Global Hysteria Goes Hi-Tech – Watch out for the “2038 Bug”

Remember how the calendar turning over to 2000 was supposed to bring on Armageddon? Then a few hangers-on said ok, that didn’t happen, but it was really 2001 when the world would be catapulted back in the technological dark ages?

Obviously, that didn’t happen, either, so now the virtual doomsdayers are warning us about the year 2038.

ReadWriteWeb, with tongue firmly in cheek, explains the theory:

The bug, being dubbed the “2038 bug,” arises because Unix-based systems store the time as a signed 32-bit integer, in seconds, from midnight on January 1 1970. And the latest time that can be represented in that format, by the Posix standard, is 3:14 AM on January 19, 2038. After that, times will wrap around and be represented as a negative number… Programs will fail…Since they will see times not as being in 2038 but rather in 1901, erroneous calculations and decisions will occur.

This reminds me of a former boss, who (true story), called a staff meeting in early 2001 to help start the planning process to make sure that the glitches that happened in 2000 “won’t happen again, the next time.” The next time? In 3001?

Back to the 2038 bug, if anyone still thinks they’ll be using any of the same equipment, programs, software, or code in thiry years that we’re using now, then be afraid…be very afraid. Your only hope is that by then we probably will have melted from Global Warming.

The rest of us are going to lunch. Byeeeeee.