This afternoon, party like it's 1234567890 Unix time
By Ross Miller 
posted February 13th 2009 5:41AM
posted February 13th 2009 5:41AM
[Via Wired]
posted February 13th 2009 5:41AM
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1234567890th comment!
3..2...1...
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
1 second to party? I'll have a big shot of my best Cognac!
Serious bragging rights for whoever can get the most drunk at this party.
Jan 1 1970....Why that date? Whhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyy?
Well, obviously you've got the pre-party and after party festivities, and the countdown to the second is just the novelty of the occasion, like on New Year.
Won't Unix time go bye bye once that 2038 problem occurs/doesn't occur?
You'd hope 64 bit computers would be widely used by then, increasing the date range by... a lot.
Hopefully by that time we'll just extend it by using a 64-bit integer. That will give us another 0.5(2^64-2^32) seconds to think up something else (or just use 128-bit integers). Assuming, of course, we survive that long.
Not with 64bit time. My comp didnt give date for 2^64 or even 2^63 probably due to calculation stuff happening behind, but even 2^55 date gives (Finnish date format):
$ date -d @`echo "2^55" | bc`
su 13.6.1141709097 08:26:08 +0200
...so we got some time...
Ah...just pass it off to some future generation to worry about. I'm sure I'll be dead by the ripe old age of...56! WAIT! I might not be dead by then! We need to get on this!
Two corrections ....
All time aware operating system today uses NTP (Network Time Protocol) - not only UNIX/Linux.
NTP uses 32 bit signed value to count the seconds since first of january 1970.
This makes 31 bit usable (the first bit is to say if the value is plus or minus (after or before first january 1970).
With 31 bit you can count to 2147483647 seconds (or a little over 68 years - january 2038)
:-) Williams_Nest
Correction: Two's complement on most machines these days =)
Unless you like your -0s
Negative zeroes?
Ah...Univac!
Correction: NTP uses an January 1st 1900 epoch, so the first "wrap" will occur in 2036, two years short of the UNIX's year 2038. But this only applies to NTP v3 (the only RFC standard to date) and the 32 bits version of NTP4. By that time we can imagine that everyone will have switched to either the 64 bit tier of NTP4 or to the future NTP v5 already in development by Mills.
My 2 cents
Y2K38 BUG! EVERYONE FREAK OUT!!
That being said, party at my place.
Couldn't you guys have posted a decent picture at the very least? That guy looks like a douche.
That's not a guy, that's Prince.
It's ironic that you have a Ministry of Sound profile pic and don't know who Prince is.
He IS still a douche though, so you did get that right.
WTF? I know who Prince is but what do I say- "Prince looks like a douche?"
@WickedB: MoS != Prince. There are other artists in its catalog.
I'd really advise you to be quiet. You're really not making much sense.
whee.
Epoch Win!
ROFL!!!
Genious!
@Zane, "that guy" is Prince.
Whohoo!
http://www.coolepochcountdown.com/
The universe started in 1970. Anyone claiming to be over 38 is lying about their age.
So no one was born between January 1 and February 13 1970?
If there are any, they are killjoys or don't read xkcd.
Awesome! I can't wait
I can't wait for 02 April 2012 at 02:22:17 GMT
That will be 1333333337 o'clock in Unix time :)
"we'll see you December 22, 2282 at 3:13:30PM ET"
If you consider using your 4th generation neural sensor array and integrated image processing system "seeing", well then yeah, we'll see you then.
I think more historic events will be:
9021090210 (90210 season 90210)
6666666666 (The Apocalypse)
or 7777777777, when all of the slot machines in the world will be robbed
Watch out...maybe some viruses will trigger at this time.
$5 says that Prince will want his pic taken down because it impinges on his "intellectual" property
Nerdiest post EVA!
That's hilarious.
www.toddruth.com
Surely it doesn't require ET after the time "As of 6:31:30PM ET" as it will be 1234567890 unix time @ 6:31:30PM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.!
No, Unix time is generally assumed to be UTC.
Nice try, though.
It'll be like the Kentucky Derby, 3 hours of pre-party, 1 second of event, 3 hours of after party.
oh no thats gonna be when conficker strikes!!!
You guys better be careful... Prince's legal team is notorious for sending out cease and desist letters for using his image without permission and payment.
I expect they'll start whining at you soon.
Meh, they'll just mock their letter and get 99% of all tech blogs to do the same. I'm sure frequent readers know what I'm talking about. It
Meh, they'll just mock their letter and get 99% of all tech blogs to do the same. I'm sure frequent readers know what I'm talking about. Ahh, magenta, the good ol' times when t-mobile didn't know when writing a letter to one of the biggest tech blogs was a bag idea.
@ Ross
as opposed to a sac idea?
"not counting leap seconds" is false, epoch time only measure time which has passed. Leap seconds are a modification to how a point in time is labeled. I.E. leap seconds have absolutely no effect whatsoever on epoch time.
Hence how it doesn't count "leap seconds."