text: You've Got 25 Years Until UNIX Time Overflows
  timothy posted about a year ago | from the start-packing dept.
  ? (5, Insightful)
  damn_registrars (1103043) | about a year ago | (#42656767)
  those phony programs politicians use to project government expenditures
  The programs are real, even if the math may be phony.
  Re:Could we be a little less biased? (5, Insightful)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657267):Could we be a little less biased? (2)
  Archangel Michael (180766) | about a year ago | (#42657315)
  Most Insightful Post Ever!
  Re:Could we be a little less biased? (2, Funny)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657381)!"
  Not NetBSD (5, Informative)
  Nimey (114278) | about a year ago | (#42656775)
  NetBSD has switched to a 64-bit time_t.
  Re:Not NetBSD (4, Insightful)
  Beezlebub33 (1220368) | about a year ago | (#42656811)
  Re:Not NetBSD (-1, Flamebait)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42656867)
  That's not how it works, you dumb shit. Are you trying to say that "64-bit computers" don't have any support for 32 bit integers? The size of the variable the OS uses to store its time value has nothing to do with the memory space it's capable of addressing.
  See my post below:
  developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3399939&cid=42656827
  You prove my point. STOP POSTING.
  Re:Not NetBSD (-1, Offtopic)
  djsmiley (752149) | about a year ago | (#42657003)
  That's not how slashdot works you dumb shit.
  STOP POSTING.
  Re:Not NetBSD (5, Informative)
  mrjatsun (543322) | about a year ago | (#42657083)
  > (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657379)
  The time_t was, in many cases, switched to 64bit even in 32bit OSs.
  Re:64-bit computers DO NOT solve this problem (4, Insightful)
  JcMorin (930466) | about a year ago | (#42656879)
  Re:64-bit computers DO NOT solve this problem (4, Insightful)
  h4rr4r (612664) | about a year ago | (#42656963) (5, Insightful)
  locofungus (179280) | about a year ago | (#42657215) (5, Funny)
  HaZardman27 (1521119) | about a year ago | (#42657411) (1)
  cshark (673578) | about a year ago | (#42657423)
  Y2k was a boom for technology contractors such as myself. The years leading up to Y2k38 will be good too. Think of all the code that will need to be totally rewritten. I know, there is that faction of people that want to see technology undo itself, and the world end, but for those of us that live in reality... it'll be great. Honestly, I wish we had these kinds of crises more often.
  Re:64-bit computers DO NOT solve this problem (2)
  Hatta (162192) | about a year ago | (#42657119)
  If you have a 64 bit PC and OS, it should be little more than a recompile. This is why it's important to have the source.
  Re:64-bit computers DO NOT solve this problem (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657193)
  True. Don't recompile and continue whining.
  embedded (5, Informative)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657:Not NetBSD (4, Informative)
  petermgreen (876956) | about a year ago | (#42657319) (1)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42656905)
  And your point is?
  #include <ctime>
  #include <iostream>
  int main()
  {
  std::cout << "The time_t on Linux is " << sizeof(time_t)*8 << " bits.\n"
  "HTH\nHAND\n";
  }
  Gives:
  The time_t on Linux is 64 bits.
  HTH
  HAND
  Re:Not NetBSD (2, Informative)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657171) (1)
  mgcleveland (2029194) | about a year ago | (#42657107)
  Re:Not NetBSD (1)
  gweihir (88907) | about a year ago | (#42657211)
  At least 64 bit Linux has too. The only 32 bit installation I have (on a Raspberry Pi) has not.
  Re:Not NetBSD (1)
  WilyCoder (736280) | about a year ago | (#42657257)
  Don't forget the Rpi doesn't even have a real time clock...
  Re:Not NetBSD (1)
  gweihir (88907) | about a year ago | (#42657371)
  Yes, I know. A limitation found on quite a few other embedded systems. My intuition is that on something without real-time clock, this issue cannot be important.
  That's OK (5, Funny)
  Big Hairy Ian (1155547) | about a year ago | (#42656793)
  Come on! (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42656795)
  Current Unix systems have 64-bit (where not 128-bit) timestamps!
  Maybe some databases could store timestamps as 32-bit unsigned long with basline at 1970-01-01...
  But you know, Human Intelligence has limits, his stupidity has none!
  Re:Come on! (1)
  lengau (817416) | about a year ago | (#42657273)
  I feel like the security guard in Austin Powers... (5, Funny)
  killfixx (148785) | about a year ago | (#42656807)
  Standing before the steam roller....
  "Stoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop"....
  .... "Stooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop"....
  I understand, we need time to correct the issue, but...c'mon?!
