Talk:Year 10,000 problem/Archive 1

Too Speculative

It is extremely unlikely that the year 10,000 will ever pose a problem. I mean, will we even be using computers then? Calendars? Think about how different the world was 8,000 years ago (if we can even imagine), and realize that the rate of change is accelerating. It's fine to have an article about the joke itself (there are many google hits for Y10k bug), but putting this forth as a factual "problem" is ridiculously speculative. (See WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, of course.) Brighterorange 00:47, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree. This article is essentially a joke, as by the year 10000 computers will almost certainly be using an entirely different system of storing dates, and at present there is no need for general-purpose applications to store dates beyond Y10K. Jibjibjib 23:43, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Also, why should we even start caring now???? It's not going to happen (if it even does happen) for another 7,994 years! Anyone reading this right now won't even be alive to see if it even happens.--24.3.158.176 05:31, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Some of us might still be alive when Y10K happens. Medical technology will advance greatly in the next century, and probably in a few hundred years we'll all download our brains into computers and be immortal. But this is also very speculative. Maybe tomorrow a meteor will wipe out human civilisation or something. But who cares anyway? Jibjibjib 03:11, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm not sure what is more urgent: this or an alien attack. We should make this page forward directly to global warming, water pollution or deforestation... just so that worrywarts can worry about something more useful. 165.123.140.215 03:24, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, if we did that, there would be no use for this page. Although this page isn't really that useful... Maybe in 9,900 Scepia 19:48, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

The biggest mistake that a scientist can make is extrapolation. With all of this data, we are all taking into account the assumption that technology will stand still for 8,000 years. During this time WikiPedia may not even exist. Why is this thread here and not on somewhere like Exit Mundi? I'm going to tag this article for speedy deletion some time in the near future, per WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a crystal ball and the fact that this info is nonsensical.--WaltCip 13:31, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, as said by others. It is possible that this will never happen, hey, we might not even be living then. It is way too speculative. It has not been written in a formal tone. I will nominate this for deletion when I have a bit more time.

Jtmb02 17:02, 13 February 2007 (UTC)jtmb02

You guys must have missed the part where it mentioned that some programs, such as software that examines proposals for the long term handling of nuclear waste, have already had problems with the year 10000? 142.59.172.187 11:10, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

The Jewish religious calendar is already more than halfway to Y10K. I'd say that's evidence enough that this is a real issue. RossPatterson (talk) 16:20, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

>>>Guys. Do you get the feeling that something has just gone WAAAAY OVER YOUR HEAD? That perhaps you've 'missed the joke'?

Long Now Foundation

Those suckers at the Long Now Foundation are just setting themselves up for disaster come 100,000 CE. Superking 19:01, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It serves them right for being so short sighted. They'll get what's coming to them.

How so? Brianjd

I don't even have to read it, but essentially based on this silly article, people who set the date to store by 5 digits (10,000) will fail at 100,000 CE. And those who store with 6 digits will fail at 7 (1,000,000 CE).

Pretty silly to me Piepants 01:57, 9 June 2006 (UTC)Piepants

Since time could theoretically stretch infinitely and there is no way to predict at what point an end will come to our world, pretty much every generation could be said to be setting themselves up for disaster further and further in the future. This can just go on infinitely. --218.186.9.4 09:14, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Except that each generation that fixes it gives the next generations up to ten times longer than the previous fix. The fixers of A.D. 1999 gave us and our descendants 8000 years. The fixers in A.D. 9999 will give their descendants 90,000 years (10,000 to 99,999). The fixers in A.D. 99,999 will give their descendants 900,000 years (100,000 to 999,999). The fixers in A.D. 999,999 will give their descendants 9 million years. And so on. Assuming years are not renumbered from a new reference point. GBC 23:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

True. However, even though the problem will be postponed to a date even further in the future than the previous, the problem still exists and an infinite fix is the only solution if one wishes to completely eliminate this problem. --218.186.9.3 04:26, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure MicroSoft has got it under control.

Pronunciation

Is there any widely accepted way to pronounce years beyond 10,000?? 66.245.120.192 01:57, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My best guess is, say, for the year 10,540: "Ten five-forty." That's the easiest to say, 'cause you don't want to say "Ten thousand five-forty." Superking 23:42, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Or even better, maybe people will be all savvy and just say the last three numbers. Superking 23:45, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Scary

It's scary to think about the future

WHY?!?!?

Why should we bother with this? Ain't we got any more urgent problem to solve?

Why should we bother with anything at all? Whatever you take, there always will be some more urgent problem to solve... — Monedula 11:53, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

But in this case, I can't even see any less urgent problem than this...

Then once this were deleted, there would be a page that becomes the least urgent, and so we would have to delete that, and then another and another and another until there were no problems at all.--jp3z 23:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

It's because your lack imagination. — Monedula 11:44, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

...How about the year 100,000 problem?

