Software glitch brings Y2K deja vu
By David Becker
CNET News.com
December 22, 2003, 10:17 AM PT

Software running on thousands of computers worldwide will become inoperable in a few weeks because of an obscure date-related glitch, and developers are rushing to create and apply patches.

Sound familiar?

Software maker PTC, a specialist in product lifecycle management applications for engineers and product designers, has rekindled memories of the Year 2000 bug, or Y2K, as it scrambles to patch a glitch that will render most of its products inoperable after Jan. 10.

The flaw was discovered late last week, and PTC engineers have been working around the clock since then to create and test patches, PTC spokesman Joe Gavaghan said. Two patches that address some of the company's most widespread products were released early Friday, and fixes for other applications are on the way.

The flaw involves the way the programs handle date entries, Gavaghan said. To be able to recognize dates, PTC programmers had to set a date for infinity. They mistakenly chose about 1 billion seconds--2 to the 30th power, to be precise--since Jan. 1, 1970, which is when the Unix operating system was developed and is Year Zero for many Unix applications.

Unix itself uses a similar method to resolve dates, but developers chose the maximum infinity value of 2 to the 31st power--about 2 billion seconds. That means that PTC software will time out Jan. 10, while most Unix programs will continue to operate until 2038.

Left uncorrected, the error in the PTC software would be inconvenient but not destructive, Gavaghan said. It's not something where they would lose data, he said. The software just stops working.

PTC was alerted to the flaw last week by a customer who was unable to use the software to process work with future dates, Gavaghan said. Upon investigating, PTC engineers discovered that the flaw was widespread, affecting most of the company's 35,000 customers worldwide who use PTC products such as Pro/Engineer, Pro/Intralink and Windchill. ................................

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