why are posts dated 1970?

[jackgiantkiller]

have we found a way to time travel?

[wayfriend]

[ I moved this topic to the Q&A forum. ]

[I'm Murrin]

A bug related to problems with our post database some time back, I think. Posts earlier than some date all got reset to the default start date, which is in 1970.

[Akasri]

That hearkens back to the time when people discussed the Thomas Covenant books even before they were written. In fact, you could say that SRD got a lot of great ideas from some of the 1970 posts on this forum. I mean, there are even passages quoted here that show up in the books which were written long after 1970!!

[wayfriend]

BTW, if anyone is interested and doesn't yet know ... software frequently stores times as a really big number. Specifically, as the number of seconds since midnight Jan 1, 1970. Also, software frequently will, when there is a problem, do the best it can, cough something up, and move on, rather than stop dead. So if you ask it for a time, and there is a problem retrieving the time, it'll do the best it can and cough up a zero - which equals midnight Jan 1, 1970. Then it might be adjusted for timezone, and so you might see 9pm Dec 31 1969, or 3am Jan 1, 1970.

In software, midnight Jan 1, 1970 is "the epoch". Nothing has ever occurred before "the epoch", at least, not as far as programmers are concerned.

[Savor Dam]

Phooey. I wrote my first program prior to that date.
Admittedly, it was the programming equivalent of reading "See Spot Run..."

[High Lord Tolkien]

In software, midnight Jan 1, 1970 is "the epoch". Nothing has ever occurred before "the epoch", at least, not as far as programmers are concerned.

[wayfriend]

Yeah, like your not the biggest.

[sindatur]

We had a new poster a couple weeks back, who racked up 1 Million posts, or something outlandish like that on their first day of posting.

And we thought Sarge and Avatar were prolific, LOL

[I'm Murrin]

In software, midnight Jan 1, 1970 is "the epoch". Nothing has ever occurred before "the epoch", at least, not as far as programmers are concerned.

Microsoft Excel has date number 1 set to 1/1/1900.

[sgt.null]

We had a new poster a couple weeks back, who racked up 1 Million posts, or something outlandish like that on their first day of posting.

And we thought Sarge and Avatar were prolific, LOL

can i has his wgd's?

[Avatar]

He didn't get WGD's for them. IT was just some bug. Same way that you sometimes get told you have 16477 private messages.

--A

[dANdeLION]

You guys are all wrong. Here's the truth, as explained by me back in '05:

The Origin Of Kevin's Watch

The Watch was created in December of '69, a couple of hours after danlo woke up from a drug-induced coma in the empty field where Woodstock had happened a mere three months earlier. His first thought was, 'Man, Jimi ROCKS!". Then, the dream came back to him. See, during danlo's drug-induced coma (did I mention his coma was drug-induced?), he drempt of the illustrative characters we have come to know and grudgingly accept as High Lord Jay, Alynna, Vain, Sevothtarte and the like. And danlo drempt of a special place where they all lived; a place filled with all sorts of cool people dedicated to truth, justice, and repelling the evil forces of the Terry Brooks Hack Team, and the one known only as the Dark Bird. Oh, and he drempt of the THOOLAH idiots, too. That's what you get for dropping acid, danlo.

Anyway, back to my riveting story. Lying in the field next to him was a young Bill Gates, and when he awoke, danlo described his dream to him. Intrigued, Bill agreed to create and market small, affordable 'Personal Computors' for people to own and use, so that danlo would have a venue to house his concept of a 'Kevin's Watch', and get filthy rich in the process.

Albert Gore happened to be wandering nearby when he overheard this fascinating discourse, and agreed to help danlo and Bill by inventing an 'Internet' by which danlo could share his wonderful ideas with the rest of the world (and help Bill get richer, while winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his altruistic efforts.).

Together, they decided to contact a professional writer to write several books that would be the basis of the whole 'Kevin's Watch' concept; the writer they chose is known to us all as the inmitible Stephen R. Donaldson (Stephen King, their first choice, threw them out of his house, shouting "O, Discordia!"). The reason the Watch appears to be only five years old is because A) these ideas take time to complete, and B) danlo crashed his VW bus into the arch of time, bending it somewhat.

And thus, so born was Kevin's Watch.

[aliantha]

You guys are all wrong. Here's the truth, as explained by me back in '05:

The Origin Of Kevin's Watch

The Watch was created in December of '69, a couple of hours after danlo woke up from a drug-induced coma in the empty field where Woodstock had happened a mere three months earlier. His first thought was, 'Man, Jimi ROCKS!". Then, the dream came back to him. See, during danlo's drug-induced coma (did I mention his coma was drug-induced?), he drempt of the illustrative characters we have come to know and grudgingly accept as High Lord Jay, Alynna, Vain, Sevothtarte and the like. And danlo drempt of a special place where they all lived; a place filled with all sorts of cool people dedicated to truth, justice, and repelling the evil forces of the Terry Brooks Hack Team, and the one known only as the Dark Bird. Oh, and he drempt of the THOOLAH idiots, too. That's what you get for dropping acid, danlo.

Anyway, back to my riveting story. Lying in the field next to him was a young Bill Gates, and when he awoke, danlo described his dream to him. Intrigued, Bill agreed to create and market small, affordable 'Personal Computors' for people to own and use, so that danlo would have a venue to house his concept of a 'Kevin's Watch', and get filthy rich in the process.

Albert Gore happened to be wandering nearby when he overheard this fascinating discourse, and agreed to help danlo and Bill by inventing an 'Internet' by which danlo could share his wonderful ideas with the rest of the world (and help Bill get richer, while winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his altruistic efforts.).

Together, they decided to contact a professional writer to write several books that would be the basis of the whole 'Kevin's Watch' concept; the writer they chose is known to us all as the inmitible Stephen R. Donaldson (Stephen King, their first choice, threw them out of his house, shouting "O, Discordia!"). The reason the Watch appears to be only five years old is because A) these ideas take time to complete, and B) danlo crashed his VW bus into the arch of time, bending it somewhat.

And thus, so born was Kevin's Watch.

Good times, good times.

[danlo]

(...must of missed that! ) But it IS "high"ly interesting that SRD, Gates and myself (and possibly Buggs Bunny) have had major epiphanies in Albuquerque ...