Doomsday (1 Viewer)

[Ashley Seymour]

So we survived the end of the second millenium, by whatever date people choose to recognize and the end.

I got thinking that we have just passed some dates that have held been a fascination of popular culture.

The year 2000, or 2001, whichever. We have survived destruction fortold by various "seers" for upwards of a millenium.

1984. George Orwell's great work dealing with the corruption of government and institutuions (yeah, I know corruption and government is redundant) passed 17 years ago, but he was chillingly prescient and disparaging about the near term course of human behavior. When his work came out in 1948 he had already seen the shift in alliances between the allies and foes of WWII, and over the last 10 years these alliances have shifted yet again. He saw music generated by computers and hummed by workers whose minds and spirits had become numbed by the dictators who sought to maintain control by reducing the intellect of the subject masses. Maybe I am the only one who thinks current music is dull, unimaginative, and produced with less ability than the computers in Orwell's book.

2001. Arthur Clarke focused our attention on this year with his fascinating book and the movie of the same name. How close is he to any of his predictions? How many years would you give for us to build and send a space ship to Jupiter? How soon will computers be able to think and screw up as effectively as HAL.

I can think of no new watershed years that have griped our hopes and fears as have these three. What symbol do we now now look to with anticipation or fear as we hear out on the new century, millenium...?

 

[James RD]

The next Adam Sandler movie.

 

[Rob Lutter]

to tell you the truth, I don't really to imagine a date for doomsday... I just hope it is really far away ...but for the sake of this poll... I am dead-set that the end of the world will come when the temple is re-built in Jerusalem

 

[Walter Kittel]

January 19, 2038 at 03:14:07
Unix systems will experience a rollover in their system clocks. Here's a link describing the situation.
- Walter.

 

[Steven K]

Walter is exactly right. I wrote a research paper on this in College; this is going to be the real Y2K. Thankfully it is still roughly 35 years away and hopefully, something will be done.

 

[Joe_C]

Walter, that was an interesting article. I'm surprised I hadn't heard about it before.

Most software development departments are managed by people with little or no programming experience.

It's sad, but true

 

[Philip_G]

it'll be cake.. minor kernel changes and you're set
I hope :frowning:

 

[Walter Kittel]

Joe - I'm not surprised that you haven't heard of it. As the author of that piece, Roger Wilcox says

The greatest danger with the Year 2038 Problem is its invisibility.

Like Steven said, we still have quite a few years until this takes place. I'm sure everyone will get started on the problem in, ummm... July or August of 2037.
- Walter

 

[Kevin P]

I think newer Unix kernels use a 64-bit date-time stamp instead of the older 32-bit.
A 64-bit date stamp won't roll over until the sun is a cold, dead, dense lump of matter and Earth has long since been consumed. Let's just say we'll have a bigger problem on our hands than "Y2K".
KJP

 

[Steven K]

Yes, but what about all of the embedded devices that currently use a Unix kernel that only has a 32-bit timestamp?

Of course, everyone made a big deal about the same issue with Y2K, and nothing really happened. But, who knows...

 

[Jack Briggs]

Re the year 2001 and the film of the same name: True science fiction does not endeavor to "predict" the future. Instead, it presupposes a certain future within which to base a story.

As for how the year turned out compared to the film: Chalk it up to money (as in a lack thereof) and political resolve (ditto). The bulk of what was portrayed in the film could have happened by 2001. Unfortunately, Mr. Kubrick was so intensely hard at work on the film that the implications of certain social and political events of the era didn't sink in. As much as I uphold the Counterculture and progressive social movements, they pretty much worked against the space effort; NASA was unjustly linked to the "military industrial complex" by the antiwar movement's movers and shakers.

I read an interesting interview with Apollo 15 Command Module pilot Alfred M. Worden in a recent issue of Britian's Spaceflight magazine. In it, he said if someone had asked him in 1965 what the year 2001 would be like, he would have thought it might turn out as portrayed in the 1968 film. If, however, he were asked the same question in 1970, he would say he is not so sure we'd be anywhere near that level of advanced technology.

I've always felt the say way. And what a difference a few years can make. NASA experienced the first in a series of devastating budget cuts in 1967, which served to erode the promise made so beautifully eloquent by the film.

And now, NASA is little more than a Works Progress Administration for aging techies, a shadow of its former self.

What a tragedy.