The Year 2038 Problem

Test it now.

steps…

1. login to yahoo messenger

2. send instant message to anyone - fine its working…

3. now, change ur system date to 19-Jan-2038, 03:14:07 AM or above

4. Confirm weather ur date is changed

5. again send instant message to anyone…

Your YM crahes….

* * * YES ALL NETWORK BASED APPLICATION WILL NOT WORK NOW * * *

Why…..

What is it?

*

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Starting at GMT 03:14:07, Tuesday, January 19, 2038, It is expected 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, banking errors, 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

In the first month of the year 2038 C.E. many computers will encounter a
date-related bug in their operating systems and/or in the applications
they run. This can result in incorrect and wildly inaccurate dates being
reported by the operating system and/or applications. The effect of this
bug is hard to predict, because many applications are not prepared for
the resulting “skip” in reported time anywhere from 1901 to a “broken
record” repeat of the reported time at the second the bug occurs. Also,
may make some small adjustment to the actual time the bug expresses
itself. This bug to cause serious problems on many platforms, especially
Unix and Unix-like platforms, because these systems will “run out of
time”.

What causes it?

Time_t is a data type used by C and C++ programs to represent dates and
times internally. (Windows programmers out there might also recognize it
as the basis for the CTime and CTimeSpan classes in MFC.)

time_t is actually just an integer, a whole number, that counts the
number of seconds since January 1, 1970 at 12:00 AM Greenwich Mean Time.
A time_t value of 0 would be 12:00:00 AM (exactly midnight) 1-Jan-1970,
a time_t value of 1 would be 12:00:01 AM (one second after midnight)
1-Jan-1970, etc.. some example times and their exact time_t
representations:

Date & time time_t representation

1-Jan-1970, 12:00:00 AM GMT 0

1-Jan-1970, 12:01:00 AM GMT 60

1-Jan-1970, 01:00:00 AM GMT 3 600

2-Jan-1970, 12:00:00 AM GMT 86 400

1-Jan-1971, 12:00:00 AM GMT 31 536 000

1-Jan-1972, 12:00:00 AM GMT 63 072 000

1-Jan-2038, 12:00:00 AM GMT 2 145 916 800

19-Jan-2038, 03:14:07 AM GMT 2 147 483 647

By the year 2038, the time_t representation for the current time will be
over 2 140 000 000. And that’s the problem. A modern 32-bit computer
stores a “signed integer” data type, such as time_t, in 32 bits. The
first of these bits is used for the positive/negative sign of the
integer, while the remaining 31 bits are used to store the number
itself.

The highest number these 31 data bits can store works out to exactly 2
147 483 647. A time_t value of this exact number, 2 147 483 647,
represents January 19, 2038, at 7 seconds past 3:14 AM Greenwich Mean
Time. So, at 3:14:07 AM GMT on that fateful day, every time_t used in a
32-bit C or C++ program will reach its upper limit.

One second later, on 19-January-2038 at 3:14:08 AM GMT, disaster
strikes. When a signed integer reaches its maximum value and then gets
incremented, it wraps around to its lowest possible negative value.

This means a 32-bit signed integer, such as a time_t, set to its maximum
value of 2 147 483 647 and then incremented by 1, will become -2 147 483
648.

Note that “-” sign at the beginning of this large number. A time_t value
of -2 147 483 648 would represent December 13, 1901 at 8:45:52 PM GMT.

So, if all goes normally, 19-January-2038 will suddenly become
13-December-1901 in every time_t across the globe, and every date
calculation based on this figure will go haywire. And it gets worse.

Most of the support functions that use the time_t data type cannot
handle negative time_t values at all. They simply fail and return an
error code.

Detail about the 2038 problem can be found at www.2038.org