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[Starver]

I think we'll all be using 64-bit operating systems by then, so I think everything should be fine or at least the damage will be greatly reduced.

Strange you should say that.  I started adding one extra bit to all my code since the middle of last decade, so as to phase my code into full 64 bits before the deadline.

Ok, for some reason, the programs don't run properly, but I'm sure that's just a minor problemthat I'll sort that out at some point!

[G-Flex]

I'm more worried about the 2038 bug which doesn't have such an obvious solution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

I think we'll all be using 64-bit operating systems by then, so I think everything should be fine or at least the damage will be greatly reduced.

It doesn't matter if you're using a 64-bit OS. What matters is that the programs themselves use 64-bit (or otherwise expanded) time representation. It's not as if having a 64-bit OS makes that happen; in fact, a 64-bit OS these days would likely still use old-style time representation, to be compatible with all the other software out there.

[Muz]

64-bit OS? Pfft, that's two decades from now! We'd have like a 1024-bit time representation. We'll overkill the solution, like we're doing with the IPv6 addresses.

[MrWiggles]

64-bit OS? Pfft, that's two decades from now! We'd have like a 1024-bit time representation. We'll overkill the solution, like we're doing with the IPv6 addresses.

That mentality lend to the y2k issue. 'We honestly didn't think you'll be using our punch card date notation system forty years after it was made. ... Lazy fucks."

[Starver]

For a long time now (since before Y2K) if I've been using YYYYMMDD (zero-padded) as an internal text format for dates (in places where it's more important, for example, to relate to human-readable file formats than to be efficient with the data storage aspects.

Has an advantage that it can be text-sorted, by a many of the simpler tools I might have to use externally, and I can do things like put DD="00" for "start of month" and DD>"31" for the end, and similar with months, where certain information is indefinite.

Of course, I always need to convert to/from the current system/programming language's implementation of dates, and be aware of the era-start (e.g. 1900), and magnitude (1 unit is a day, or a second?) of the system/language supplied data, etc, but apart from being a bit blind to BC dates and having a Y10K problem I think it works nicely.  And can be appended with "-hhmm[ss[decimals]]" for a full date-time of the appropriate resolution (still sortable).
Again, not data-efficient, but but can be squashed into optimally utilised bits a number of different ways, while still retaining the precision and range.

(If there's an extensive list, I tend to go for stating a baseline value, in full-precision, at the beginning of such a list and then reducing the rest to offsets in a suitable variable bit-length form biased towards efficiency for small differences.)

Not that any of this helps if I don't document the format for future users (or myself), of course.  Which is something that was the problem with most of the Y2K coding dilemmas (the ones trying to check/update the code virtually having to rewrite it all because it was too obscure to certify or amend).  Well, from my perspective, it was.

[alway]

Haha, your code will esplode on Jan 1, 10000!

[Starver]

Haha, your code will esplode on Jan 1, 10000!

but apart from being a bit blind to BC dates and having a Y10K problem

(Although the reading usually can handle ...YYYYYs, unless I've implemented particularly strict sanity checks, and the writing code is easily extensible.  So when I'm sitting in my eBathchair in my dotage and considering how it's only a century or two until my code needs to be concerned about it all, I know I can rewrite it to be more forward-looking and remain backwardly compatible.  After all, I want to leave something for me (or my mental download counterparts of the era) to do, or I might get bored.

[Outcast Orange]

Well, that makes one thing certain.

We will need to make our robot servants aware of the clock run-out problem,
 before we can go into permanent creature comfort mode,
 where none of us even know what learning is, but rather enjoy ourselves to bored death.

[Starver]

Well, that makes one thing certain.

We will need to make our robot servants aware of the clock run-out problem,
 before we can go into permanent creature comfort mode,
 where none of us even know what learning is, but rather enjoy ourselves to bored death.

Don't let the robotsknow!  It's our only leverage against being archived away and forgotten about...

Maybe we need to set up an auto-restore job, before we wander off into whatever Digital Domain we willingly wander.

[HideousBeing]

Well, that makes one thing certain.

We will need to make our robot servants aware of the clock run-out problem,
 before we can go into permanent creature comfort mode,
 where none of us even know what learning is, but rather enjoy ourselves to bored death.

Don't let the robotsknow!  It's our only leverage against being archived away and forgotten about...

Maybe we need to set up an auto-restore job, before we wander off into whatever Digital Domain we willingly wander.

If the robots don't know, how can we use it as leverage? Better also tell them that they all have bombs implanted in them and will die immediately if they so much as lift a finger against us.

[Kagus]

Well, with any luck, we'll have resurrected Isaac Asimov by then.  Just stick him on as a consultant to the programming team.

[Outcast Orange]

I prefer Nikola.

He could use his devils magic to fix the world.

[Sensei]

I'm sure something hardcoded could easily fix it. Like changing the starting measure time.

Anyway, I don't think nukes will suddenly start firing because it's 1901. At most, we'd have trouble firing them accurately if we wanted to.

[MrWiggles]

I'm sure something hardcoded could easily fix it. Like changing the starting measure time.

Anyway, I don't think nukes will suddenly start firing because it's 1901. At most, we'd have trouble firing them accurately if we wanted to.

Yea, but nukes are like horseshoes and hand grenades. Close counts.

[G-Flex]

I'm sure something hardcoded could easily fix it. Like changing the starting measure time.

Only if you want to accomplish three things:

• Invalidating dates before some unreasonable minimum, possibly worse than what's done now ("Hey cool, we can store dates up to the year 3000 now, just nothing from before 2015")
• Causing dates from any old software or data to be read very, very incorrectly
• Not actually fixing the problem, leaving it to people in the future to solve... again

We just need to switch to a 64-bit time standard of some sort. It'll give us all the time we'd ever need, really. I hope.