Printable View
i have an email account on yahoo and receiving spams , which is quite common but what im getting from past 2 weeks : spams which r sent on year 2038 like 20 jan 2038.
i searched on google abt this but didnt get anything interesting, does anybdy knw abt dis ???
___________________________________________________________________
"Knowing how to do something that might be harmful is not the same as causing harm."
What do you want to know? Somebody is spamming from a machine with the date set wrong, or they are changing the date in an attempt to trick spam filters... It is just spam, delete it and move on... Nothing intersting..
Hmmmm,
That is mildly interesting..........what is the subject matter of the spam?
The reason that I find it interesting is that the ancient gods, Gog and Magog (otherwise known as Ballmer and Gates) will mark your Windows XP as pirate if it is more than 24 hours adrift from Redmond time?
Also, I haven't come across a spam filter that is time and date driven????
:D
I guess it is just me then.. Spam is spam and it's never really that interesting...
Hi mohaughn,
I think that I have the answer............if you date e-mail into the future it will "float to the top"?????????
There is also some sort of *nix thing with 2038..........? something like 1 billion seconds since 1st January 1970............or whenever *nix thinks the World started:D
http://www.geektronica.com/tag/unix
subject is " Need Loan? Find FREE Pre-approval today !1129" .. well its fine if i got 1 or 2 mails but till now i have got over 1500 mails in bulk folder of year 2037, 2038 .
Well... im not sure bt i think a machine with the date set wrong will not send mail to specified date coz date and time depends to server (in this case yahoo server ).Quote:
Originally Posted by mohaughn
____________________________________________________________
"Knowing how to do something that might be harmful is not the same as causing harm."
[QUOTE=Alokpatidar]To mohaughan "What do you want to know? Somebody is spamming from a machine with the date set wrong, or they are changing the date in an attempt to trick spam filters..." Well... im not sure bt i think a machine with the date set wrong will not send mail to specified date coz date and time depends to server (in this case yahoo server ).[\QUOTE]
Unless the server is spoofed too :rolleyes:
And yes....I guess depending on how you would sort your mail....it will be right at the top...
MLF
hey nihil ... the same came into my mind .. yr. is set to 2038 coz msg will be on the top even after many many days. but is this d only reason ??
___________________________________________________________________
"Knowing how to do something that might be harmful is not the same as causing harm."
As stated...
spam is spam is spam is spam
with that subject line...if it got past the spam filter...my junk filter would have caught it....
Guess it would be the first to be deleted when I clear that folder due to the date ;)
MLF
Hmmm, I think that 20th January 2038 is when 32 bit Unix time stops?
If they go beyond that it may not work?
Yes, the intention is certainly to get to the top of your inbox;)
2038? Common People, that's when the new M$ OS comes out.
Introducing - 2038 Windows Anomaly:
Quote:
Come 2038, Microsoft will do what no other company has done, create the perfect OS. Known simply as "The Anomaly". No more BSOD's, patches, updates, or any other issues. This OS boasts complete perfection, so much in fact that engineers have included a new option in the Control Panel. This new option titled "System Crash" will imitate all previous MS operating systems. Just click on the icon and the screen will freeze, followed by 20+ cryptic error messages, a BSOD, and a final dialog box reading "critical system error, contact your system administrator".
"Once the user hits the "OK" button, everything will be fine again, except the screen will be upside down" one MS engineer was quoted. "The user just has to flip his/her monitor and everything will be fine" he added.
I've received spam from the future for quite some time, the significance of the date is probably only significant to the sender.
maybe something of interest:
http://aec.cadalyst.com/aec/article/....jsp?id=123100
Also it a guess at the exact date of the 5 billionth article on wikipedia.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...e-million_pool
and this goes on and on. ;P
2038 is irrelevant
we're all doomed 2036-04-13.37
Apophis is projected to be within the orbits of most communication satellites ...and that's just a guess
geeez...how old will Bruce Willis be by then...are we going to have to rely on Ben Affleck? ahhhh
hhh
hhhh
The reason (or one reason anyway) why spam arrives with a date way into the future is that if you have junk mail filters which delete mail automatically after so many days, these messages never get deleted, and I suppose the longer they're on your PC the more chance there is that you'll eventually read them.
You often get messages arriving with a date of 1977 as well. This is apparently the date generated when spammers leave the date field empty - something which isn't possible using a mail client (apparently it can be done when sending mail through telnet, but I'm a bit hazy on the details here).
Hello,
The answer to this is quite simple, the 2038 date carries importance to all *nix systems, especially olders systems. Since the *nix machines count in seconds, there will be a rollover or overflow once the date reaches a certain count causing many large systems to break.
This number is 2147483648. Here is the math:
* There are 3600 seconds in one hour.
2147483648 / 3600 = 596523.2500 hours
596523.2500 / 24 = 24855.1348 days
24855.1348 / 365.25 = 68.0497 years
1970 + 68.0497 = 2038.0497 (the final second of any *nix)
1 second over 2147483648 will cause a math error because the *nix system will see a time of -1 seconds.