... Different people have different urgent problems. Apparently, the Year 100,000 problem has not crossed the threshold of urgency of the person who is concerned with the most distant problems of mankind among the Wikipedians. --Roland 05:30, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

There's always more urgent problems. People are starving and dying and being brutally oppressed, and cosmetics companies are spending millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours researching how to hide fine lines and live spots. So I'd argue your concern over whether or not we should be concerned with this is itself a non-urgent problem. B.Mearns^*, KSC 20:28, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Year 10000?

I wonder what will happen in the year 10,000 since now date years are stored with 4 digits? Just curious, but it seems too hard to think that far ahead. The Personal Computer had only been around about 25 years. (I'm starting with the IBM 5150.) In 8000 years, imagine the possibilities! Hopefully, the computers will be able to fix the bug themselves. I wonder if Wikipedia will still be around or will we know just instantly know (almost) everything in the universe. :) -Hyad 2 July 2005 23:50 (UTC)

Luckily, there is already a solution, RFC 2550. I hope we can implement it in time. CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 06:09, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Better start planning, these commitee decisions can take years! (Cough). Seriously, our PCs will be landfill long before the year 10,000. --kingboyk 02:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Subsequent problems?

As the year 10,000 may pose a problem for computational calendars - will the year 100,000 and the year 1,000,000 and each subsequent date pose a problem?

If so, why are the New Long Foundation planning for the years up-to JUST the year 99,999 - rather than an infinite date? Because, after all, in 1960 who anticipated their methods would be in use in 2000; perhaps we are just not future-thinking enough.

It seems to me that if we divide our dates into blocks (1, 2, or 3 digits), we a computer can simply be programmed to add another block when it becomes prudent.

Any sane computer system should use a binary representation of time anyway, so the number of digits in our base-10 representation of a year shouldn't be relevant. Jibjibjib 03:13, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I think there's a fair chance that computer technology may shift away from binary within the next ~8k years. — David Remahl 00:09, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Computers will probably become non-binary when they gain intelligence, and once they are intelligent Y10K will not be a problem. --Jibjibjib 06:23, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Analog computation is probably necessary for intelligence, but it can be emulated on binary based digital computation, so a shift doesn't seem entirely necessary, unless the gains of such a shift far surpass that of other evolving architectures. --Amit 10:49, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I really can't imagine what modern computer program encodes dates as actual calendar values like the year 10000 or 1000000, or whatever you please. Most systems use some variant of Unix time, which stores dates as a certain number of seconds or milliseconds beyond a certain reference date called the Epoch. By this standard, the first second of the year 10,000 will be, I believe, 253405040400000, which is only a 38 bit value with plenty of room to spare before requiring another bit. So under this common system, there's nothing special about the year 10,000. However, there will be something special about whatever second the 32 bit value that most systems use rolls over (see Year 2038 problem), or if systems have switched to 64 bits by then, or 128, then there will be something special about having those values roll over. I think the whole point of this article is that everything we're doing now is going to need to be fixed in the future, and it will always be the case unless we come up with some dynamic-length storage, or some as-yet-un-thought-of method of storing data. B.Mearns^*, KSC 20:43, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

There will be no Year 10000

This is completely ridiculous. People would use a different calendar in 10,000. The modern one is not good. It is based on Earth and Earth alone. Who will even want to use a system that is based on the birth of a person 2000 years ago! Aleksei 09:12, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Seeing as by the year 10000 our great great great great grandchildren's great great great great grandchildren's great great great great grandchildren's great great great great grandchildren's great great great great grandchildren's corpses will be nothing but millenia-old fine dust, I don't think any of us need to put too much thought into this subject.

We need a new calendar very soon, and not 8000 years from now. We can hope to have colonies on the Moon, Mars, Europa, etc. in the not so distant future, and that makes a universal calendar really an urgent priority. Of course, we don't fully understand time, but the universal calendar should account for all of current relativistic understanding of it. --Amit 03:10, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Most likely we'll end up either drowning ourselves by melting the polar ice or freezing ourselves by blocking sea flows with excess water before the year 10,000 comes. If we manage to avoid those two, we'll probably nuke each other to death just to make sure. --HJV 22:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Such speculations about the distant future don't carry any value to them due to their extremely limited worldview. It seems best not to speculate, but still, let me give you one more example as to why we may need to solve this problem rather soon.

In the not so distant future, intelligent life from Earth decides to develop a colony on a planet in a nearby star system that is currently inhabitated by other intelligent but not as technologically sophisticated alien beings. Part of the agreement with the aliens is to provide them with basic computational technology. The alien calender is counted in the tens of thousands of years. Due to this, life from Earth must have systems that can handle a reasonably large number of digits to measure time.

