On one of my many trips around wikipedia I stumbled across a date that has been called the real millennium bug.
Contrary to belief, the computers which run the most important systems including most webservers and database systems run on a variant of Unix/Linux or Unix-like aka *Nix.
All these operating systems operate a time keeping mechanism that starts from 1st January 1970
The measure of this time keeping is that it counts in seconds from this.
Most versions installed are 32bit Operating Systems which means that the largest number in seconds that can be represented would occur at 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038
This is the Year 2038 problem (or Y2K38 bug) and the result is that all these computers unless upgraded to a 64bit OS (or other patches applied) will have their calendar reset to 1st January 00:00 at 03:14:08 on 19th Jan 2038. 64 bit OS’s will last well into the future – 290 billion years. A less radical solution of assigning the size of the time character to unsigned 32 bits would extend the problem till the year 2106 but could cause other problems. Other suggestions are to reset the date that is counted from from 1970 to 2000 which would extend the problem by 30 years.
I’m sure a solution will be found, but given that these operating systems are not found as often in home computers (with the exception of linux and Mac OSX operating systems) it has not become as well known but am sure that it will hit the press at some point in the future.
As usual I’ve been slack with upgrading my blog’s software, and it’s only been a few spammers signing up that has prompted me to upgrade things. And again, I’ve refreshed the ip2nation database & plugin to cater for any unusual countries or ip addresses. Things seem to be working, but as usual if you spot anything odd drop me a line and i can do some investigation.
The main reason for my post though is I’ve just installed an autotagger (I haven’t been tagging my posts in the past) and want to see whether it works.
With a bit of luck if I drop some keywords in it should add the relevant tags
As we all know now Barack Obama is going to be the first black US president, but I’m not going to talk about the in’s and out’s of the election or the merits of his victory.
Instead I give you Dizzee Rascal on newsnight interviewed by Jeremy Paxman – the result is rather comical
(in the next section i’ve completely copied the transcript of the interview into chunks in case the link isn’t available in the future and to highlight certain parts. DR is Dizzee Rascal, JP is Jeremy Paxman)
The highlights of the interview are:
• When asked if the UK could have a black president it went as follows:
JP: … could you see this happening in Britain? DR: Yeah. In time. JP: You’re rather positive! DR: Yeah, man. Why not, man? There’s a first time for everything, isn’t there? … if you believe you can achieve, innit?
Radio One have been mocking this final line but at the same time it almost is something the “yoof” of today could take to heart.
• When asked on political parties he acknowledged they existed but little else:
JP: Dizzee Rascal, do you believe in political parties in Britain? DR: Yeah, they exist. I believe in ‘em … I don’t know if it makes a difference. But you know what I mean. It is what it is. Politicians … say what they say – you might get every now and again a genuine one, innit? But I think people, like, as a whole make the difference …
• When asked if he considered himself British, Paxman calls him “Mr Rascal”. Dizzee then comes out with a classic on who could run the country:
JP: Dizzee Rascal, Mr Rascal, do you feel yourself to be British? DR: Of course I’m British, man! You know me! … what’s good. I think it don’t matter what colour you are, it matters what colour your heart is and your intentions. I think a black man, purple man, Martian man can run the country … as long as he does right by the people.
• And finally, Dizzee reckons he could run for PM and that Obama’s victory couldn’t of happened if he hadn’t embraced hip hop:
JP: Well why don’t you run for office? DR: See, that’s a very good idea. I might have to do that one day. Dizzee Rascal for prime minister, yeah! Wassappenin’! Barack Obama embraced hip-hop, man. That’s the way he got through to kids. There was a more young vote ever. And it was through hip-hop!
There’s a new “drug” also known as a Herbal Powder going round called Akuz (sorry, best link i could find in 2 minutes).
Apparently they had problems with people switching the powder for cocaine when it first launched, but the bottle is now tamper proof so you won’t be sold coke inadvertently.
