Have you heard about the Year 2038 problem, which the doomsayers say would cause aircrafts to nosedive, satellites to fall out of orbit and what not? Not getting into the technical stuff, it is again about the date/time handling and you can find more details here & here .

A mail I got detailed an interesting way to test whether this is really true. If you are interested, you may try these steps. 1. Login into Yahoo! Messenger 2. Send an instant message to someone to make sure that it is working. 3. Now, change your system date to 19-Jan-2038, 03:14:07 AM or above 4. Confirm whether the date in your PC has changed 5. Again try sending out an instant message to anyone… Doesn't your messenger application crash? If you were using MS Outlook, it would cause you some hassles and may require you to restart your machine. I tried the above and it happened – both the messenger crash & the Outlook trouble etc. I am being told that all network-based applications wouldn't work if the system date were beyond 19/Jan/2038, though I didn't check that. Though 'How Stuff Works' says that the problem is not as difficult as it was with Y2K, I could see IT majors licking their lips in anticipation of 2038 bug fix projects.