> : 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 what many or most would consider outdated technology, it isn't beyond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
> --


I think the software will live longer than the hardware. The Y2K issues, I
believe, were due to code written in the 1960s and 1970s in COBOL still
running fine on relatively recent hardware. We may find some of our code,
especially if it gets stuck in a library somewhere so no one ever looks at
the source, still running in 30 years.

Harold


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