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Thread: Year 2038 !!!

  1. #21
    Agony Aunty-Online Moira's Avatar
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    The Year 2000 and the Milliennium bug were a complete anticlimax

    Interesting statistics frpeter, I don't pretend to understand it completely but I get the gist. I was intrigued to read Lotus is affected too, although realistically it's not something that is likely to even be around by then! I have a set of accounts made in Lotus 1-2-3, and some people use Lotus Notes at work, but the development of that software seemed to stop with Lotus Millennium, in other words, M$ had won the race.
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  2. #22
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Actually Moira, I can explain the Lotus thing. Back in 1999 (I think) IBM bought Lotus. To begin with they gave away Millenium Edition. I actually recall getting a 20,000 seat corporate licence for the cost of a telephone call

    It is alive and well under the Lotus IBM brand name and the latest version is called "Lotus SmartSuite 9.8" It costs around £40 for a boxed retail version.


  3. #23
    Master-Jedi-Pimps0r & Moderator thehorse13's Avatar
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    Nihil is referring to the Epoch. Depending upon which revision you look at, this Unix clock begins "the time since 00:00:00, Jan. 1, 1970, measured in sixtieths of a second". That def is from a Unix programmers guide from 1971.

    Yes, Epoch time runs out in 2038 but this issue will not be a problem now that 64bit time is going to be a Unix standard before long.


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  4. #24
    Agony Aunty-Online Moira's Avatar
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    Thanks hihil, interesting facts. thehorse13, is this clock stuff related to the way email which has a blank date field ends up with 1970 as the date, as in spam messages?
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  5. #25
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    I've noticed this too, expecially when signing up for this account... all email from this site was automaticly directed to my spam folder, which was a pain to get to because of the 2000 messages dated in 2038.

    I was wondering with all the stupid emails that get past the spam filter that one from antionline was automaticly caught and past to the spam folder

  6. #26
    Senior Member alakhiyar's Avatar
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    Honestly I think its because most e-mail clients sort e-mail by date, and if the spam said it arrived in 2038, then it will always be at the top of the list.

  7. #27
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    Well... can any1 really find the deadline of any machine either unix or windows or lotus 1-2-3 ?



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  8. #28
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Theoretically the answer is "yes". You only have to take the start date and add the maximum number of time units that the system can handle.

    With applications you can have work-arounds. For example if your date is only two characters you can make a rule:

    0-49 is 2000 to 2049
    50-99 is 1950 to 1999

  9. #29
    Agony Aunty-Online Moira's Avatar
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    I think this was the problem with the millennium "bug", ie the lack of foresight.
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  10. #30
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Well, the millenium bug was a bit more complex.

    1. There was a lot of legacy code still being used.
    2. People had used two digit dates because they did not anticipate the code to be still in use and storage was very expensive back then.
    3. Quite a few PCs only supported a two digit date, and were still in use.


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