: The thing is that time_t is much more of an "internal" format than
:: the two digit "year" that led to the Y2K "problems."  The number of
:: programs that store binary time_t in a database is vanishingly
:: small
:: compared to the number of programs that stored "YY", and you could
:: probably change the base year, or the increment, and 80% of
:: programs
:: wouldn't even notice...

I'm not so sure, I was in a university research lab today, and there 
battered in a corner was a computer from circa mid nineties, still 
requires a 5.25" floppy to crank it up, uses DOS and is still used, as 
it still performs the measurements required by their fluoroscopic 
microscopy. I have seen lab equipment made by a well known Austrian 
lab equipment  company that still uses DOS based firmware to run their 
systems. Apart from providing the experiment date, not too much else 
is date based - but the point is, if high tech facilities are using 
what many or most would consider outdated technology, it isn't beyond 
the realms of possibility that in 2038 computers or equipment made in 
2000 would still be in use.

Colin
--
cdb, colin@btech-online.co.uk on 24/04/2008

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