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The year 2000 date problem is not the only calendar problem causing trouble for software applications. This report highlights some of the known date problems that are likely to affect software applications over the next 50 years. Other date problems that might impact software include the date at which global positioning satellites (GPS) roll over, the dates at which commodities switch to the Euro, the dates at which the UNIX and C libraries roll over, and some hazardous date patterns which have been used for non-date purposes in software applications. In addition, at some point early in the next century the numbers of digits assigned to social security numbers and telephones will run out of capacity.
Over the next 50 years at least 100,000,000 software applications globally will need modification because of various date problems. The total costs of these modifications can top $5 trillion dollars. The report concludes that because date problems with computers and software are so widespread, serious, and expensive, a new international standard for dates should be developed for computer purposes. The proposed date format includes a "key" field which is used to identify which specific date format follows. This method would allow older date formats to be used, and would support multiple calendars.