Hi all....
got a question re: Unix Dates
on my server Unix Date for 01-Aug-2001 is 996642000
my question is what happens to dates and time beyond the 1000000000 mark...does it just keep going? if so just how far can it go.....does anyone have any info on this? much appreciated..thanks Rob

No problem. Don't care about that.

1000000000 is of no significance for computers, since computers are binary and 1 billion is actually:

111011100110101100101000000000 (in binary)

The real problem occurs when we reach the limit for unsigned integers, which is:

1111111111111111111111111111111 (one more digit than the one before) which is (2^32 - 1) seconds since the beginning of 1970 - and it will happen at Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038 UTC to all 32-bit computers.

However, given that both AMD and Intel are moving to 64 bit processors (other CPU's have been 64 for some time now) I would doubt that any 32-bit computers having this vulnerability will still be around in 10 years. Think about this - who still has their computers from 10 years ago, much less 30 years ago?

I don't think we have anything to worry about

Jason Rhinelander
Gossamer Threads
jason@gossamer-threads.com