Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
Speaker 1: I'm the tech editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Isn't that convenient? Sitting across from me as usual is
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland. There's a party going on right here,
Speaker 1: really a celebration. Yeah, you know that song came out
Speaker 1: in I know that, Okay, off the top of my head.
Speaker 1: That's a long time ago. Yeah, well, you know that
Speaker 1: was so twentieth century. We're talking. Yeah, we're talking about
Speaker 1: twenty first century. Here. We actually have a topic that
Speaker 1: is comes to us courtesy of a little listener mail.
Speaker 1: This listen mail comes from Todd, and Todd says, Hi, there,
Speaker 1: tech stuff. My name is Todd, and I live in Adelaide, Australia.
Speaker 1: At school we were talking about what would have happened
Speaker 1: if Y two K did go ahead. Here's a thing, Todd.
Speaker 1: Why two K did go ahead? Otherwise we wouldn't be
Speaker 1: in two thousand at nine. I think he's talking about
Speaker 1: the computer problem. My bad. Let me just finish the email.
Speaker 1: Then then one of my friends brought up something about
Speaker 1: the year thirty eight. It happens to thirty two bit systems.
Speaker 1: But that's as far as I know. Actually, Todd is
Speaker 1: going to happen to everybody, because this goes back to
Speaker 1: the similar problem before. He's talking about a computer. Oh right,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm being kind of picky. Uh so I
Speaker 1: would like more information or, if possible, a podcast. Thanks Todd, Todd,
Speaker 1: I'm really not making fun of you. I'm just being
Speaker 1: kind of a jerk face right now. That's me being
Speaker 1: a jerk face, not you. So, but yes, the problem,
Speaker 1: as it is known, is somewhat similar to the Y
Speaker 1: two K problem. So let's start by talking about the
Speaker 1: Y two KVE problem, because that's that's easy to grasp.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty easy, simple problem. Okay, So so here's
Speaker 1: here's what the deal was with the Y two k problem.
Speaker 1: The deal was that, in several lines of code for
Speaker 1: various applications, programmers got a little lazy when they were
Speaker 1: filling out the space for a year, and they only
Speaker 1: allowed two digits to express the year, thinking well, that's
Speaker 1: more than enough. Because by the time the year two
Speaker 1: thousand rolls around, which would be zero zero if you're
Speaker 1: if you're designating in two digits, by the time that
Speaker 1: rolls around, will be on totally different computer programs, totally
Speaker 1: different systems. Besides, this is just a line of code.
Speaker 1: I can change it later, nothing to worry about. Let's
Speaker 1: just PLoP it in there. It'll save me time. I
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about two extra digits. See. The
Speaker 1: thing is, if it had reached zero zero, it still
Speaker 1: would have assumed that the first two digits would be ninety,
Speaker 1: So instead of rolling over from, it would have rolled
Speaker 1: over from thus turning your computer or other device us
Speaker 1: into a time traveling machine. You know. And if you
Speaker 1: don't like it, you can get in your horse and
Speaker 1: buggy and you can see the construction of the railways
Speaker 1: from sea to shining Sea. Actually, that's not what would happen.
Speaker 1: It would here. Here's the thing is that the cause
Speaker 1: serious problems. Well, the media picked this up, and yeah,
Speaker 1: here's the real problem. The media picked this up and
Speaker 1: began to proclaim a an era of chaos would soon
Speaker 1: descend upon us, thrusting us back into the Stone Age.
Speaker 1: Satellites would fall from the sky planes would plummet to
Speaker 1: the ground, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria, housewives
Speaker 1: would be eaten bite toasters. It was just gonna be horrible,
Speaker 1: and most of us were wondering exactly how bad this
Speaker 1: was going to be. I mean, really, they were talking
Speaker 1: about this affecting microchips that were in everything from computers
Speaker 1: and supercomputers, which you would expect to seemingly innocent devices
Speaker 1: like smoke detectors, and you really I begin to begin
Speaker 1: to envision something like the realization of the movie Maximum Overdrive,
Speaker 1: which was based off Stephen Kings screenplay and is absolutely
Speaker 1: terrible don't watch it, but the machine live and attack people.
