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The 2038 Problem and the Office of the Future on TechStuff
by Jonathan Strickland | November 25, 2009
Greetings from the World of Tomorrow TechStuff! This week, Chris and I fired up the DeLorean, set the time circuits to The Future and blasted off for another pair of exciting podcasts. We have to take a moment to thank Liz, our amazing editor. It’s Liz who adds in all the special sound effects that make our shows even better (in this host’s humble opinion, at any rate). She’s also the person responsible for trimming out mistakes. Not that we make mistakes often. Ahem.
On Monday, we answered a listener request to explain the 2038 problem. Do you remember the hysteria surrounding 2000 and the dreaded Y2K problem? The 2038 problem is similar to that. It all hinges on the way Unix-based systems keep time. The whole story is both bizarre and interesting. For example, did you know that according to Unix, time began on Jan. 1, 1970?
Then on Wednesday, we take all our listeners on a field trip to the future to see how offices will take advantage of emerging technologies. We also learn that the TechStuff Time Machine can get mighty stuffy.
To all our listeners who continue to send us suggestions, feedback and reviews, we give our thanks. We’re receiving more mail now than ever before. Your input is what continues to cause our show to evolve over time. Keep it up!
And if you’d like to learn more about the 2038 problem and office technologies, pop on over to HowStuffWorks.com:
What is the 2038 problem?
How Server Virtualization Works
How Time Travel Will Work
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Wow, Deja Vu all over again to quote Berra. What you spent a lot of time talking about we were doing in the 80’s as time share machines. I was a programmer and project manager for DEC Vax’s at the time and we were doing just what you were describing using basically dumb terminals as what you would call now ‘virtual machines’. We did WAN and LAN networks for offices in what was called and the time as ‘real time’ applications as opposed to the office of the day with IBM type batch processing. For example we did a real time online network for Kaman which was then doing mostly military heliocoptors work. We connected 250 offices to their central VAX system and they did real time online inventory and distribution order entry and processing. A central database etc. The only difference I see now is the thin client that helps with local UI processing. Otherwise it works basically the same way. We were handling the UI then online over the network packets. Our big issues then were packet window turns and central database record locking for multiple users. Still about the same issues today. What we were lusting for then that is available now is the local UI processing of Windows. The central database processing has not changed much.
The cloud is time share operations like we did then with outsourcing the central data systems which was what the time share systems were then. The more things change the more they remain the same.
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Kristian Trenskow says:
Hey Techstuff Podcast
I am an eager listener to your podcast, and I think your doing a great job. Although, being a C-programmer, I just wanted to point out some issues on your Y2038 episode.
The fact that people are running 64-bit system does NOT fix the problem. The only thing 64-bit system addresses, is the possibility to have bigger pointers, which again allows you to address more memory. The current 32-bit pointer-size in 32-bit systems, only allow for 4 gigabytes of memory to be addressed.
In C and UNIX, the time_t type is what defines time. As mentioned in your podcast, it is used for expressing time as an integer value of seconds since January 1. 1970 at midnight. The fact that we are moving towards 64-bit processors, do NOT change that. The time_t type is still 32-bit wide. The reason why 64-bit systems fixes the issue, is because their C-library has been upgraded to support the new pointer width, and while we were already fiddling with the internals of the library, we could easily address the 2038-problem at the same time.
So it is not because of 64-bit systems, that the problem is fixed. It is because we’re changing the C-library as a result of the need to implement wider pointers in order for it to support 64-bit architectures.
BUT, that do NOT fix existing 32-bit applications. Applications compiled for 32-bit processors, still runs in 32-bit mode, which means that it still isn’t able to address memory beyond 4 gigabytes, and it WON’T get the benefit of the newly widened time_t type as it is compiled against the old 32-bit C-library. In order for applications to get those benefits, they have to be recompiled for the 64-bit architecture.
That means, that 32-bit software, that for some reason or the other cannot get recompiled (ex. the source code is no longer available), will continue to have the 2038 problem.
Hope you get it. It’s kind of technical, and I’m not that good of making people understand. Just trust me. It’s not as simple as just installing a 64-bit processor in your system.
Thanks for a great podcast, anyway. Keep up the good work!
And BTW… Mr. Fusion only powered the Flux-Capacitor!
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