From owner-freebsd-hackers  Mon Jan  6 14:57:20 1997
Return-Path: <owner-hackers>
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id OAA07584
          for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 6 Jan 1997 14:57:20 -0800 (PST)
Received: from offensive.communica.com.au (offensive-eth1.adl.communica.com.au [192.82.222.18])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id OAA07575
          for <hackers@freebsd.org>; Mon, 6 Jan 1997 14:57:14 -0800 (PST)
Received: from communica.com.au (frenzy.communica.com.au [192.82.222.65]) by offensive.communica.com.au (8.7.6/8.7.3) with SMTP id JAA12041; Tue, 7 Jan 1997 09:27:13 +1030 (CST)
Received: by communica.com.au (4.1/SMI-4.1)
	id AA28821; Tue, 7 Jan 97 09:24:04 CDT
From: brawley@communica.com.au (Ivan Brawley)
Message-Id: <9701062254.AA28821@communica.com.au>
Subject: Re: Year 2000 time change(Format support)
To: imp@village.org (Warner Losh)
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 09:24:04 +1030 (CST)
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <E0vh9KL-0004U0-00@rover.village.org> from "Warner Losh" at Jan 6, 97 00:18:33 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21]
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> : How about the year 2038 problem, then ? =-) I believe time_t
> : overflows then.
> Only if we're all still running 32 bit hardware, or with a 32 bit
> time_t :-)

Its solely if we are using a 31bit time_t. (its a signed long). Make it an
unsigned long and we get another 68 (or there abouts) years. Make it a 64bit
number (yeah, will need to add extra code to handle the maths) and be
set for quite a while...

But then again, why use 00:00:00 1-Jan-1970 as the epoch. Its only used for
hysterical (historical, these words are usually inter-changeable :-) reasons.

ivan.