[olug] 1 billion since epoch, tonight

[Adam Korab]

For those that are unsure about UNIX's birthday tonight, here's the scoop:

  epoch

     1. [Unix: probably from astronomical timekeeping] The time and
     date corresponding to 0 in an operating system's clock and
     timestamp values.  Under most Unix versions the epoch is
     00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970; under VMS, it's 00:00:00 of
     November 17, 1858 (base date of the US Naval Observatory's
     ephemerides); on a Macintosh, it's the midnight beginning
     January 1 1904.  System time is measured in seconds or {tick}s
     past the epoch.  Weird problems may ensue when the clock wraps
     around (see {wrap around}), which is not necessarily a rare
     event; on systems counting 10 ticks per second, a signed
     32-bit count of ticks is good only for 6.8 years.  The
     1-tick-per-second clock of Unix is good only until January 18,
     2038, assuming at least some software continues to consider it
     signed and that word lengths don't increase by then.  See also
     {wall time}.

A countdown can be found here: http://www.electromagnetic.net/detach.php

--Adam
-- 
"A workstation without a network is like a geek in a field all by himself.
It looks intriguing, unusual and different but no one will come within 20
feet of it." -- Sun help document

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