Speaker 1: So so, based upon the media's reports, it sounded like
Speaker 1: we were all going to be destined to a fiery,
Speaker 1: nasty death at the hands of our electronics. And the
Speaker 1: funny the thing that that kind of got me was
Speaker 1: when when it was all over with, you know, January
Speaker 1: second on two thousand, everybody was going, ah, see, I
Speaker 1: knew there was not going to be any big deal,
Speaker 1: But actually there would have been if people hadn't been
Speaker 1: working on fixing it over that you know, year to
Speaker 1: two years beforehand. There are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: had to be correct. There were a lot of people
Speaker 1: who went in and would change lines of code so
Speaker 1: that they so that the year would roll over properly,
Speaker 1: and that you know, we're talking about going through hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of thousands of lines of code for some
Speaker 1: of these applications. And I mean, I think it probably
Speaker 1: was overhyped by the media. Yes, and I'm sure, I'm
Speaker 1: sure there were several systems out there that were not
Speaker 1: fixed that did roll over to zero zero and nothing happened,
Speaker 1: because really, the only thing that would happen is if
Speaker 1: if the systems depended upon the date. Most systems don't
Speaker 1: depend upon the date. They depend upon just keeping time
Speaker 1: like they're they're they're counting time in a matter of
Speaker 1: clicks or seconds or whatever. Two o seven am. It's
Speaker 1: two oh seven am, no matter what the years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't. It's not dependent upon the date. Now, if
Speaker 1: you have a calendar software and you're dating system in
Speaker 1: the code was two digits long, yes, that's gonna be
Speaker 1: a problem because of anything that you would schedule for
Speaker 1: the the week following the last week of ninety nine
Speaker 1: would seem to appear in ninet and that that turns
Speaker 1: out to be an issue for most of us UM,
Speaker 1: but most pro problem programs that were running on some
Speaker 1: sort of date UM system. We're not reliant on a
Speaker 1: two day jet year designations. So it ended up being
Speaker 1: a big non story. Was one of those things where
Speaker 1: the media had really really drummed it up and it
Speaker 1: sounded like it was gonna be armageddon UM. I was
Speaker 1: actually more worried about the how people would react more
Speaker 1: than the machines. I was worried that people were going
Speaker 1: to be convinced that this was going to be the
Speaker 1: end of civilization and start, you know, like we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to create our own militia and we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to depend upon ourselves, and I mean there are stories
Speaker 1: of people stockpiling food and water and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. I was more worried about what those guys
Speaker 1: were gonna do rather than the machines. And of course
Speaker 1: it turned out to be pretty much a big story
Speaker 1: about nothing at all. So now that brings us to
Speaker 1: the problem. It is similar to the Y two K problem,
Speaker 1: and that again it has something to do with the
Speaker 1: date yes, and in this case it does have to
Speaker 1: do with UM thirty two bits, yes, and a very
Speaker 1: specific date. Seat. Now, according to Unix and see based
Speaker 1: programming languages, time began on January one, nineteen seventy midnight
Speaker 1: Cridage meantime. Yeah, that that that value is zero. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it starts at zero. That's when time began. Now well, actually,
Speaker 1: I guess technically you could argue that you could have
Speaker 1: a negative integer, in which case time did not begin.
Speaker 1: Then that's just the zero that would be as if
Speaker 1: we went from BC to a D. Actually we're getting
Speaker 1: ready to get into the negative integers. Yes, because see
Speaker 1: there is a limit to the amount of time as
Speaker 1: expressed in this form. Right that that that limit? Should
Speaker 1: I say with the limit, Well, before we can say
Speaker 1: what the specific limit is, we can say why there's
Speaker 1: a limit. It's because it's the standard four byte format. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: or four bytes which four times eight, because remember there's
Speaker 1: eight bits to a bite. That means so thirty two bits.
Speaker 1: One bit H represents the sign whether it's positive or negative.
Speaker 1: The other thirty one bits can represent the actual numbers.
Speaker 1: And with thirty one bits plus the positive minus that
Speaker 1: means that you have a mag s some mum number
Speaker 1: that you can reach. Do you have that number in
Speaker 1: front of you if you want to read it off. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's two billion, one million, free thousand, six hundred seven.
Speaker 1: So now, on Unix based systems they count time in seconds,
Speaker 1: so each of those integers represents one second, So one
Speaker 1: second after in January one, nineteen seventy uh zero o'clock,
Speaker 1: if you want to talk about military time, you know,
Speaker 1: one second after that would be the first on this journey. Well,
Speaker 1: that means that once you hit two billion, one seven million,
Speaker 1: four hundred eighty three thousand, six hundred forty seven seconds
Speaker 1: after zero o'clock, you've reached the maximum that that thirty
Speaker 1: two bit system can count up to. It cannot count
Speaker 1: higher than that. And what date does that translate to?
