T w e n t y S i d e d
This post went live at 6:31:30PM ET on Feb 13, 2009. That’s 1234567890 in Unix time. (Seconds since January 1, 1970.)
Just thought you should know.
Programming Language for Games
Game developer Jon Blow is making a programming language just for games. Why is he doing this, and what will it mean for game development?
Seven Springs
The true story of three strange days in 1989, when the last months of my adolescence ran out and the first few sparks of adulthood appeared.
MMO Population Problems
Computers keep getting more powerful. So why do the population caps for massively multiplayer games stay about the same?
Rage 2
The game was a dud, and I'm convinced a big part of that is due to the way the game leaned into its story. Its terrible, cringe-inducing story.
Are Lootboxes Gambling?
Obviously they are. Right? Actually, is this another one of those sneaky hard-to-define things?
…Shamus, you magnificent bastard. How long have you been planning this?
You mean we only have 277 more years before the counter runs full ? what will become of us, o tragedy !
:-D
It’s not every day you pass such an important milestone, this will change the way I keep time forever.
“You mean we only have 277 more years before the counter runs full ? what will become of us, o tragedy !”
Nope. You’re still thinking in decimal. :-) We have less than 30 years until it rolls over (on January 19, 2038, to be exact) at (2^31)-1, or 7FFFFFFF in hex. That’s going to make Y2K look easy to fix.
That’s the most interesting and worthless piece of trivia I’ve ever seen.
Also, did you know that cows can be led upstairs but not downstairs?
Well, I guess that “Dork” label in your picture next to your Escapist columns is rightfully earned… :)
When did you set THIS up to post? I can’t imagine you got lucky…
@Kimari:
Also, did you know that cows can be led upstairs but not downstairs?
As the Patrician once said, “The trick of getting donkeys down from minarets is always to find that part of the donkey which seriously wishes to get down.”
Slashdot knows this too :)
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/13/1534240&from=rss
Geek!
You’re way more of a geek/dork/nerd than I thought you were, Shamus.
@Randomscrub:
You meant “Dork!”, right?
Erik: Only if time_t stays a signed int32. Making it unsigned (which has other issues) will give another 68 years; making it either signed or unsigned int64 will give another … uhh, far more years than I want to think about.
And since 64-bit programs’ time_t is indeed 64-bit (at least on Linux/x86; no idea about various other kernels or architectures), all we have to do is replace everything with a 64-bit binary. That can’t be hard, right? :-P
But to be slightly serious — I think (almost) 30 years to upgrade everything to 64-bit is far more than we need. The 32-bit transition took a few years, but nothing like 30.
It’s Allentine’s day?
Bryan @ #14:
The main problem isn’t “time_t inside a program”, it’s all the places where it’s slapped firmly into a file format or protocol specification. Those bastards are almost impossible to change smoothly (tip, if you EVER design a file/protocol format that needs to represent time down to the second, reserve 16 (if you want to be OK until end of year 9999) or 17 (if you feel better about year 99 999) octets and use ISO date-time strings).
Incidentally, “lack of storage space” seems to have been one of the major reasons behind the Y2k problem, since sticking the century indicator in is a whole whopping 2 characters per record, it was a significant savings, back then and that created a file-format whose legacy, 30-40 years later, probably cost more than it would have cost to spend the money initially.
Heh, i wondered about that when i looked at the tile of the post. I was in a bar last night counting this down with some friends…
Happy progressive Unix time day.
This post brought to you by the letter “U.”
“U” Is for Unix. oF 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 0 oF
I’m going to tell this to everyone I know, just to see what kind of look they’ll give me. :)
This apparently caused some shennanigans in Ragnarok Online …
Now we just have to wait for 9876543210…
NNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Good one though!
Yep, ultimate nerdery. Well played sir, well played.