Did You Party Like It Was 1234567890?
Only technophiles would recognize this event, but at 3:31 PM PST on Friday the 13th, 2009, Unix time reached 1234567890. Unix time is the number of seconds since the beginning of the "Unix Epoch" at midnight UTC on January 1st, 1970 (not including leap seconds).
Celebrations abounded (seriously!), but now(!) there is the dread of the Epochalypse. Anyone remember the Y2K scare? While that mostly fizzled, there is a similar scenario scheduled for Tuesday, January 19, 2038.
Yep, that year, you'll have the same principle as Y2K. Systems using a 32-bit signed integer will wrap around, and be stored internally as a negative value, meaning that it'll be 1901 (sorta). That's bound to create software havoc.
The big problem is that while Y2K could be easily understood by Joe Schmo, this is something only computer scientists and geeks might see coming. Hopefully, there will be an early enough alert so that people take it seriously.
For now, let's party like it's 1234567890!
Celebrations abounded (seriously!), but now(!) there is the dread of the Epochalypse. Anyone remember the Y2K scare? While that mostly fizzled, there is a similar scenario scheduled for Tuesday, January 19, 2038.
The big problem is that while Y2K could be easily understood by Joe Schmo, this is something only computer scientists and geeks might see coming. Hopefully, there will be an early enough alert so that people take it seriously.
For now, let's party like it's 1234567890!
