Friday 13th. End of Linux

[Cheap Scotch Ron]

"At 11:31:30pm UTC on Feb 13, 2009, Unix time will reach 1,234,567,890.
Where will you be at this momentous second?" - from Bell Labs

This will be Friday, February 13th at 1831 and 30 seconds EST. If you want to find out what time it will be in your local time, try this Perl script courtesy of Matias Palomec:
perl -e 'print scalar localtime(1234567890),"\n";'

If my calcs are correct, they will run out of digits in another 30 years (approximate). Better go to 64bit unix before then.

[nihil]

Now listen up you Linux fanboys and prepare to meet your doom!

[Muhahahahahahahahahahahahah ]

Friday 13th February 2009 is when your World will abruptly terminate at 11:31:30pm UTC.

I know that 'cause it's what Billygoat Gates paid me to surreptitiously embed into your firmware and hardware microcode.

Actually it is rather interesting, as that is when POSIX will pass a milestone: exactly 1234567890 seconds since the clock first started ticking.

Anyone planning a celebration?

For those of you who realise the true enormity of this event.............. here is a timer to count down your final seconds.

http://coolepochcountdown.com/

[nihil]

Good man! I didn't spot that as it doesn't appear on the front page, and I only look behind the scenes now and then.

I was hoping that it might stimulate some discussion on time handling on various platforms and operating systems.

My first two computers were an Acorn BBC Basic microcomputer and an IBM PCXT. Neither had a CMOS battery so you had to reset the date and time on each bootup.

The first time I really encountered the issue was when we were checking for the elusive "millennium bug". The guys who threw my trash brought me an HP 286, that was not millennium compliant............until I replaced the battery, and found that it did 4 digit years Mind you, I think that the US list price was around $4,000 when it was made?

My next issues were back at work where I had been volunteered to support Access 2 (Office 4.3 suite) and Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS. Yeah, the old guys get the legacy "user mushrooms"

My contacts in MS had told me there would be a last minute fix for Access, which I did help beta test..............all I really had to do was alter a few field sizes. The Lotus wasn't the problem that guys thought, as it uses a 3 digit year with the World beginning on 1 January 1900.

[Cheap Scotch Ron]

Yeah, I noticed that after I posted it. I wasnt exactly sure where to post this and I didnt realize all new posts dont show up on the front page. (That sucks. I dont look behind the scenes unless I am specifically looking for something.)

lol. I remember the old IBM PCs w/o CMOS. We sure have come a long ways.

As you might expect, I dealt with the millennium thing as well, although thankfully, at that point in my career, I was doing strictly BI work, so I had no operational applications to worry about. As I recall, there were a variety of ways that this was handled. The challenge for us was more of a coordination thing. We had many data sources and they all came up with their own approaches which we needed to follow AND we needed to implement on their schedule because we were downstream. Most apps were changed months in advanced, but a few went down to the wire. At one client, they had many of us on call that night, "just in case". It's the only time I've actually been awake for the dropping of the ball since my early twenties. I'm more of a cocktails at 5pm guy these days.

This unix time thing will be very similar. Although upgrading to 64bit OS will make the time field larger, any app that utilizes it will need to be analyzed for impact. Could be at least as big as the millennium bug. God willing, the stock market will recover so that I can retire before then.

CSR

[t34b4g5]

Threads merged

No use having 2 identical threads at the same time.

t34b4g5..

[dinowuff]

/me thinks this thread will un merge on Friday, February 13th at 1831 and 30 seconds EST

/me stands on virtual corner with sign reading "THE END IS NEAR"

[gore]

So did anyone party like it was 1999 ?

[nihil]

Yeah sure,

I dug out my copies of Red Hat 5.2 and S.u.S.E 6.3

They're both 1999 vintage

[dinowuff]

****, the world is still here!