Epoch Win!
Posted on February 12, 2009 - No Comments »
UNIX systems and their derivatives store the current datetime as a single number — the number of seconds since 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00[1], known as the Unix Epoch (pronounced “epic”). This guarantees that odd dates such as 1 Jan 2000 and 29 Feb 2004 do not cause problems, and makes date calculations really easy. As an added bonus, geeks around the world will celebrate 13 Feb 2009 as a milestone in UNIX history. Why?
Take a look at the current UNIX timestamp: .
Based on that number, and your powers of estimation, what do you think that number will be on 13 Feb 2009 23:31:30 UTC (18:31:30 EST)?
Yeah, that’s right: 1234567890. Party Time[2].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time
[2] http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7070799469