year 2000; after the New Year celebrations and computer debacles; after the leap day. Nothing else to worry about except getting on with his life.
He was put into his cryogenic receptacle, the technicians set the revive date, he was given injections to slow his heartbeat to a bare minimum, and that was that. The next thing that Jack saw was an enormous and very modern room filled with excited people. They were all shouting "I can't believe it!" and "It's a miracle" and "He's alive!". There were cameras (unlike any he'd ever seen) and equipment that looked like it came out of a science fiction movie. Someone who was obviously a spokesperson for the group stepped forward. Jack couldn't contain his enthusiasm. "It is over?" he asked. "Is 2000 already here? Are all the millennial parties and promotions and crises all over and done with?"
The spokesman explained that there had been a problem with the programming of the timer on Jack's cryogenic receptacle, it hadn't been year 2000 compliant. It was actually eight thousand years later, not the year 2000. But the spokesman told Jack that he shouldn't get excited; someone important wanted to speak to him.
Suddenly a wall-sized projection screen displayed the image of a man that remarcably looked very much like Bill Gates. This man was Prime Minister of Earth. He told Jack not to be upset. That this was a wonderful time to be alive. That there was world peace and no more starvation. That the space program had been reinstated and there were colonies on the moon and on Mars. That technology had advanced to such a degree that everyone had virtual reality interfaces which allowed them to contact anyone else on the planet, or to watch any entertainment, or to hear any music recorded anywhere.
"That sounds terrific," said Jack. "But I'm curious. Why is everybody so interested in *me*?"
"Well," said the Prime Minister. "The year 10000 is just around the corner, and it says in your files that you know COBOL...."
How is this in any way better than a 64-bit integer???
Maybe because XML is easier to deal with in Visual Basic than 64 bit ints? =P
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
"It's such a simple flaw; we don't believe it requires extensive testing to deploy the patches," he [PTC spokesman Joe Gavaghan] said.
That's an excellent plan! Nothing bad has ever come from that train of thought before.
In future news, PTC spokesman Joe Gavaghan is now working for Microsoft's Security division.
Nooooooo!!
Hmm, it seems that the date that a system's clock overflows is inversely proportional to the date that the system has outlived its usefulness
People who use Excel on purpose need to be sterilized.
In case you haven't figured out, we are now a reactive society as opposed to proactive. We fix things, or usually replace them, when they break, not before. Americans don't think much about the future beyond what's on television later that day.
Yes, we could fix the bug now. Likewise, we could also address world hunger, the deficit, the exploding crime problem, terrorism and a host of other issues with such cautious, preventative measures, but doing so wouldn't give us the instant gratification we desire now, so we'll let your children deal with the deficit, crime, terrorism, poverty, hunger and the time bug. We have better things to do. I'd write more, but I think "Friends" is coming on.
You expect to have twenty generations of descendents by 2034? Ooh ooh I got it! You're from Alabama, right?
mogorific carpentry experiments
It's a long-standing rule of Fight-O-Net / UselessNet / Slice'n'DiceDot that when one attempts to correct the grammer or speling of another, invariably they themselves will make a misteak.
If for no other reason, of course, than the fact it doubles the fun of language police.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
That does NOT count as a sufficient documentation of the above feature!
thank you Unix for combining data and error conditions into one convenient return value!
cpeterso
I used to do a bit of COBOL, but also have cut my teath with a few years experience with S370 Assembler. I could probably earn good money with that too. But I'm not sure i WANT to!!!
> http://maul.deepsky.com/%7Emerovech/2038.html
That page is worth visiting for the disclaimer alone:
"PUBLIC NOTICE AS REQUIRED BY LAW: Any use of this Web page, in any manner whatsoever, will increase the amount of disorder in the universe. Although no liability is implied herein, the consumer is warned that this process will ultimately lead to the heat death of the universe."
I shorted A31 to ground with a screwdriver on my Motorola MC68060 board. It blew a pullup resistor on an open collector output driver. Now A31 is always low -- and I'm too lazy to replace the tiny little 100 ohm surface mount. It runs just fine as long as I don't address high memory.
I just want to know: Does that count?
All's true that is mistrusted
Daryl?
A girl once told me she wouldn't go out with me until the end of time.
Sally Roberts, pucker up.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
I thought it was pregnancy that was the result of some 'affection'.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
In standard /. fashion, I will overlook factual inaccuracies in the interest of pursuing my goal of correcting everyone's grammar. As such, I must tell you that Y2K *began* on January 1, 19100.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
> I think it'd be much nicer if the language could handle Perl-style returning of arrays.
/* waif, indeed! */ /* no jogging allowed */ /* guiness record */ /* doorway limitation */
/* name of girl */ /* diameter of waist */ /* diameter of chest at most interesting offset */ /* measure are the hips, don't get distracted, you naughty tailor */ /* it's good to hold on to! */ /* if they can't see it, they can't suck it */
The guy who posted above you 8 minutes earlier already understood the solution: return a damned pointer!
Why, oh why, is this so hard to understand? Here, I will provide a contrived, stupid example.