  Slow news day?
  Not news (-1)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42656827)
  Shouldn't be news to anyone posting on this site. Jesus fuck, I wish all the fucktards and redditors would get the fuck off this site.
  Re:Not news (-1)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42656893)
  Re:Not news (-1)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42656955)
  Shouldn't be news to anyone posting on this site. Jesus fuck, I wish all the fucktards and redditors would get the fuck off this site.
  You forgot hipsters.
  The collective IQ of Slashdot has diminished over the past few years.
  Unsigned! (3, Interesting)
  aglider (2435074) | about a year ago | (#42656831)
  Re:Unsigned! (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657031)
  32bit unsigned, not signed! What'd be the negative timestamps for?
  Ages before 1970?
  Avast! The negative timestamps be for the forgotten yars way back when Jack Kennedy did found this great nation, even before that scurvy son of a bitch Nixon started the Civil War.
  Re:Unsigned! (-1)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657037)
  Are you fucking joking? It's up to the implementation to define this, anyway. And for the faggoty ass OS you people on here use, it's a signed integer you fag.
  See my post above:
  developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3399939&cid=42656827
  You prove my point. STOP POSTING.
  Re:Unsigned! (2)
  davydagger (2566757) | about a year ago | (#42657111)
  no you heard correct.
  "What'd be the negative timestamps for? Ages before 1970?"
  but you managed to guess this correctly.
  Re:Unsigned! (2)
  vlm (69642) | about a year ago | (#42657255) and rollovers
  ... most of them.
  On the bright side, at least they didn't use BCD or floats. floats would have been pretty funny, crontab entries not running because of rounding errors and stuff like that.
  Re:Unsigned! (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657185)
  error return. it's also easier to do arithmetic on signed numbers.
  Re:Unsigned! (2)
  Waffle Iron (339739) | about a year ago | (#42657235)
  Do the math. If they used a 32-bit unsigned integer, the problem wouldn't happen until the year 2106.
  Is it a real problem? (1)
  ruir (2709173) | about a year ago | (#42656841)
  Re:Is it a real problem? (4, Insightful)
  kenny603 (1754842) | about a year ago | (#42656923)
  Re:Is it a real problem? (-1)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657207)
  How many devices are you running from 1988 at the moment?
  Re:Is it a real problem? (1)
  Omegium (576650) | about a year ago | (#42657203)
  Getting old (2)
  boristdog (133725) | about a year ago | (#42656845)
  I put in my time working on the Y2K fix. I'll be retired in 5 years, so let the kids of today fix this one. Hell, they need jobs.
  Re:Getting old (1)
  Doug Otto (2821601) | about a year ago | (#42656989)
  Re:Getting old (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657063)
  I put my time working on the Y2K fix, going through hundreds of computers by hand that could not be automatized.
  I won't be retired in 25 years, so I get to fix this one as well.
  Hell, I hope I don't need the job in 25 years.
  -j
  Re:Getting old (2)
  slim (1652) | about a year ago | (#42657231) (5, Insightful)
  bill_mcgonigle (4333) | about a year ago | (#42656855)
  Was this a USENET post from '94? Mortgage systems using 32-bit time_t (if there ever were any) failed 5 years ago for 30-year mortgages. We did not hear an earth-shattering kaboom.
  Re:Mortgage Calculations (5, Funny)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657001)
  Actually we did, but it had nothing to do with integer overflow.
  Re:Mortgage Calculations (1)
  Exitar (809068) | about a year ago | (#42657025)
  The global crysis!
  I blame UNIX for that!
  Re:Mortgage Calculations (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657157)
  I blame Crytek.
  :)
  Re:Mortgage Calculations (1)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657035)
  Oh really? There was no "earth-shattering kaboom" in the world of housing finance ~5 years ago?
  Re:Mortgage Calculations (3, Funny)
  Thud457 (234763) | about a year ago | (#42657081):Mortgage Calculations (1)
  plover (150551) | about a year ago | (#42657085):Mortgage Calculations (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657263)
  Was this a USENET post from '94? Mortgage systems using 32-bit time_t (if there ever were any) failed 5 years ago for 30-year mortgages. We did not hear an earth-shattering kaboom.
  There was supposed to be an earth shattering "kaboom"!
  Re:Mortgage Calculations (1)
  Waffle Iron (339739) | about a year ago | (#42657343).
  Re:Mortgage Calculations (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657417)
  so that's what triggered the financial crisis
  ;)
  Maybe (-1)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42656865)
  It'll finally get people to switch from Windows XP
  fake!!!! Nothing to see here. (-1, Flamebait)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42656901)
  Unix time has been 64 bits for a long time now.
