The internet is full

Eh?

A friend told me last night that pretty soon the internet will run out of memory and blow up. I thought you geeks might be able to explain wtf he was going on about, because it's been keeping me awake with worry :cry:.
 
Squeamous said:
That'll be the rheumatism Biggy-wiggy. I'll let you know when it's coming so you can stock up on anti-inflammatories :yup:.
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It is Nivea cold cream you will be needing

smackbum.gif
 
In 2038, exactly 30 years from now, a bug in Unix will cause all computers running a Unix-based OS to crash. The biggest problem is that most internet servers run Unix, so a majority of websites will be down. "The 2038 bug", as it is called, is a problem with how the system processes time, similar to the y2k bug. Unix systems will show the time as a negative number because they encode the time in a 32-bit format, counting seconds form midnight on January 1, 1970. That last number that will work in that format will be the time at 3:14 A.M. on January 19, 2038.

There has already been a big crash because of the bug: in May 2006, AOLServer web server software crashed. The problem came about because it was programmed so that database requests would not time out. However, instead of just setting timeout to 0, it set the timeout to 1 billion seconds in the future. One billion seconds (just over 31 years 251 days and 12 hours) after 21:27:28 on 12 May 2006 is after 2038, the system calculated the timeout date to be in the past, and crashed.

Before you panic, just remember that 2038 is 30 years in the future. A fix might come our way by then.
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:view: The Internet Will Die In 30 Years
Funny comment from Tiago Luz: "the world will end in 2012, so no problems for us, but SkyNet will be in trouble." :lol:
 
Hairbautt said:
:view: The Internet Will Die In 30 Years
Funny comment from Tiago Luz: "the world will end in 2012, so no problems for us, but SkyNet will be in trouble." :lol:
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Ah! No I don't think so somehow... all real *IX boxes sold today are running 64 bit processors, (even Intel boxes are now moving to 64 bits) as a consequence the word length has changed to 64 bits, so another 32 bits have been added to the 32 bits that are used to encode the clock ticks since 1970... and if you're dealing with someone who is still using 32 bit processors in 2038, who isn't a museum, then you'll deserve to lose your data :lol:


Fixed.
 
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