Difference between revisions of "Talk:1467: Email"

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(Correcting myself on something)
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:The number is literally a count of <s>milli</s>seconds between the Unix "Epoch" (1/1/1970 at 00:00:00).  The Unix standard uses a single large number to represent the absolute amount of time that has passed since that time.  Calendar algorithms know how to translate that number into a human-readable date/time (remember, the Gregorian calendar and the 12/24-hour clock are really just human-devised methods to tell what day and time it is).  There are lots of good whitepapers that describe how these algorithms work, but such an explanation would be far too complex for this wiki. [[User:KieferSkunk|KieferSkunk]] ([[User talk:KieferSkunk|talk]]) 21:06, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
 
:The number is literally a count of <s>milli</s>seconds between the Unix "Epoch" (1/1/1970 at 00:00:00).  The Unix standard uses a single large number to represent the absolute amount of time that has passed since that time.  Calendar algorithms know how to translate that number into a human-readable date/time (remember, the Gregorian calendar and the 12/24-hour clock are really just human-devised methods to tell what day and time it is).  There are lots of good whitepapers that describe how these algorithms work, but such an explanation would be far too complex for this wiki. [[User:KieferSkunk|KieferSkunk]] ([[User talk:KieferSkunk|talk]]) 21:06, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
 
::Whoops - number of SECONDS since epoch, not milliseconds.  Sorry. :) [[User:KieferSkunk|KieferSkunk]] ([[User talk:KieferSkunk|talk]]) 21:25, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
 
::Whoops - number of SECONDS since epoch, not milliseconds.  Sorry. :) [[User:KieferSkunk|KieferSkunk]] ([[User talk:KieferSkunk|talk]]) 21:25, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
 +
:::By the way, a handy site for this is http://www.unixtimestamp.com/index.php .
  
 
the title text gives a date of 30 not 31 which means randell made a mistake!!!
 
the title text gives a date of 30 not 31 which means randell made a mistake!!!
 
refer to http://www.unixtimestamp.com/index.php [[User:Needforsuv|Needforsuv]] ([[User talk:Needforsuv|talk]]) 19:03, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
 
refer to http://www.unixtimestamp.com/index.php [[User:Needforsuv|Needforsuv]] ([[User talk:Needforsuv|talk]]) 19:03, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
 
:I have added that Randall made a mistake with 30 vs 31 and have also made a trivia entry that explains how the unix time stamp string becomes the specific date. Since this is called a unic time stamp it also makes sense to call it a unix time although it is also used by other languages. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:25, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
 
:I have added that Randall made a mistake with 30 vs 31 and have also made a trivia entry that explains how the unix time stamp string becomes the specific date. Since this is called a unic time stamp it also makes sense to call it a unix time although it is also used by other languages. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:25, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Revision as of 21:34, 1 January 2015

The strftime format used is probably %Y-%M-%D %h:%m:%s, which visibly looks as if it will yield a date and time, yet doesn't. A more correct format would have been %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S. ‎197.234.242.236 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

There's a strange thing with the date string : why 30 ? The timestamp shows 31 as a day in month and 5:54 which doesn't match 30... 54 looks like the week in year but matches with the minutes. Goufalite (talk) 09:57, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The explanation now mentions that Randall goofed - the string he typed in states "30" when it should be "31". KieferSkunk (talk) 21:06, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

What on earth does 'Created for a live studio audience mean'?! 141.101.106.143 10:03, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

"Unix" is misleading. Sure, unix "date" command is using this kind of formating, but it's also in C standard (specifically, C89 and C99) and available in most other programming languages standard libraries (including perl, php, python, ruby), often as ONLY way to format date without fetching every component separately. -- Hkmaly (talk) 13:15, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The C standard is largely based on the earlier Unix standard, so referring to "Unix" time is in fact correct and will make more sense to a larger set of readers (most computer users are at least vaguely aware of Unix and how it predates virtually all modern OSes, while less of them understand programming languages, let alone the various standards that exist in them). KieferSkunk (talk) 21:06, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm fairly confident that I used the term "email" before 1993, because of what I was doing before that date. But I also couldn't give any definitive sources. And I mean the name, not just the general Port 25 thing or its predecessors. But meh, no real proof unless I get lucky digging around in 5.25" floppies for old backups that I doubt I could read anyway... 141.101.98.191 13:23, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

People were using the term "email" back in the days of modem-based bulletin-board systems (BBSes) and time-sharing services well before those systems were interconnected via the Internet. But back then, those were pretty specialized systems with specialized user groups. The explanation refers to when email became widely accessible to anyone with the ability to connect to the Internet (and coincided with the rise of "free" ISPs - "free" in quotes because most of them placed adware on your computer). 1998 is the year most often cited as the point where the Internet went fully mainstream - before that, it was still primarily a place for computer geeks. KieferSkunk (talk) 21:06, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Might be worth explaining %D vs %x for other locales. Glen442 (talk) 15:28, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

How does "1420001642" translate into "2014-12-31 at 04:54:02"? Smperron (talk) 16:35, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The number is literally a count of milliseconds between the Unix "Epoch" (1/1/1970 at 00:00:00). The Unix standard uses a single large number to represent the absolute amount of time that has passed since that time. Calendar algorithms know how to translate that number into a human-readable date/time (remember, the Gregorian calendar and the 12/24-hour clock are really just human-devised methods to tell what day and time it is). There are lots of good whitepapers that describe how these algorithms work, but such an explanation would be far too complex for this wiki. KieferSkunk (talk) 21:06, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
Whoops - number of SECONDS since epoch, not milliseconds. Sorry. :) KieferSkunk (talk) 21:25, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
By the way, a handy site for this is http://www.unixtimestamp.com/index.php .

the title text gives a date of 30 not 31 which means randell made a mistake!!! refer to http://www.unixtimestamp.com/index.php Needforsuv (talk) 19:03, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I have added that Randall made a mistake with 30 vs 31 and have also made a trivia entry that explains how the unix time stamp string becomes the specific date. Since this is called a unic time stamp it also makes sense to call it a unix time although it is also used by other languages. Kynde (talk) 12:25, 1 January 2015 (UTC)