Speaker 1: That would be January. Yes, so on January eight, any
Speaker 1: system that is based on this thirty two bit architecture
Speaker 1: is going to hit its limit. And then one of
Speaker 1: two things really is probably gonna happen. Either it's gonna
Speaker 1: roll over to the negative number, which would be negative
Speaker 1: two seven thousand, seven million up exactly. And and some
Speaker 1: people say, well that would mean that it would start
Speaker 1: at December, like in December nineteen one or something like that.
Speaker 1: But um so it's either going to do that or
Speaker 1: it's going to just totally crash because it can't handle
Speaker 1: the fact that it's it's gone beyond the amount of
Speaker 1: time it can count up to. And this actually will happen.
Speaker 1: We'll be able to see some evidence of this before
Speaker 1: because any kind of software that projects into the future,
Speaker 1: like like calendar software, anything like that, where you're looking ahead,
Speaker 1: is going to encounter that problem once you start to
Speaker 1: try and look beyond January thirty eight. UM. So it
Speaker 1: is a real problem now. It's a real problem for
Speaker 1: thirty two bit based systems. If you are not using
Speaker 1: a thirty two bit based system, it is not a
Speaker 1: problem for you. And sixty four bit based systems are
Speaker 1: becoming more popular right And we should also point out
Speaker 1: that by the year eight, I don't think they're going
Speaker 1: to be that many thirty two bit based systems out
Speaker 1: there at all. There might be some legacy systems and
Speaker 1: some legacy software that was programmed using language that uses
Speaker 1: the same that follows the same format. That's gonna be
Speaker 1: a problem that's gonna need to be adjusted, and it's
Speaker 1: not easy to do. You can't just flip a switch
Speaker 1: and change it from thirty two bit to sixty four bit.
Speaker 1: It's actually really complex. Well, there is another way to
Speaker 1: deal with it, and that's to adjust the way it
Speaker 1: handles time. Yeah, you know, because it could be a
Speaker 1: switch to UH a new library system that uses you know,
Speaker 1: an eight byte value for you know, time storage format.
Speaker 1: Well there, yeah, that's one time by going to sixty
Speaker 1: four bit. But that's that's eight time date to sixty
Speaker 1: Well yes, um, but yes, you can do that. What
Speaker 1: I'm saying is that it's not the easiest thing in
Speaker 1: the world to do, especially if you're talking about software,
Speaker 1: because you're likely going to encounter multiple instances of that
Speaker 1: that thirty two bit based UH timekeeping system within a
Speaker 1: particular program and you have to change all of those.
Speaker 1: It's not like you can just you know, pour it
Speaker 1: over and is what I'm saying. No, that's true, and
Speaker 1: it would be easier with the way things are right now,
Speaker 1: to go ahead and you know, transfer over to a
Speaker 1: more sophisticated machine with a more sophisticated operating system. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if you did transfer over to a sixty four bit system,
Speaker 1: do you know how many seconds that can accommodate? No, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: how many seconds could that he was easy to get ready.
Speaker 1: He was practicing earlier. I heard him. This is how
Speaker 1: many seconds it can and again this is both positive
Speaker 1: and negative. So you can double this because it's actually
Speaker 1: twice as many seconds. Okay, so you're looking at positive
Speaker 1: negative nine quintillion, two hundred twenty three quadrillion, three hundred
Speaker 1: seventy two trillion, thirty six billion, eight hundred fifty four million,
Speaker 1: seven hundred seventy five thousand, eight hundred seven seconds. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing that the sun will go to red dwarf before you.
