It seems that the problem was due to the leap-year issue as originally rumored. When GMT officially became 3/1/2010, the older “Fat” PS3s thought that it was 2/29/2010. Since 2010 is not a leap year, the PS3 went ballistic. The PS3 believed that 2010 was a leap year for some yet to be determined reason. The programing should be simple enough, as leap years follow these rules:
Which years are leap years?
In the Gregorian calendar, the calendar used by most modern countries, the following three criteria determine which years will be leap years:
1.Every year that is evenly divisible by four is a leap year;
2.of those years, if it can be evenly divided by 100, it is NOT a leap year, unless
3.the year is evenly divisible by 400. Then it is a leap year.
Source
Maybe it’s due to the movie Leap Year being released in 2010, and the PS3, trying to become sentient. 
Here is the PSN official post:
We are aware that the internal clock functionality in the PS3 units other than the slim model, recognized the year 2010 as a leap year. Having the internal clock date change from February 29 to March 1 (both GMT), we have verified that the symptoms are now resolved and that users are able to use their PS3 normally.
If the time displayed on the XMB is still incorrect, users are able to adjust time settings manually or via the internet. If we have new information, we will update you through the PlayStation.Blog or PlayStation.com.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Source
BTW, the first picture is an update of this one:
Anyway, back to Heavy Rain!!
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Written by: Oly
- PR Manager 
#1 by Trev on March 2nd, 2010 [ 24520 Points ]
The thing is PS3s were working at least 15 minutes before midnight so it seems a little off.
#2 by Sakinah on March 2nd, 2010 [ 25417 Points ]
That was a fun 24 hours.
#3 by Kicks on March 2nd, 2010 [ 804 Points ]
I felt so bad as I gave a friend of mine (long story, but lets just say it was definitely for a worthy cause) my 80 GB PS3 and it was only the older systems that were impacted
@Trev I think the issue was based off of GMT as the issue started before midnight EST
#4 by Trev on March 2nd, 2010 [ 24520 Points ]
Being in the UK, I live on GMT time
#5 by Durr Hurr on March 2nd, 2010
Sony claims they “fixed” the problem, but in reality all they did is wait 24-hours for the clock to roll over to March 2nd, and for the problem to fix itself. Do they plan on fixing the actual underlying bug in order to prevent this from happening again?
#6 by Oly on March 2nd, 2010 [ 86784 Points ]
Yes was based on GMT.
@Durr let’s hope that they do. I’m not sure why it would think 2010 is a leap year, so any other year could be affected as well.
#7 by Emrah on March 2nd, 2010 [ 7049 Points ]
They still need to fix this. Not all PS3′s may have their time correctly set, there may be random errors, and there may be future dates with problems.
#8 by Oly on March 2nd, 2010 [ 86784 Points ]
Def need to fix the problem so it won’t happen again. the date can be fixed in your settings. Can set manually or by internet.
#9 by chrysostom on March 2nd, 2010 [ 830 Points ]
Interesting.. I was wondering how they “fixed” the problem without a firmware update. I guess they’d silently sneak in a fix in some future firmware update.
#10 by jacobfett on March 2nd, 2010 [ 205 Points ]
Happy it’s working again… I was having withdraws
#11 by Jay on March 2nd, 2010 [ 69353 Points ]
what they probably did was see if it rolling over GMT would resolve the issue, so they can more easily identify the problem and fix it for a firmware update, and there was no real way of telling if it would happen until it did.
I also think the system clock might check on the date and time a half hour beforehand, which is why the issue started a little bit early and resolved a little bit early as well