  This article was written by a {loser} windows 8 person.
  Nothing to see here.
  Oh No! (1)
  MyLongNickName (822545) | about a year ago | (#42656921)
  This could be worse than Y2K!
  Re:Oh No! (1)
  tippe (1136385) | about a year ago | (#42657169)
  It's time (haha) to pull those windows and mainframe programmers that saved us from Y2K out of retirement. They'll know what to do...
  Re:Oh No! (1)
  PolygamousRanchKid (1290638) | about a year ago | (#42657223)
  This could be worse than Y2K!
  . . . and more lucrative, for retired C hackers who want to earn a few bucks . . .
  The COBOL boys had their turn with Y2K. Next up, are the C-bies.
  Just use Dice(r) Job Boards! (1)
  larry bagina (561269) | about a year ago | (#42656959)
  Re:Just use Dice(r) Job Boards! (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657123)
  This post was removed due to Dice content standards violations.
  Noooooooo! (5, Funny)
  lxs (131946) | about a year ago | (#42656971)
  My uptime!
  Surely we'll all be using 64bit by then. (2, Funny)
  Arancaytar (966377) | about a year ago | (#42656975)
  After all, we handily averted Y2K with decades to spare, and the internet has been migrated to IPv6 for the past ten years.
  :-P
  Re:Surely we'll all be using 64bit by then. (1)
  rossdee (243626) | about a year ago | (#42657139)
  And the Mayan clock rollover didn't seem to cause any problems.
  WP article much better (1)
  bcrowell (177657) | about a year ago | (#42656979):WP article much better (2)
  ledow (319597) | about a year ago | (#42657115) autopilot) and they didn't risk a plane to do so.
  25 years means none of your current desktops will still be running (it would be like running a ZX Spectrum as a business machine would be seen today). There might be embedded devices, but how many will go 25 years without a SINGLE test or upgrade or fix or replacement? Very, very, very few.
  There isn't a network switch in the world deployed today that will still be around in 25 years untouched. It would literally be like finding out a ZX Spectrum was running vital parts of your business by being tucked away in a cupboard and forgotten about for 25 years and NOT ONE PERSON KNOWING.
  Re:WP article much better (2)
  LDAPMAN (930041) | about a year ago | (#42657339):WP article much better (1)
  vlm (69642) | about a year ago | (#42657415) because the planes in a stall and floors the engine.
  Assuming the plane doesn't crash (and it probably won't... this is hardly the first time in aviation history that an autopilot broke) will get the trouble ticket for a broken autopilot, then has to work backward to figure out the moving map is broke, move back to find the GPS is broke...
  Even funnier would be really shitty arithmetic implementations. Like a "one" value in bit 32 is somehow, accidentally the MSB/LSB/something now added to the lat/lon. Again pissing off the autopilot into thinking you're now suddenly 15000 miles off course and need to enter a gentle turn to the north to correct. The odds of that being unnoticed and there being a mountain there are actually pretty low, but its still going to be an unholy PITA to investigate and "solve".
  Or overzealous security monster type paranoid "24 tv show fan" type firewall type design.. Why, the date "has" to be pre-32 bit, right? So filter anything "wrong" out. Whoops that makes the engine computer crash. Well thats annoying. Or the GPS isn't broken at all, but the moving map display interpretation code actually is broken. Overall just as annoying as hell.
  Re:WP article much better (1)
  Annirak (181684) | about a year ago | (#42657187)
  (Do people still read Byte? I don't remember seeing it since the 80's.)
  Only in strings. We migrated to Words in the late '80s, then DWords in the '90s.
  Re:WP article much better (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657239)
  One thing that seems a little different from Y2K is that this bug seems to be prevalent in a lot of embedded systems. To me that seems harder to test than a desktop system.
  Y2K was massively about embedded systems and few of the real problems were with desktops.
  Re:WP article much better (1)
  davydagger (2566757) | about a year ago | (#42657387)
  will most embedded systems need the date to work as an absolute, ot just need to count seconds? Why does an industrial robot care if its 2038 or 1901?
  Since When Do Politicians Use Unix? (1)
  xxxJonBoyxxx (565205) | about a year ago | (#42656985)
  >> those phony programs politicians use to project government expenditures
  That's Excel in most cases, I bet. As long as spreadsheets can handle up to 50 rows and numbers up to 3000 I suspect all will be as it is today.
