Ahhh, remember the glory days of Y2K? Yup, there’s also a Unix date problem! In case you weren’t aware of the Unix 2038 problem, on Unix, 2038 will roll over to 1970 as things are currently set up. As Unix vendors move to support 64 bits, this problem will disappear.
The year 2038 problem (also known as Unix Millennium bug, or Y2K38 by analogy to the Y2K problem, known as the millennium bug) may cause some computer software to fail before or in the year 2038. The problem affects all software and systems that store system time as a signed 32-bit integer, and interpret this number as the number of seconds since 00:00:00 January 1, 1970.[1] The latest time that can be represented this way is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038. Times beyond this moment will “wrap around” and be stored internally as a negative number, which these systems will interpret as a date in 1901 rather than 2038. This will likely cause problems for users of these systems due to erroneous calculations.
Further, while most programs will only be affected in or very close to 2038, programs that work with future dates will begin to run into problems much sooner. For example, a program that works with dates 20 years in the future will have to be fixed no later than in 2018.
Because most 32-bit Unix-like systems store and manipulate time in this format, it is usually called Unix time, and so the year 2038 problem is often referred to as the Unix Millennium Bug. However, any other non-Unix operating systems and software that store and manipulate time this way will be just as vulnerable.
This y2038 assume that all computers remain 32 bits architecture by then, which is not true
Now, 2009, already we are moving towards 64 bits architecture
By 2038, all computers are probably 64 bits already, maybe with 128bits already looming in the horizon