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The year 2000 went by without any problems but other year problems are threatening the computers again.
One problem is the Year 2038 Problem. It involves a programming language called C. The C programming language uses a different date format. Instead of using dd/mm/yy format, the date is expressed in a number which is how many seconds it is after 12 am on January 1, 1970, the beginning of time in the standard 4-byte format. So the value 919642718 is 919,642,718 seconds past 12 am on 1-1-1970, which is Sunday Feb 21,
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1999 at 16:18:38 pacific time.
The C Language uses this format because it is very easy to calculate the amount of time between any two times (by subtraction).
Here is where the Year 2038 Problems comes in. A 4-byte integer has a maximum value of 2,147,483,648 which translates to January 19, 2038. On this day, any programs written in C will start to have problems with date calculations. Many programs are written in C because C was a very popular programming language before C++ came along with all the new objected-oriented-programming languages.
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The Year 2038 problem will be a lot easier to fix than Y2K because a program written in 4-byte C can be easily recompiled using a compiler with 8-byte values. The date calculations is within a library so recompiling will be able to fix the problem.
Another year problem that IBM PC hardware may suffer from is the Year 2116 Problem. The starting date for a IBM PC is January 1, 1980. The date is written and read in increments by seconds in an unsigned 32-bit integer similar to UNIX time. The integer will overflow by 2116.
Windows NT uses 100 nanosec
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onds as its increments with a 64-bit integer beginning on Jan 1, 1601. It will overflow in 2184.
Apple says on its website (www.apple.com/about/year2000/) that Mac is alright until the year 29,940.
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The United States Supreme Court opened its website (www.supremecourtus.gov) on April 17 of this year. The site is dedicated to making information available to the public, lawyers,
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and the media through the internet so that everyone is able to get these information. Some of the information on the site are general information, news releases, rules, court's opinions
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and orders, calendar and schedules, and decisions which will be posted on the day of the release.
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