#define MIN_CHEST 25
#define MAX_CHEST 55
#define MIN_WAIST 19
#define MAX_WAIST 65
typedef enum { brown, blue, red, blonde, blue, cmax } colour_t;
typedef struct
{
char *name;
size_t waist;
size_t chest;
size_t hips;
colour_t hair;
colour_t eyes;
} girl_t;
typedef struct
{
size_t count;
girl_t *girls;
} girl_array_t;
void mempanic()
{
write(STDOUT_FILENO, "oh oh\n", 6);
_exit(1);
}
girl_t *createAllGirls()
{
girl_array_t *girlArr = calloc(sizeof(*girlArr), 1);
char name[64];
size_t waist, chest, hips;
colour_t hair, eyes;
if (!girlArr)
mempanic();
for (waist = MIN_WAIST; waist girls = realloc(girlArr->girls, sizeof(*(girlArr->girls)) * (girlArr->count + 1));
if (!girlArr->girls)
mempanic();
sprintf(name, "chick #%i", girlArr->count + 1);
girlArr->girls[girlArr->count].waist = waist;
girlArr->girls[girlArr->count].chest = chest;
girlArr->girls[girlArr->count].hips = hips;
girlArr->girls[girlArr->count].eyes = eyes;
girlArr->girls[girlArr->count].hair = hair;
girlArray->count++
}
return girlArray;
}
There. Everything you need. A single return value, a dynamic sized array of structs. And girls.
Of course, I didn't test it. But if you really need girls that bad, let me know and I'll make sure it builds.
Now, this is just some text to avoid the lameness filter. Doo dah. Tobacco use during pregnancy increases the risk of preterm birth. abies born preterm are at an increased risk of infant death, illness and disability. Health Canada.
L'usage du tabac pendant la grossesse accroit le risque d'un accouchement premature. Les bebes prematures font face a des risques plus grands de mort infantile, de maladies et d'incapacites. Sante Canada.
Okay. Maybe I'll de-indent my code. Stupid piece of shit.Meta-control-Q should fix that.. Oh great! Now I need more characters per line. Comments, here I come...
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
So just what kind of a two-bit operation are you running here?
Um, not to be quarrelsome or anything, but I'm not sure sure you'll find anyone here willing to make that distinction.
Present company execpted, of course. :)
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
How fitting that the time of a crash would be L337.
I mean 13:37.
The Y2K preparedness team at my company went crazy over the hype. They set up a big "Y2K Command Center" (commandeered a big teleconferencing room) with PCs full of nothing but Excel spreadsheets with all the functionality metrics for our whole enterprise painstakingly listed. Every ten minutes, all of us in the trenches were supposed to telephone this "command center" so they could update their spreadsheets (yes, web site "foobar" is still responding, yes, this database still works.)
About 30 minutes before Y2K hit our time zone, I noticed the maintenance guys firing up the big diesel backup generators in our rear parking lot. I asked my boss about it. "Oh yeah," he said, "They're going to take us off the power grid just in case." No big deal to us: we have UPS's on all our PCs, and the power fails over all the time in the always-spectacular Kentucky summer thunderstorm season. (Half of the building's lighting turns off to conserve power, everyone slightly gasps, but keeps working...we're used to it.)
But not so for the "Y2K Command Center." The "suits" had plugged all their spreadsheet-running PCs straight into the wall, and when we changed over to the generators (on their command) the momentary power drop caused *every single one* of their machines to go down....
We laughed in their faces openly. If that's not being hoist by one's own petard I don't know what is. It almost made it worth it not to be kissing my sweetie on New Year's Eve.
The first rule of Fight-O-Net is: You do not talk about Fight-O-Net.
The second rule of Fight-O-Net is: You do not talk about Fight-O-Net.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
At noon on December 31st, 2001, the Y2K fix for BlueWave (my offline BBS mail reader) stopped working. But only for one version. The Y2K fix still works with a slightly later version. Someone speculated that it was due to the older version being exactly n-many seconds old (from compile date) and at that point, some poorly coded function ran out of date space.
Back in 1999, some BBS door functions stopped working, apparently due to running out of single-digit dates. *sigh*
In the Closet I have a P90 that ever since Y2K, firmly believes the year is 2094. Oddly enough, NWDOS7 thinks this is a perfectly acceptable date!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Maybe this is what the Orange Alert is about.....
perl -we 'print "seconds left: ", ((2**30) - localtime), "\n"'
Argument "Mon Dec 22 01:44:41 2003" isn't numeric in subtraction (-) at -e line 1.
seconds left: 1073741824
Not too Informative, if you ask me...
It was flame bait and I just wanted to post an educated rebuttal.
Translation:
Like what I said? You might like my music
I remember talking to a friend who tried to convince me that the earth was going to end somewhere in 2001. Why? Well, it's very simple. The number of the beast is 666, multiply that by three (there was a reason for that too -- not sure what it was, but it was biblical as well). That gives you 1998, and that's the number of years after the birth of Christ that the world is going to end. However, he told me, Jesus Christ wasn't born exactly on the first day of year one, he was actually born somewhere around 3 B.C., so that meant that the end of the world was going to take place in 2001.
:)
This conversation took place somewhere in the year 2000. He was not very pleased to hear that if he were right, the world would already have ended 5 years ago.
NWDOS7 thinks it's a perfectly acceptable date, but is secretly wondering why you're still using it on a P90 in 2094.
Moof!
13:37 in the afternoon, huh?
Saturday, January 10, some big iron datacenter in Silicon Valley
Tech: What's this? ERROR 2393: HAXX0rS HAEV STOELN YUOR MEGAHURTZ!
I love you Jeff K.