So 2038 in *nix term is the death date of all current *nix system.
Hah! *nix is doomed, and Billy Windoze will rule the Universe............
Muhahahahahahahahaha..................
Doctor, I think that I need another :drink:
Please send your fee billings to Redmond, rather than the Southern Polar regions;)
[Penguins live at the South Pole?]
:D
Actually no. *nix is hardly doomed. One simple flip of a bit and we have an outrageously large number of seconds: 4,611,686,018,427,387,904 seconds.
As to "Billy Windoze" ruling the universe, only in his delusions and wet dreams. :)
So we're headed for another year 2000 in the world of linux?
Yes (this should probably be a maybe) for the older UNIX systems, no for the modern UNIX/*nix systems.Quote:
Originally Posted by Moira
Time is *nix is store as a singed long (4 bytes) currently. In 2038 or before (most likely before), time will move to an unsinged long.
There are 31,557,600 seconds in a standard year. In the *nix world, the Epoch is 1970, so the (supposed) "death date" is 1970 plus the number of years computed from the seconds.
Here is a table that sums this up (32 bit):
Signed long............... 2,147,483,647 seconds (4 bytes), 68.0497 years, 2038.0497 A.D.
Unsigned long........... 4,294,967,295 seconds (4 bytes), 136.0993 years, 2106.0994 A.D.
Signed long long....... 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 seconds (8 bytes), (take 1970 off), 292,271,030,272.0000 A.D.
Unsigned long long... 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 seconds (8 bytes), (take 1970 off), 584,542,060,544.0000 A.D.
*nix is gonna be here for a LONG LONG (signed or unsigned) time. :)
Well, as frpeter has more or less implied, it is a well understood issue that will be addressed way before the deadline. Hey, how many people will be using 32 bit OSes in 2038 anyway :D
It is not the same as Year 2000 as that was partly a physical issue in that the CMOS RTCs in some computers only held the date as two characters. And developers had become used to using two character dates.
I was given an HP Vectra VS12 (286) in late 1999. I put a new battery in it and it passed the tests with flying colours, even the rollover! mind you it must have cost £3,000 when it was new so I suppose it ought to have the more expensive 4 digit clock:)
I actually never came across a machine that couldn't be fixed.................mostly they just couldn't handle the rollover, so you had to manually reset them.
Incidentally, Lotus 1-2-3 will die in 2899. It has a three character date that starts in 1900 ;)
The Year 2000 and the Milliennium bug were a complete anticlimax :)
Interesting statistics frpeter, I don't pretend to understand it completely but I get the gist. I was intrigued to read Lotus is affected too, although realistically it's not something that is likely to even be around by then! I have a set of accounts made in Lotus 1-2-3, and some people use Lotus Notes at work, but the development of that software seemed to stop with Lotus Millennium, in other words, M$ had won the race.
Actually Moira, I can explain the Lotus thing. Back in 1999 (I think) IBM bought Lotus. To begin with they gave away Millenium Edition. I actually recall getting a 20,000 seat corporate licence for the cost of a telephone call :D
It is alive and well under the Lotus IBM brand name and the latest version is called "Lotus SmartSuite 9.8" It costs around £40 for a boxed retail version.
:)
Nihil is referring to the Epoch. Depending upon which revision you look at, this Unix clock begins "the time since 00:00:00, Jan. 1, 1970, measured in sixtieths of a second". That def is from a Unix programmers guide from 1971.
Yes, Epoch time runs out in 2038 but this issue will not be a problem now that 64bit time is going to be a Unix standard before long.
--TH13
Thanks hihil, interesting facts. thehorse13, is this clock stuff related to the way email which has a blank date field ends up with 1970 as the date, as in spam messages?
I've noticed this too, expecially when signing up for this account... all email from this site was automaticly directed to my spam folder, which was a pain to get to because of the 2000 messages dated in 2038.
I was wondering with all the stupid emails that get past the spam filter that one from antionline was automaticly caught and past to the spam folder
Honestly I think its because most e-mail clients sort e-mail by date, and if the spam said it arrived in 2038, then it will always be at the top of the list.
Well... can any1 really find the deadline of any machine either unix or windows or lotus 1-2-3 ?
________________________________________________________________
"Knowing how to do something that might be harmful is not the same as causing harm."
Theoretically the answer is "yes". You only have to take the start date and add the maximum number of time units that the system can handle.
With applications you can have work-arounds. For example if your date is only two characters you can make a rule:
0-49 is 2000 to 2049
50-99 is 1950 to 1999
I think this was the problem with the millennium "bug", ie the lack of foresight.
Well, the millenium bug was a bit more complex.
1. There was a lot of legacy code still being used.
2. People had used two digit dates because they did not anticipate the code to be still in use and storage was very expensive back then.
3. Quite a few PCs only supported a two digit date, and were still in use.
:)