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date +%s Turning 1111111111
initsix writes "Break out your party hats. According to http://www.onlineconversion.com/unix_time.htm , Unix time is supposed reach 1111111111 on
Fri, 18 Mar 2005 01:58:31 GMT
That's only 1036372537 seconds from 2^31 (ie Tue, 19 Jan 2038 03:14:08 GMT)!!"
1) Bored Unix programmer visits the Unix time conversion website and enters in "1111111111" for shits and giggles.
2) Bored Unix programmer sees that this is equivalent to just a little while from now.
3) Bored Unix programmer tosses around a few more numbers and submits the story to Slashdot.
4) Story becomes Slashdot front-page news.
The coolest voice ever.
Geeks are "fake freaks": freaks by choice, not by nature. Now we've got a horde of Slashdotters talking about how this timestamp story is interesting only if you're really "bored", or have "too much time ;) on your hands". Of course this story is interesting to nerds, who are preternaturally aware that we've got a "Y2K38" event coming up, when all the 32bit timestamps roll over to another epoch. But all these high-numbered posers, whining about how irrelevant or how hard it is to to understand this timeframe, are fake nerds. What is the word for that?
--
make install -not war
(by that time, we will all have at least 64-bit systems, but still a cause for concern, read the link)
The number of bits a CPU can natively operate on data has little relevance on the problems due to representing dates with too few bits. It all depends on the programming interface and storage format. If you use an outdated (hah) API on a 256-bit CPU, you'll still have a YnK problem.
Whatever makes 1111111111 interesting is probably the same thing that makes people think that the series of random bits 111111 is less random than 101001 or 011001 etc.
k-thx-bye
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Actually, My prediction is the opposite:
[PutsOnNostradamusHat]
The only reason that the y2k computer problem was such a media event is because the year 2000 was such a media event. People were expecting the world to end, the y2k computer bug fit neatly into that hysteria.
There is nothing about 2038 that will grab media attention. So no boob tube watchers will ever know anything about the date rollover problem.
Then, because there will be no public panic about it, it won't be taken seriously by the PHBs and no matter how much the coders scream about it, no money will be given to the project and it will end up being a much bigger problem than y2k turned out to be.
[\PutsOnNostradamusHat]
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
"1111111111" is cool and all, but won't it be even more cool when we get to "2222222222?" :)
It will, just not on the computer you're using right now :-)
;-)
One place the unix timestamp has made it into literature is in Vernor Vinge's "Deep" books: A Fire Upon the Deep, and A Deepness in the Sky. In the latter, there are a number of uses of a "day" onboard their starship that is 100,000 seconds long, and was based on a semi-mythical OS on early computers 8,000 years earlier, back before humans left their original planet and spread out into the galaxy. They routinely use kiloseconds as the main division of the day.
The size of the second count isn't a problem, of course, because nobody builds 32-bit computers then. If fact, we probably won't be making them by the time the second count reaches 2^32. I wonder how many old 32-bit machines will still be operational by then?
(Probably a lot of them, and they'll all still be running Fortran and Cobol programs.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.