  Time overflowing (3, Funny)
  Dyinobal (1427207) | about a year ago | (#42656993)
  Re:Time overflowing (2)
  ChocNut (791621) | about a year ago | (#42657097)
  I'll be 70 or dead (1)
  swb (14022) | about a year ago | (#42657017)
  So it will be someone else's problem.
  that give time for there to be a PHD level class (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657019)
  that give time for there to be a PHD level class coving fixing this and then you will only find job's that pay like 30K a year to fix it and your loans will be like 500K
  Re:that give time for there to be a PHD level clas (1)
  vlm (69642) | about a year ago | (#42657445)
  and your loans will be like 500K
  Per textbook
  Well (2)
  ledow (319597) | about a year ago | (#42657039)
   are available today are carrying on quite happily.
  Y2K was like this - doomsaying about how your mortgage would fail and your wages would stop. Sure, it could - theoretically - have caused problems. But only if your software managers in charge of those things were complete idiots in the first place (and using an app that was written in the 60's, unchanged, isn't an excuse and STILL makes you an idiot).
  Y2.038K is definitely MORE of a problem. Definitely. But it's obviously not something that those with software that looks that far ahead are worried about at the moment. And in 25 years, in any of my current computers are still operational I will be incredibly impressed. If any of my computers NEXT YEAR aren't running 64-bit OS (whether or not they have 64-bit clocks) I will be slightly put out! So 25 years to move to 64-bit clocks? No problem.
  Re:Well (1)
  gweihir (88907) | about a year ago | (#42657277)
  I expect that financial calculations are using 64 bit or 128 bit integers, long-numbers or at the very least (may be illegal in some countries) double. The last still gives 56 bit integer precision when misused as an integer.
  Another Global Warming Scare (1)
  mtrachtenberg (67780) | about a year ago | (#42657055).
  By then... (0)
  Alien Being (18488) | about a year ago | (#42657067)
  I'll be almost 2.5 gigaseconds old and won't give one nanoshit.
  I will be collecting Social Security by that time (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657069)
  So whoever is going to fix it, I don't want my check to be late.
  Now get off my future lawn.
  safe on 64bit Linux (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657089)
  They got one thing right. (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657109)
  At least none will be able to say slashdot was late with this report.
  32-bit signed integer? (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657125)
  Why would they use a signed integer for something that started at zero and cannot be negative?
  Simple fix (1)
  Registered Coward v2 (447531) | about a year ago | (#42657151)
  I already warned people weeks ago (1)
  Dishwasha (125561) | about a year ago | (#42657155) [slashdot.org]
  But thanks for pointing it out again. Don't forget to stock up on Spam and Treet.
  When Do /. UIDs Overflow? (1)
  RedHackTea (2779623) | about a year ago | (#42657189)
  typedef int64_t time_t; (1)
  Rob Riggs (6418) | about a year ago | (#42657261)
  PHP (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657287)
  PHP is still screwed, no 64-bit integers.
  Re:PHP (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657405)
  PHP is already screwed. Why? It exists. Can't get any worse than that.
  Shhhhh!! (3, Interesting)
  hawguy (1600213) | about a year ago | (#42657293) (1)
  VAXcat (674775) | about a year ago | (#42657303)
  No lets panic (1)
  cod3r_ (2031620) | about a year ago | (#42657367)
  John Titor (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657395)
  All we need is to understand the plans of the time machine that John Titor put on the internet.
  Then, we will be able to send another John Titor back the to the 70's to get an IBM 5100 to solve the problem...
  Y2K hysteria alloevr again... (0)
  Anonymous Coward | about a year ago | (#42657397)
  Remember how the world was going to end on Jan 1, 2000 because no one could possibly imagine how computer software could be ready for the new millennium? Except, of course, that people who write computer software had known about the issue for 15 years and had already changed most code to not be affected.
  This is going to be the same thing. Long before we reach 2037, programmers are going to be changing their code to not be impacted by it (probably simply moving to using a 64-bit integer to represent time - which has nothing to do with whether the hardware is 32-bit or 64-bit - one can still perform 64-bit operations on 32-bit hardware - its all a matter of software). The moment that the kernel's start tracking and presenting time as a 64-bit seconds-since-epoch (which may require some apps to be reworked if they hard-coded assumptions about the size of a time_t) the problem goes away. I am 100% confident that Linux, Windows, OSX, etc will have all made that change long before 2037 rolls around.
  Of course, the general public, and the media, will continue to play it up as if no one could possibly have planned for such an event - mostly because the general public's idea of Engineering comes from Hollywood, where Engineers design indestructible super ships which can be taken out by going into a public lavatory and flushing three toilets at the same time.
  A real problem! (1)
  Murdoch5 (1563847) | about a year ago | (#42657425)