The latest time that can be represented in this format, following the POSIX standard, is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, January 19, 2038. Times beyond this moment will "wrap around" and be represented internally as a negative number, and cause programs to fail, since they will see these times not as being in 2038 but rather in 1901. Erroneous calculations and decisions may therefore result.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

In May 2006, reports surfaced of an early Y2038 problem in the AOLserver software. The software would specify that a database request should "never" timeout by specifying a timeout date one billion seconds in the future. One billion seconds after 21:27:28 on 12 May 2006 is beyond the 2038 cutoff date, so after this date, the timeout calculation overflowed and calculated a timeout date that was actually in the past, causing the software to crash.

And even though 64bit OS's and architecture don't have the problem a lot of file types and apps still do.

this was given plenty of coverage when the y2k one was all abuzz

end of the world omg

Most of us will be dead by the time that happens =P

that in 30 years..... ill be 55 most ppl will be alive u nub

you obviously haven't heard of the Y2K35 problem that'll kill most of us

i just want someone to drop nukes so i can live the 'Fallout(tm)' experience

i was disappointed when Y2K bug did not deliver what was promised

i was disappointed when Y2K bug did not deliver what was promised

obviously cos they worked so hard to prevent it