7. Security Considerations

Y10K dates will improve the security of all programs where they are used. Many errors in programs have been tracked to overflow while parsing illegal input. Programs allocating fixed size storage for dates will exhibit errors when presented with larger dates. These errors can be exploited by wily hackers to compromise the security of systems running these programs. Since Y10K dates are arbitrary length strings, there is no way to make them overflow.

In addition, positive Y10K dates are easy to compare and less error- prone for humans. It is easier to compare the three projected end of the universe dates - "H100000000000", "I1000000000000" and "K100000000000000" - by looking at the leading letter than by counting the 0's. This will reduce inadvertent errors by people. This advantage will become more noticeable when large dates are more common.

Unfortunately, negative Y10K dates are a bit more difficult to decipher. However, by comparing the current age of the universe to its projected end, it is obvious that there will be many more positive dates than negative dates. And, while the number of negative dates for human history is currently greater than the number of positive dates, the number of negative dates is fixed and the number of positive dates is unbounded.