Speaker 1: It's not quite that bad, but it will be. It
Speaker 1: will be a long long time before you have to
Speaker 1: worry about it. I just wanted to say that because
Speaker 1: because you're tallis years, I'm I'm not facing the scientific
Speaker 1: factor around now with the the two billion, one hundred
Speaker 1: forty seven million, four hundred eighty three thousand, six seven
Speaker 1: forty seven seconds that we're talking about before, Yes, that
Speaker 1: translates to thirty five million, seven hundred thousand, three hundred
Speaker 1: ninety four minutes or five hundred nine six thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred twenty three hours or four thousand, eight hundred fifty
Speaker 1: five days or sixty eight years give or take you
Speaker 1: figure in leap years in there, so it kind of
Speaker 1: messes things up. Can I start calling you Sheldon? Now?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I'd prefer C three point Sheldon. I think
Speaker 1: I'm a little more socially adjusted than Sheldon is. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Is is C three po more well adjusted
Speaker 1: than than Sheldon Cooper? Yes, you make a point. Well,
Speaker 1: I'd also like to think that if you dismembered me,
Speaker 1: I'd still be talking C three po. You definitely can
Speaker 1: do that, Sheldon. I. I haven't seen that episode yet,
Speaker 1: so I don't know. But anyway, so obviously you switched
Speaker 1: to a sixty four bit system. That's a much greater
Speaker 1: capacity as far as counting up the year. Um, this,
Speaker 1: as we said, this is not you can't say that
Speaker 1: this is a non trivial problem because if you are
Speaker 1: running legacy machines or legacy software, you will have to
Speaker 1: address this issue in one way or another if it's
Speaker 1: something that you can't just you know, switch to the
Speaker 1: newest version. Because that's true. I mean, they're there are
Speaker 1: businesses out there that refer on you know, they rely
Speaker 1: on old programs, and their whole system is built around
Speaker 1: an old program and they can't just port to something new, right,
Speaker 1: So in that case, you have to fix the old
Speaker 1: one rather than you know, just say let's switch to
Speaker 1: a different system. Right. And I apologize for speaking out
Speaker 1: of turn um, but I don't But I don't think
Speaker 1: that that you're going to see the hype in twenty
Speaker 1: six and seven that you saw about the problem, because
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be for the most part,
Speaker 1: a moot point. Yeah, most people will be on newer systems.
Speaker 1: You might hear some reports about how old systems may
Speaker 1: not work properly. Uh, you know, you want to keep
Speaker 1: an eye on things like bank accounts and stuff like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you know, Yeah, here's the things that some of
Speaker 1: the older systems also happened to be with some of
Speaker 1: the more important ones. I mean, like because they are
Speaker 1: hard to change over the electric grid, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean that means that we have to make sure the
Speaker 1: electric grid is running on the A sixty four bit
Speaker 1: or better system. Again, if you went to eight bit system,
Speaker 1: I don't even have the breakdown of how many how
Speaker 1: many seconds that would be It would be huge lots.
Speaker 1: Let's use the technical term of lots. We do have
Speaker 1: twenty eight years or so to yeah, well twenty yeah, sure, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course, by then, as I was pointing out
Speaker 1: to Tyler earlier, will be in the Singularity for three years,
Speaker 1: So why would we worry. We're gonna be evolving so
Speaker 1: quickly that problem. We're gonna have so many different kinds
Speaker 1: of problems by then, Like how do we stop the
Speaker 1: terminators from ruining our gardenias? I mean, they just they
Speaker 1: have no sense of propriety, those those jerks. Okay, wow,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what I got, Chris, but he's
Speaker 1: like giving me a look right now? Is it because
Speaker 1: I brought in the terminator? Can talk about I can
Speaker 1: talk about Johnny five? Right, I mean, we can talk
Speaker 1: about nice robots if you like. Asimo Asthma's very nice guy.
Speaker 1: I met him once. Actually I shouldn't say him, I
Speaker 1: met it once. It actually had the voice of a
Speaker 1: little girl, which was very disturbing. You know what what
Speaker 1: ASIMO's spouse said when it came home. What's that? Hi, Honda,
Speaker 1: I'm home? Oh my dear. Okay, we're just uh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take a moment here. Um. So anyway, I hope
Speaker 1: that answers your question. Todd. Uh, Yeah, and we should
Speaker 1: also point out that the Unix space systems are not
Speaker 1: the only ones to have this kind of an issue. Um,
Speaker 1: there are other systems. There was an IBM PC hardware
Speaker 1: that could suffer from a problem similar problem where uh,
Speaker 1: it'll start counting over once we hit the year sixteen.
