Kirill Popov and Frans managed to explain to a monkey like me that Unix time turned 1 billion yesterday (signifying the number of seconds since January 1, 1970). Since the highest number a 32-bit Unix system can register is 2,147,483,647, the Unix equivalent of the Y2K problem is on track for early 2038, when, unless 64-bit time, or some other innovation comes along, the time on a whole lot of systems (including Blammo) will revert to zero (it'll be here sooner than anyone thinks--we'd better get to programming now!).

A further commemorative note: Today is the second anniversary of the Dreamcast launch, as the console system was released on the symmetrical 9/9/99. The next date of note in the Dreamcast timeline will be January 23, 2002 which will be the first anniversary of the first indications that Sega was killing the system off (story). I believe the anniversary of the death of my own Dreamcast will take place sometime this week, as it was one of those classic moments of a product dying scant moments after it's out of warranty. The anniversaries of the cancellations of all those DC games that were in progress when the DC was canned will, of course, be too numerous to mention, but the 16-month active lifespan of the system offers a different perspective on the argument that the unified architecture consoles boast is an advantage over PCs, especially since console manufacturers take a bath on each system they sell in the hopes of recouping their losses on game licensing.

Link of the Day: Why I Lost That Deathmatch. Thanks Dale.
Wild Science: National Security Nightmare (CBS). Thanks Captain Kaos[doh].