Utc 1234567890

[harley]

I was googling something a few minutes ago, and I noticed an entry under the logo. I had gone there just in time for UTC (Unix Time) 1234567890! It occurred at exactly 23:31:06 Greenwich time today (2/13/09). If I had still been an active w*rking Unix geek I'd have been aware of this and been at one of the many parties happening in the world tonight. This is one of the only negative aspects to ER I've ever run into. Man, I could have been drinking beer with ugly guys and talking IEEE standards and stuff.

 

[Moemg]

The things you miss when you don't work ! I miss our impromptu happy hours .

 

[ziggy29]

The Mayans thought the world will end in 2012. Long-time Unix geeks know it will really end in 2038.

 

[slouch]

Long-time Unix geeks know it will really end in 2038.

Just the 32-bit world

 

[Khan]

I worked on the Y2K event.

I recall something about other possible computer rollover moments.

Does anyone else recall a list thereof?

 

[ziggy29]

Just the 32-bit world

Yeah, well I'm an old-timer. None of that mamby-pamby 64-bit Unix stuff for me in my sysadmin days. We had 32 bits and we liked it.

 

[harley]

I worked on the Y2K event.

I recall something about other possible computer rollover moments.

Does anyone else recall a list thereof?

The biggie is Jan 19, 2038, end of the (32 bit) Unix epoch. That's when we'll hit 2,147,483,647 seconds from 00:00:00:00 01/01/1970. The 64 bit epoch ends in about 290 billion years, so I'm not sweating that one.

 

[slouch]

I recall something about other possible computer rollover moments. Does anyone else recall a list thereof?

Oh there [-]were[/-]are a number 49.7 day bugs in a few products some of us use

 

[ziggy29]

The biggie is Jan 19, 2038, end of the (32 bit) Unix epoch. That's when we'll hit 2,147,483,647 seconds from 00:00:00:00 01/01/1970. The 64 bit epoch ends in about 290 billion years, so I'm not sweating that one.

Heck, even back when I was a Unix sysadmin (1995-97) I joked that the end of the world wasn't going to hit until I was 72, and I'd be retired or dead by then. Looking at my portfolio lately, maybe I need to reconsider that proposition.

"Hello folks, and welcome to Wal-Mart!"

Then there was also the early Pentium floating point bug. Where 32/4 = 7.9999999999983 or something like that.

 

[clifp]

Heck, even back when I was a Unix sysadmin (1995-97) I joked that the end of the world wasn't going to hit until I was 72, and I'd be retired or dead by then. Looking at my portfolio lately, maybe I need to reconsider that proposition.

"Hello folks, and welcome to Wal-Mart!"

Then there was also the early Pentium floating point bug. Where 32/4 = 7.9999999999983 or something like that.

Boy Y2K and the Pentium (c) processor errata brings back painful memory.

Now to be fair simply numbers like 32/4 produced correct results. You needed to divide some relatively obscure numbers like.
For example, dividing 5505001 by 294911 produced 18.66600093 instead of 18.66665197.

I am pretty sure that 2038 will be another non-event. The interesting question is what time bombs lie hidden in Microsoft's code base?