This forum has been around THAT long?!

[Volug]

Yeah, I checked for previous threads about this.

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff132/MasatoHyuga/0_o.jpg

Some sort of bug, maybe?:smallconfused:

[Hoplite]

That would make mr Burlew very very old. :smalltongue:

[Ego Slayer]

It happened when we switched servers the first time. Anyone who hasn't logged in since the switch still has that in their profiles.

Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time

[Roland St. Jude]

Back then the boards were all conducted via mail. It was very slow.

Oh, and for a while in 2004, the boards time-traveled to 2017.

Giant in the Playground Message Boards - we play fast and loose with the laws of space and time. :smallsmile:

[BizzaroStormy]

Yeah until you beat it into submission.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

Come on, now. Play nice.

Y'know it's only fun and games until the time-space continuum loses an eye…

[Lorn]

With a join date several years after their last activity, that's impressive...

[Rawhide]

http://halshop.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/phpw9jvl0pm.jpg


It is a bug that happened during import from YaBB to vBulletin, for some people (but not all) the last activity date, as well as some other fields, were not imported correctly.

[The Demented One]

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff. The mods just recognize that fact.

[Haruki-kun]

Giant in the Playground Message Boards - we play fast and loose with the laws of space and time. :smallsmile:

Can I sig that, PLEASE???

[Ecalsneerg]

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff. The mods just recognize that fact.

I love that your post and avatar reference each other

[Roland St. Jude]

Can I sig that, PLEASE???

Absolutely. :smallsmile:

[Narmoth]

how long has this forum actually existed?

[Jack Squat]

My guess would be August 6th 2003, as that's the join date Rich has.

[metallica48423]

Sorry. I know this is my first post and all but as a geek I have to:

EPOCH FAIL!

This usually happens when something returns a null or 0 timestamp. YaBB was somewhat notorious for having problems with timestamps. For more info, see the wikipedia article on the unix epoch.

[The Extinguisher]

Oh, and for a while in 2004, the boards time-traveled to 2017.


Oh man, that was a crazy 13 years.

[Inhuman Bot]

well, he did have this before OOTS, so I can't say I'am suprised.

Then again, this is the place where I've posted anywhere from hours to years into the future..

[Saph]

Impressive. Never realised we had such a history.

- Saph

[Moff Chumley]

On the GitP forums, we've been conducting geeky versus threads, being elitist towards other webcomics, and generally being awesome since Johnny Rotten was a sniffly little kid. :smallcool:

[Chronos]

Sorry. I know this is my first post and all but as a geek I have to:

EPOCH FAIL!To elaborate: Most computer systems don't keep track of time internally in a year/month/day/hour/minute/second format, since that's an absolute pain to work with (quick quiz: What's January 5, 2006 minus August 17, 1998?). Instead, most computer systems just use a single number for the time, which is just a continuous count of seconds or milliseconds since some "epoch time", which is given the value of 0 (of course, it converts it back to the year/month/day/hour/minute/second nonsense for most purposes of communicating with humans). Now, computers are fairly recent inventions, and don't often have to deal with dates from before when they were invented, so a lot of computer systems use midnight (GMT) of January 1st, 1970 for their zero time.

So, in the case at hand: The message board database has a cell somewhere for "last activity" for every member. This time is stored as a single number, because that's the easiest way to do it. But for some members, there isn't any information on the last activity, so the database just puts a zero there. When the board software then converts that zero into a human-readable time for the user profile page, it turns it into midnight, January 1, 1970, or since we're in the US, not England, a few hours before that time, or some time in the evening of December 31, 1969.

If you look for it, you'll encounter that same time in many other places (e-mail time stamps come to mind). The cause is usually more or less the same: Time information is missing somewhere, the information that should be present is replaced with a zero, and the zero gets translated to December 31, 1969.

[Spiryt]

stuff

Daaamn, he's understanding computers!
Thanks for the info in other words.

[Bayar]

Random fact: My computer's zero time is 1 Jan 2003.

[Rawhide]

Actually, there is not a zero value in the field. Rather, there is an invalid value in the field. Rather than crash and refuse to work, vBulletin ignores all of the illegal values.

[metallica48423]

Actually, there is not a zero value in the field. Rather, there is an invalid value in the field. Rather than crash and refuse to work, vBulletin ignores all of the illegal values.

Actually, thats a rather good way to do it. I find it is generally better to ignore an invalid/null value than confuse someone and throw them a 1969/1970 date. Either way, good stuff :)

[Firestar27]

Actually, thats a rather good way to do it. I find it is generally better to ignore an invalid/null value than confuse someone and throw them a 1969/1970 date. Either way, good stuff :)

I think he means that instead of crashing, it has a null value. It has to display something, so it displays the 0 value by default.

[SilentNight]

Come on, now. Play nice.

Y'know it's only fun and games until the time-space continuum loses an eye…
Then it's hilarious. :smallbiggrin:

[Shhalahr Windrider]

Then it's hilarious. :smallbiggrin:

Finally! Someone had to say it, eventually! :smallbiggrin:

[Gamerlord]

Hmmmmm.....(caues a glitch that caues this ENTIRE fourm to fast-foward to 2100....
(5 hours later comes back)
Wow in the future the thread can transform into a HUGE ship that go go up to warp factor 7

[Charity]

I remember when all this was just fields...

[Storm Bringer]

I remember when all this was just fields...

*looks out the window at the sea of mud, bearly visable in the rain*

"what, last week?":smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin: