In German

Verspäteter Millenium-Bug

Babelfish translation

Late Millenium bug

The " birthday " of the operating system Unix on 9 September could become the Stolperstein for many users. After the Jahr-2000-Problem threaten both Unix and Linux users the a billion-second problem. Both systems become on 9 September a billion seconds old. With many users it could come on this day to similar problems as with the transition into the year 2000.

Even if the a billion-problem does not have by far the dimension of the Jahr-2000-Problems, programmers and administrators should examine as soon as possible whether their uses of it could be concerned. Finally by good preparation the transition was outstanding mastered into the year 2000. Who will already want itself to disgrace because of the second overflow?

For Unix and Linux systems the time calculation begins 1 January 1970 at 0.00 o'clock exceeds the second counter on 9 September around 3:46:40 MEZ the billion-boundary, has that first no direct consequences.

Many users used however instead of binary number sequences a character string for the representation of the time with message lines or data base entries. Thus it can come to similar difficulties, as it involved the year 2000: Field lengths are exceeded and sort algorithms tuned no more.

PC Welt

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), March 18, 2001

Answers

Response to The Billion Second Bug § 2001-09-09

Hence: tonight I'm gonna party like it's (time_t) 1E9.

-- (funny@joke.com), March 18, 2001.