Speaker 1: I don't think of us are gonna have to worry
Speaker 1: about that. Um No, I don't know. Wait, the Singularity,
Speaker 1: maybe we will if we're all PC based robots. You know,
Speaker 1: that's gonna really be weird because when the singularity hits,
Speaker 1: all the PC based robots will be like really utilitarian,
Speaker 1: and all the Mac based robots will be like kind
Speaker 1: of like the sexy celebrities. Yeah, and all the Linux
Speaker 1: based robots will be the ones at home playing D
Speaker 1: n D on the tabletop. Yeah, please don't write me right. So,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, you know, if we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: worry too much about it, because I just think that
Speaker 1: most of the problems now are very selective, and they're
Speaker 1: they're they're specific to a subset of computing at this
Speaker 1: point and not as widespread as the Y two K problems. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think in general now, especially because of
Speaker 1: the uh, the dramatic amount of hype that went around
Speaker 1: with the Y two K situation that it uh. I
Speaker 1: think people are sort of attuned to what may be
Speaker 1: coming up more so than they would have been before that,
Speaker 1: or at least they don't care as much. And then
Speaker 1: there's that. Well, let's finish this off with a little
Speaker 1: extra listener mail. Okay. This listener mail comes from Matthew
Speaker 1: and he says, Hey, Crispy, Hey Jonathan. First, I wanted
Speaker 1: to say you guys are awesome. I love to listen
Speaker 1: to you guys, and I love your puns. Now to business.
Speaker 1: In your Tech Conspiracies podcast, you said that the Mr
Speaker 1: Fusion power generator on the Dolorean powered the car. As
Speaker 1: a big fan of Back to the Future, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to let you know that Mr Fusion did no
Speaker 1: such thing. He only powered the time traveling circuit, hence
Speaker 1: the absence of the need for plutonium or lightning. In fact,
Speaker 1: this crucial detail is the entire basis for the story
Speaker 1: in part three, when Marty can't get back home because
Speaker 1: the DeLorean is out of gas and there is none available.
Speaker 1: In just thought you guys would like to know your
Speaker 1: faithful listener Matthew Seattle, Washington, ps. Part three is superior
Speaker 1: to Part two simply because the fact that it is
Speaker 1: a Western, which was the same point I made, Thank you, Matthew.
Speaker 1: When you remove the Western aspect of it, then you
Speaker 1: don't have a movie. You have the end of Part two,
Speaker 1: which we already established was the worst of the three films.
Speaker 1: Ding alright at any rate, Yes, you are correct. The
Speaker 1: mr fusion did only power the flex capacitor as opposed
Speaker 1: to the entire car. So what powered the car when
Speaker 1: it was flying around at the end of it was
Speaker 1: gasoline and it was a Delorian. They got horrible, horrible
Speaker 1: miles pro gallen when it was flying. You know where
Speaker 1: we're going. We don't need roads. Yes, gasolene powered the
Speaker 1: engine that allowed it to create whatever anti gravity field
Speaker 1: it used to fly. Okay, maybe it was the battery too.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was the battery too, because you look what
Speaker 1: powered the hoverboard, Mattel product placement. Delorian was powered by Mattel.
Speaker 1: It all falls into place. Thank you, Matthew for sending
Speaker 1: us off on a bizarre tangent. If any of you
Speaker 1: have any of your favorite movies that you want us
Speaker 1: to talk about on tech stuff instead of actual technology.
Speaker 1: Please let us know because we love to do that.
Speaker 1: Apparently you can write us. Our email address is tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com. Remember we've got
Speaker 1: tech stuff live every Tuesday one pm Eastern. You want
Speaker 1: to check that out, go to the blogs now stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And um, did you do you have
Speaker 1: something else you wanted to say? Chris? Yeah? I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you what you might be doing. I don't
Speaker 1: know on November Chris, are you asking me out on
Speaker 1: a date? No? Damn, I would have to wait another
Speaker 1: day for that one. Now, I was going to ask
Speaker 1: you if if you were going to be tuned into
Speaker 1: the Science Channel at eight o'clock. Yeah, actually I am,
Speaker 1: because you know what's coming at eight o'clock on the
Speaker 1: Silence Channel. I do. Indeed, that's the road to Punkin Chunkin. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know what follows that up, Pumpkin Chunkin at
Speaker 1: nine o'clock. Yes. So if you want to watch people
Speaker 1: throw pumpkins are really far away using advanced technology, then
Speaker 1: you're listening to the right podcast. Gosh darn it, because yes,
Speaker 1: tune in eight o'clock and nine o'clock on the Science
Speaker 1: Channel on Thanksgiving night. Yeah. All right. Well, now that
Speaker 1: we've wrapped all that up, I guess it's time for
Speaker 1: us to sign off. Remember, write us, let us know
Speaker 1: what you think. We welcome listener feedback and we will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff works
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