From: Stuart Remphrey <stu@remphrey.net>
To: Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org>
Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] The 2038 bug...
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2021 06:56:15 +0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAD0_1cmaGq6UFuFrufd06pKrcxho7WtbdSb5vahuX8a3Ssxt3w@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2101050822330.26789@aneurin.horsfall.org>
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> Dave, who's kept his COBOL knowledge a secret in every job
Indeed! Also FORTRAN/RATFOR and BASIC, in my case; but especially COBOL:
apart from everything else, too much like writing a novel to get anything
done.
On Tue, 5 Jan 2021, 05:50 Dave Horsfall, <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Jan 2021, Peter Jeremy wrote:
>
> > Alternatively, my understanding is that the Unix epoch changed on
> > several occasions in the early days. Presumably the knowledge of how to
> > achieve this hasn't been lost. (Though actually performing an epoch
> > rollover may be more difficult today).
>
> My understanding is that it's been 1st Jan 1970 since at least Ed5, if not
> Ed6.
>
> > I suspect that 2038 may actually wind up being more serious than Y2K
> > because there are now far more embedded systems than there were then but
> > it's not clear that the designers of those systems learnt the lesson
> > from Y2K. A few weeks ago I tried to count the number of CPUs in my
> > bedroom, bathroom and study - my best guess is around 2 dozen.
> > Admittedly, I think relatively few of those will be concerned about
> > epoch rollover.
>
> The only systems I have that would care would be the various computers,
> and they are all NTP-synced (except the NBN modem/router takes its time
> from T$).
>
> > Plus 2038 is merely one epoch. Someone mentioned the Microsoft epoch
> > rolling over in 2048. Between those two, the IBM S/360 epoch rolls over
> > in 2042 - the Z-series appears to have glued another 8 bits onto the MSB
> > end of the TOD clock but that won't help all those S/360 and S/370
> > binaries that are still being run. And they are just the well- known
> > ones. I expect that there are lots of embedded systems running custom
> > epochs with weird rollover dates.
>
> Well, I don't care about the M$ epoch, and at 86 I might even get to see
> the world come to a grinding halt :-) Of course, I may be reliant upon M$
> systems in hospitals etc...
>
> Interesting story about the S/360 though. As a side-issue I wonder how
> many COBOL programmers will still be around to maintain all that payroll
> software etc?
>
> -- Dave, who's kept his COBOL knowledge a secret in every job
>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-01-07 22:56 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 34+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-12-31 7:19 Dave Horsfall
2020-12-31 7:24 ` Niklas Karlsson
2020-12-31 8:10 ` arnold
2020-12-31 15:30 ` Warner Losh
2020-12-31 16:09 ` Adam Thornton
2020-12-31 16:12 ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-11 7:18 ` alan
2021-01-11 14:01 ` Stuart Remphrey
2020-12-31 18:36 ` Theodore Ts'o
2020-12-31 21:34 ` Warner Losh
2021-01-06 16:32 ` Dario Niedermann
2021-01-06 17:08 ` Henry Bent
2021-01-06 18:05 ` Dario Niedermann
2021-01-06 18:20 ` Michael Kjörling
2021-01-06 21:09 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-12-31 19:18 ` Bakul Shah
2021-01-04 8:22 ` Peter Jeremy via TUHS
2021-01-04 9:13 ` Angus Robinson
2021-01-04 21:49 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-04 21:56 ` Warner Losh
2021-01-05 18:05 ` Dan Cross
2021-01-06 7:21 ` Warner Losh
2021-01-07 22:56 ` Stuart Remphrey [this message]
2021-01-08 1:25 ` Nemo Nusquam
2021-01-10 6:56 ` Stuart Remphrey
2021-01-04 8:59 ` Sergio Pedraja
2021-01-07 22:50 ` Stuart Remphrey
2021-01-10 7:16 ` Valdimar Sigurdsson
2021-01-10 7:24 ` Niklas Karlsson
2021-01-10 10:15 ` Stuart Remphrey
2020-12-31 15:05 M Douglas McIlroy
2020-12-31 16:51 ` arnold
2020-12-31 23:31 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-01-09 8:44 Norman Wilson
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