Of course, you can continue to be a pessimist and say we'll never get that far either. I don't think I will argue that one. --Amit 01:06, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

It takes just a time between a few months and a few years to recode a computer program to handle new kinds of year numbers. I seriously don't think that computers not liking large year numbers can be a problem in the future. It'll be so much harder to develop a spacecraft that could get far enough and fast enough to reach those aliens, that recoding computer OS's would be a piece of cake. This kind of development isn't urgent until we actually have hopes of being able to use it - if designing that new airbus doubledecker plane was costly and took a long time, imagine how long and costly making an advanced and reliable spacecraft would be. A calendar and computer programs simulating it can be developed in a matter of months, by just a small group of people. I'd be more worried about 10 000 children dying of hunger every day than about colonising moon. Moon can wait, so it'd be better to invest the money and resources in feeding those kids :) Once we've got the situation on Earth sorted out, then we can start thinking about colonising other places - although sorting out the situation here might well take us until year 9999 at the current rate. --HJV 10:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

While it is not terribly hard to reprogram computers to handle time differently, such changes take time to implement globally. The pervasiveness of technology means that it will be increasingly harder to implement a deep rooted change such as that across-the-board. Other than that, this page is not an appropriate place to discuss your personal political and social agendas. --Amit 00:51, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Heh. A smooth way to end an argument of a sort, when you run out of things to say, is to state its against Wikipedia policies to discuss the issue. Not its not smooth, just being sarcastic. I won't mention Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks in relation to your talk page post on speed dating. :) (sorry, just had to point out that most people break the rules rather often albeit not for bad intentions). Well, let's end it here, nevertheless; it's a bit pointless arguing about whether the 2006 computers should be made year-10000-compatible right now at this very second or maybe a bit later, ennit... ^_^ I will not reply under this heading of the talk page anymore. --HJV 01:33, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that they will not use the same calander...I mean, honestly, Christianity will just be considered some old mythology by then, just like Greek or Norse religions are to us now - Razorhead 1:07 Am August 16 2006 PST

Amazing

Dzoni 01:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

• Year 10,000 problem → Year 10000 problem … Rationale: remove unnecessary comma … Please share your opinion at Talk:Year 10,000 problem. --— Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:26, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
  • The redirect at Year 10000 problem has been edited. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:27, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

Discussion

Add any additional comments

• The comma makes it easier to see at a glance that the number is 10 thousand... Anyone else?  Regards, David Kernow 23:36, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, actually, it doesn't matter how many zeros it has — it's still the Y10...0 problem. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:54, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Moved. —Nightstallion (?) 10:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Possible date-handling error

Problem

The popular spreadsheet program Microsoft Excel, (in its default 1900 date system in Windows) stores dates as number of days since 31 December 1899 (day 1 is 1900-01-01). The database program Microsoft Access, stores dates as the number of days since 30 December 1899 (day 1 is 1899-12-31). In either application, entering a date value of 2958465 yields the date 9999-12-31 (or vice versa, where entering the date 9999-12-31 yields the date value 2958465). The problem here therefore is that if they both started on different days, how can they end on the same day?

Relevant functions: DATE in Excel; FormatNumber in Access.

--ST47 17:34, 10 June 2006 (UTC); Amit 04:03, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

If my new calendar goes from 1 through 1000 units (excel) your calendar also goes from 1 through 1000 units (access), i start mine one day before you start yours, so when yours says 1, mine is already on 2 so how can 2958465 occur on the same day for both our calandars? --ST47 17:34, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

The computers would not know what the year was? --Helicoptor 01:33, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

The inconsistency is that Excel counts the nonexistent date 1900-02-29, whereas Access doesn't. This therefore is an Excel bug. Note that the centennial year 1900 was not a leap year, as the number 1900 is not evenly divisible by 400. As per point #16 from [1], Lotus 1-2-3 incorrectly treated 1900 as a leap year, and Microsoft perpetuated the error in Excel for reasons of compatibility. There is absolutely no reason for Microsoft to have the error not corrected by now. Who knows what other bugs lurk in there. I guess I just won't be trusting Excel for any significant date calculations ever again. --Amit 05:19, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move to Year 10,000 problem. There is no consensus on comma issue. References use 10,000 instead of 10000. —Wknight94 (talk) 03:32, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Requested move (2)

Year 10,000 Problem → Year 10000 problem : Rationale: revert apparently random move. I accidentally moved to to Year 10000 Problem, and cannot move it back because of a previous double-redirect correction. Please share your opinion at the talk page, whereever it ends up. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:09, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Survey

Under the circumstances, this survey should decide which of the 4 plausible names the article should end up under, with proper double-redirect handling.

