Thursday, May 18, 2006

You were online for how long?!?

When I am not on my own computer, and I want to sign on to AOL Instant Messenger, I use Portable GAIM. But I noticed a little bug: It shows some people having been signed into AIM for over 49,709 days.
49,709 days is around 136 years. In other words, GAIM is saying that some people have been chatting online since 1870!
So, in 1870 the US fought a civil war, the Brooklyn Bridge started being built, Standard Oil became a corporation, Lenin was born and some people signed onto AOL Instant Messenger.

In other news, I am one of the 10,000 finalists in Google+Sony's Da Vinci Code Challenge.
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6 comments:

  1. notElon5/18/06, 8:45 AM

    Ah yes Lenin. Of course he was called Vladimir Illich Ulyanov back then. Only changed his name later when he realized Premier Ulyanov Supreme Dictator just doesn't have the right ring to it.

    Oh, and congratulations on the Da Vinci code thing. I guess you win a free trip to Rome or maybe a Tee-shirt saying "I'm Jesus's great great great great ... grandson so kill me".

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  2. Anonymous5/18/06, 1:07 PM

    the us fought a civil war from 1861-1865. by 1870, recontsruction was already in full swing. but good effort

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  3. Eli Lansey5/18/06, 1:49 PM

    You are right anonymous. Whoops.

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  4. notElon5/18/06, 1:53 PM

    True, but what Eli probably did was go to Wikipedia, and choose 5 events at random. If you look at Januray 26, 1870, you will find "American Civil War: Virginia rejoins the Union" which at first glance would seem to indicate the civil war was still going on or just ended.

    Interestingly enough, Texas also rejoined the US in 1870 but over by its entry the Civil War is not mentioned.

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  5. Etan Bukiet5/18/06, 3:12 PM

    It turns out that with regards to computers and dates, it is sometimes customary to count from the year 1970 (January first - GMT).

    This is what Java (and coincidentally JavaScript) does.

    Though this doesn't explain the extra 100 years, it does explain the 70 part. (I could further hypothesize but will spare you.)

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  6. Anonymous5/18/06, 10:14 PM

    And of course, who could forget that the great country of CANADA (aka Dominion of Canada) began in 1867!!

    It is possible that someone entered a time machine, went into the past, and happened to logged on to AOL. Then, the amount of time would be correct. Of ourse, that would assume that the time machine had some kind of Internet connectivity.

    hmm.....Internet connectivity through time...my brain is starting to hurt!!

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