The company who makes it has been saying it’s all “Just Harmless Fun” when asked whether it encourages young people to take drugs that like Akuz are sniffed up the nose. It’s an orange powder which apparently makes your nose burn and gives a bit of a sugar-rush like sensation. It turns your snot orange.
stonysleep.com has been running for a while (10 or 11 years I think), admittedly not in blog form for all that time.
Now, there’s a website called yourwebsitevalue.com which values a website based on various criteria. Back in July we were worth less than $50, but I went to it today and was surprised to see the value zoom up to $208:
How Cool is that!?! Though am a little surprised what’s happened in that time to cause that. Perhaps google has finally got round to indexing all the blog so put a higher pricetag on it.
Anyways, check it out i you have a website or are curious how much some of the more well known sites are worth
Reduce the population and size of the earth such that it has a total of 100 people
Split them into the breakdown on the earth based on ethnicity and various statistics to create the miniature earth.
It shows how stark the divide is between those who live in the western world and those who do not
I’ve been meaning to get one of these for a while, and just my luck there was one in the returned items sale at the weekend.
It’s great fun and has meant that I’ve started to tinker around with FreeBSD again which is installed on an old Dell PC.
What’s a KVM Switch you ask? Well, what it lets you do is have one keyboard, one mouse, one monitor running off 2 computers: Keyboard, Video, Mouse Switch. It has a little button that you press to switch between the two.
The video is the key part and that works incredibly smoothly. The Keyboard and Mouse part seem a bit choppy, though that’s probably more related to FreeBSD not being setup to use USB Keyboards & Mice. I’ve got PS/2 ones plugged directly in which seem to do the job.
It looks a little messy but believe me it’s an absolute joy to be able to switch between the 2 at the touch of a button.
And infact, I’ve got the network configuration linked into the router so I can use the internet connection.
Konqueror Running in KDE on FreeBSD:
It was version 4.9 that I installed before, and things have moved on so much – I reckon I mucked the install up a bit when I did it as the only user that seems to work smoothly is root, and the shutdown command breaks unless you put the -h flag (halt). Therefore, can see myself reinstalling it all – probably the latest version.
Anyway, this gadget should keep me amused for a while
I don’t know if it’s that we have thick walls in the house or i’m just unlucky with routers, but after my Linksys WAG-54G router’s 4 port hub died I decided it was time to upgrade. I went for the Belkin Mimo G+ Router.
It’s been generally good with one exception – the wireless part of the router is a pain in the neck. It’s as if it goes to sleep. Having tried everything in the settings, forked out for something they’re now calling a range extender.
They’re clever gadgets that piggy-back off the ring main electrical circuit, essentially turning any plug socket into a network point. They’re not cheap, and the one i’ve gone for is the wireless version, so doesn’t involve any change from a user end.
It works like this:
So what you do is plug a cable from the router into the XE102 plug which is plugged into the mains
Then you simply plug the WGX102 in in the room you want to get the access and you have wireless networking in that area. Takes a bit of configuring to get all the settings synced up but is pretty easy.
So far, it seems to be working well.
On another subject, I thought I’d seen every video format that’s out there from mpg, avi, divx, qt mov, asx, wmv, mp4 etc… the list goes on. But I came across one last week that had me completely baffled: MKV
And the reason for it’s appearance: Hi Definition TV recording
It’s a container format similar to avi, asf, mp4 so will play in MPlayer, VLC and a host of other players. It will also play in quicktime, but you first need to install Perian for OS X
Yesterday my iPod crashed while I was listening to a Sigur Rós album
Normally when that happens (not necessarily while listening to Sigur Rós!) I hold the menu and enter buttons down for 5-10 seconds and it reboots, but this time that didn’t work
I did a google search and found a forum post on macrumors.com that worked a charm:
- Plug the iPod into the power charger ONLY and not the computer
- Toggle the hold switch to on and then off
- Hold the MENU and Select (center) portion of the wheel down simultaneously for ten seconds.
It means you need to have a mains charger which you don’t get out of the box when you buy a new iPod
I was about to get the putty knife out and pull the battery out to reboot it, which am glad I didn’t have to do
September 19th, 2009 by 
stonysleep 
