Friday, September 17, 2010

Year 2038 bug

Many of the older computer systems will crash on January 19, 2038. Is it time to panic yet?

Starting at GMT 03:14:07, Tuesday, January 19, 2038, I fully expect 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 (including 911 emergency services), banking system crashes, 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!
--http://maul.deepsky.com/~merovech/2038.html

No comments:

Post a Comment