Y2K38 Watch Starts Saturday

Jon Masters writes "I just wanted to remind everyone that Saturday, January 19th 2008 will mark the beginning of the 30-year countdown to the Y2K38 bug, when Unix time will overflow 32 bits. Some 30-year loan calculation software might start having problems with this over the weekend."

Comments

My date of birth

[nogginthenog]

Is 123456789, Unix time. No shit. 29 Nov 1973. Guess I'm a confirmed geek then?

Re:The answer is 64!

[thegrassyknowl]

Put simply, a lot of software is poorly written and uses int as synonymous with time_t (or somesuch). The two are often interchanged by programmers; particularly those with a Windows background who can't find CTime (or whatever it's called) on non-Windows platforms.

Moving to 64-bit machines won't fix all the magic 32-bit binaries out there but software that's recompiled for 64-bit machines will automagically use 64-bit ints where the programmer held the time in an int.

Of course, I've seen a lot dumber bugs than ignoring to use the operating system's time structures and methods for dealing with time so I don't doubt that there are some bugs that actually will need some serious considerations made.

I guess it's a fault of the Unix people from way back. They made this epoch thing and used a 32-bit number to store the number of seconds since it. I guess they were assuming that all their software would have been replaced by something better on bigger machines. They shouldn't have written such reliable software and then maybe some of it would have been replaced by now ;)

Re:What about the new 40 and 50 year loans?

[kcornia]

40 and 50 year loans are really 30 year loans that will be refactored (or rewritten or reset, whatever terminology they used) at 10 and 20 years left respectively. From my recollection based on work in subprime IT for a few years, it has to do with laws that limit the life of a loan to 30 years or something.

Regardless, 40 and 50 year loans are right up there with negative amortization adjustable loans. HORRIBLE ABUSE OF TEH SYSTEM. If you have to stretch that far to get into a house, rent a fucking apartment and save up some money for cryin' out loud.

This credit crunch is a good thing, we as consumers need to get off the endless debt teat.

Re:And other things..

[Gospodin]

11/9 was just big because it was in the US. Anti-US sentiment aside, the US is simply a more influential country than any of those affected by the Tsunami. US has very a powerful media and politic, so of course its going to be well covered.

9/11 was big because it was caused by people. The tsunami was caused by nature. Comparing responses to them is like comparing responses to a murder versus a heart attack.