• A Year 10000 problem
• B Year 10,000 problem
• C Year 10000 Problem
• D Year 10,000 Problem

Approval voting is the normal recommended system for this in Wikipedia, but I'm not sure it works, here. May I suggest two separate votes with a weak consensus being the standard for decision, as moves can normally be done without Admin action.

No commma

Support

• — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support version A. We don't write 2,006 either. "p"roblem per cap rule. ~ trialsanderrors 08:21, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

• Using the comma would be my preferred option, as it is clearer and easier to read. It is also the way that such a number is normally written in English-speaking countries. — sjorford++ 13:58, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose: keep the title easy to read. Thumbelina 17:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Lower case

Support

• — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
• Clearly the title should be lower case as it's not a proper noun - I don't even think this part is worth voting on. — sjorford++ 13:58, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

Discussion

Add any additional comments

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Worrying about nothing

Why do people even worry about this? Everyone alive now will be dead by then, and so will even their great great great great grandchildren!

FLaRN2005 (talk) 20:14, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Mostly humourous

I think this subject is mostly humourous as computers are more likely to become smart enough to help themselves. It does make me wonder if there's an article somewhere about the Y1 problem - totally nonsensical about the Roman computer programmers worrying about the changeover from 1 B.C. to 1 A.D. and numbers going upward instead of downward! Actually, they wouldn't be facing that problem since they counted upward from the founding of Rome in 754 B.C. or so. They'd be facing the Y1K problem - hitting Roman year 1000 (in our years, A.D. 246), long before someone finally retroactively calculated Jesus' birth year (and got it wrong by some 4-7 years) and persuaded the church and society to adopt it. Jeepers... imagine the problem faced by the Bedrock Computer Company?! GBC 23:23, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

It is humourous - why is Tax Day in the UK the 6th April ? Because the end of the year was the 25th March and when the UK aligned itself with European calendar in 1752 then 11 days were missing (see Taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom#The_tax_year . Taxman got very unhappy with this loss of days so the tax year changed. Shift happens. Maybe we need to add these shifts in as links ? Ttiotsw 08:13, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Really concerned about this

So should I call Dell and inquire if they can fix the problem. I'm concerned my PC might be affected by this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ProfessorWikia (talk • contribs)

2 problems...

1... this page will be gone long before Y4k

2... i know for a fact that y2k was never any big deal in the first place... i changed my system date on a computer runing dos 3.1 and nothing happend... nothing... it knew it was 2000... with the date command it even showed 2000!!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 204.246.216.109 (talk) 07:20, 14 December 2006 (UTC).

Earth?

The actual problem is that by Y10K, trillions of people will be living on other planets, and they won't want to use an Earth-based calendar. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alx xlA (talk • contribs) 03:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC).

The problem would still remain on earth though. The Year 10000 problem only applies to certain calendars. The List of calendars is big and I would expect non-Earth ones to be added to that list. People (or computers) will simply convert to and from each as they see the need.

Shiptimes (which will probably still be based on Earth 24hour cycle as that's how we have evolved our circadian rhythm but will eventually settle on what the people on it want (e.g. planet of origin of the flight). I'm guessing once Timekeeping on Mars gets more settled then we'll get our answer through convention just as Gregorian dates get used.

The problem of how local times are recorded still is an issue that stays irrespective of where people live. Whatever sort of "year/day" counter a planet adopts it will still have problems with storage and conversion. All very well us saying "we'll store it using 128 bits" but humans use decimals and like to shortcut stuff to make it easier to write/type/say/think. As the population outside of earth gets larger then there may be a movement away from Earth based standards but whilst we're within this solar system then Earth politics will prevail and one aspect of that is religion (i.e. politics by revelation). It'll take some real head-scratching to work out which are the "holy" days outside of Earths frame of reference and especially when the distances travelled or the relativistic speeds make the idea of a local holy day coinciding with a earth holy day a nonsense concept. One hopes that God understands the issue of frame dragging when working out days and times of worship. The main problem I see is for festivals that are based on Earth lunar observations and especially those involving human observations e.g. Ramadan. The sighting can't be predicted to the exact second and the lag in transmission from Earth to another planet would delay observance on another planet. I'm guessing that as with calculating Easter, hard coded computer programs would replace the sighting mechanism to allow for non-Earth observance. Ttiotsw 10:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

LOL

This page is a joke HarveyDanger 05:00, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Further year problems

What about the year 100,000 problem, the year 1,000,000 problem, the year 1,000,000,000 problem, the year 1,000,000,000,000 problem, the year 1,000,000,000,000,000 problem etc. If we fix this problem, we'll just run into these.

someone else posted the comment above, but I was about to. would it be unreasonable to start pages on these? and if so, why not for this page? and what if we have abolished numbers by then. 74.13.128.8 09:14, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it would be unreasonable. If there's anyone using the term, you might create a redirect here. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:42, 24 October 2007 (UTC)