Page 68 of Space Exploration Forum

[jkmccrann]

Here's something that I've noticed, but I'm not sure if many of the rest of you out there have noticed, but if you go to the last page of the Space Exploration thread, it tries to tell me that some of those threads were last posted to in December 1969 and January 1970! Can anyone explain that?

I'm totally confused by that because I'm pretty certain the Internet wasn't really around 35+ years ago.

[Candy]

Thank you for pointing that out, jkmccrann!

[01101001]

December 1969 and January 1970!
Something funny happened to the records' date fields so that they got set to zero, and zero in the Unix epoch is the first second of 1970 UTC (and then possibly adjusted for display to your preferred time zone).

[jkmccrann]

Cheers, had totally forgotten about Unix, but now you mention it, I do recall that those dates had something to do with Unix.!

:)

[Candy]

Great catch, jkmccrann!

[publiusr]

That was the old Rotary-net.

"Thread please.."

I'm trying to get to Popular Skeptic. About the ad for that new car...the..Vega.

"That is a party line site, sir"

[Enzp]

"Thread please.."

OK, you got me, I laughed out loud.

I suppose it made a little noise when it connected? A token ring?

Cell phone? Nah, prisoners have to use the pay phone in the hall.

[jumbo]

Not just unix either. Windows, unless your coding has some fiddles to it, often represents dates as long ints. The number being the seconds since the beginning of new years day 1970 as well.

[publiusr]

"Thread please.."

OK, you got me, I laughed out loud.

I suppose it made a little noise when it connected? A token ring?

"Do--Da--Dee! We're sorry, the website you linked to is no longer in service... the new page is..."

[Kemal]

That was back when the board was stored on those big magnetic tape reels, and your messages had to be printed on green-striped paper to be read.

[publiusr]

Yeah, but I had this nifty punchcard machine mod where the case look like the Millenium Falcon!