NationStates Jolt Archive

Can anyone tell me how to interpret this?

<LASTLOGIN>1082137932</LASTLOGIN>

Is it some kind of encrypted date or session ID?

Thanks,
Mike

That's evil Unix time.

In other words, your last login was 1,082,137,932 seconds after some date. I forget the date.

That's evil Unix time.

In other words, your last login was 1,082,137,932 seconds after some date. I forget the date.

31 December 1969.

That's evil Unix time.

In other words, your last login was 1,082,137,932 seconds after some date. I forget the date.

31 December 1969.

Dammit! I thought that was it, but didn't want to put the wrong date. BAH!

Sorry, wait. WHY? Did Unix even exist in 1969? Hell, did the Internet exist in 1969?

unix was around b4 the net

unix was around b4 the net

Sorry, can I get an answer to my question in English? 8)

unix was around b4 the net

Sorry, can I get an answer to my question in English? 8)

Unix is a programming language, wholly separate from the internet, and it predates the internet by a good many years.

Yeah, but why does it date things from 1969?

Thanks, I figured that was what it was.

I think Javascript does the same thing. Seems that I remember one time fiddling with date formatting, and the whole thing centered around seconds since a date in the 1960s.

Yeah, but why does it date things from 1969?

That was the day some UNIX guy started operating his stuff. In other words: "Last log in was 1,082,137,932 seconds after the implemention of UNIX".

Unix isn't a programming language, nor was that time selected based on completion of implementation and turning a system on.


Unix is a specification for Operating Systems (OS). When an OS meets the specifications it is considered Unix. There are many different implementations, like SGI has IRIX, Sun has Solaris, there's HP-UX, AIX, etc... Some systems are not 100% up to spec and will have some modifications for various reasons. They're "Unix-like" or "based on Unix".

In Unix, the date/time is described as one number, the amount of seconds from a specific time. This was set after that time had already passed, and was done because it is a simple standard which doesn't take a lot of memory, it is easy to compare and calculate using date/time values, easy to keep track of for the system, and initially it was thought Unix wasn't gonna live long enough for that clock to run until the maximum possible number in the spec. Now it looks like it will ;)

Ballotonia

This is also, incidentally, why the forums sometimes say that the last post was in 1969.