2038

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The problem is now, not in 2038. Nobody is concerned about those days. Just the effect on projected information, such as insurance and loan calculations.

Tell that to large government agencies. They are running these old hardware/software setup because of some of these reasons:

1) They do not know how to port the application to a newer system - or have custom (read expensive) hardware that need to go with it.

2) The code is undocumented and noone know the programming language anymore.

3) The programmer in question have died or manuals have been lost.

4) They have no money for it or they consider the system non important and will keep running it untill it explodes.

5) A critical manufactorer have gone into bankrupcy and have been eliminated.

6) They just need that backwards compatibility.


Again, it is not just the case of "just installing 64 bit Linux", there are many different reasons why the world looks like it does.

Yeah, I was actually kind of disappointed when I woke up on New Years and the world hadn't descended into chaos...kind of anti climactic.

You wanted something to happen?

I was being sarcastic

In what, calculators?


32-bit processors are already pretty much obsolete, aside from cheap netbooks. 64-bit processors are the norm nowadays, and people need to move to software that actually supports their hardware.


Compatibility layers? I can run 32-bit software just fine on either of my 64-bit UNIX-derived operating systems.


Not a problem if they used open source.


See above.


When dealing with computers, upgrading every decade or so is extremely conservative, and would still suffice to solve this particular problem. Technology moves fast, you can't expect your old 1970s-era mainframe to still suffice for 21st-century needs.


Open source.


You can't hang on to the past indefinitely, especially not in the realm of technology. Stuff changes, you have to deal with it. Memory needs will exceed 3GB very soon, and then 32-bit will be worthless.


There are plenty of other 64-bit systems aside from Linux. Apple, Microsoft, and Sun all produce 64-bit operating systems, and BSD also comes in 64-bit flavors. The point is that in any respectable computer on the market today (aside from cheap netbooks) there is a 64-bit processor, and continuing to use 32-bit operating systems to run that hardware completely negates the benefits of using a more advanced architecture.

Orwell, you are being a little simplistic here.

A lot of the systems in question are technically open source, pre-dating the 80s it was more common to not hoard private code.

Part of the problem is, as said, missing manuals. They simply could not always store uncompiled versions for people to learn from. Its entirely possible that only one copy was every made, printed, discarded and lost. The users would modify things over the years, causing things to vary greatly to mildly from the manuals.

Open source is moot if there are no extant, useful copies. Floods, fires, earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes.

Secondly, there is a paucity of programmers that can digest that code. Who other than old men and ultra geeks use Forth and Fortran any more? Its hard enough to find someone that knows or remembers what they know of Assembler, and that is not so far back. 20 years of non use of a skill makes anyone rusty. Programmers often have a hard time reading their own code after a year. Commented code is often terse and cryptic.

And frankly, even with uncompiled Assembler code its pretty hard to tell what it does. Assembler on one machine is different in critical ways compared to a different architecture. It interfaces with the micro code on the chip, and that is a trade secret and its pretty darn obscure to boot.

Some of the systems are deeply embedded in critical spots. You cannot just shut it all down. Controllers in nuclear reactors, city traffic lights, flood gates and sewage pumps, satellites, busy radar towers and ventilation controllers in bio-hazard rooms. New York has to pump its sewage away. Chicago O'Hare cannot shut down for a day.

You would think that most of these would be fixed because of Y2k, but a lot of systems were left in place, fingers were crossed, and when Y2k passed calmly, they just left them there running. Civil engineers are loathe to spend money on preventive measures.

There can be a problem with legacy code. In the most programs time_t (the UNIX/Linux-Time format) is properly used and recompiling from a 32 to a 64-bit system shall adjust the right format. I know of software in which this time-format is used in source code as an explicit unsigned 32-bit integer. Recompiling on a 64-bit system may raise a warning, may not and this warning may seen and recognized (or not).

It does not solve the problem, you have to port them to the new environment in order to keep them running, all signed 32 bit values must be changed to 64 bit values and all applications that adress the same timevalue must also change, as well as all databases and other data storage units.



Not a problem if timemachines existed.



See above.



I do not expect anything, but there are still mainframes running old stuff like CICS and similar applications.



No timemachines.



Again, i do not. Some people do not care for new stuff. They just want their old crap running, regardless on how much we like new stuff, they are purely intrested in the business effect that it gives and does not care if the software runs on Linux, Windows or Commodore 64 - if it just do the job.



Apparently you totally missed the point of my post. There is are other things that matter more than what flavour of operating system you run, like that business aspect i mentioned earlier.