OMFG brain short-circuiting
Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more closely⦠the starting instant was actually some hundred million seconds later, the 0‑second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems.
[A Deepness in the Sky]
Damn that’s cool.
I need some help here. What
I need some help here. What OS was born around 1972? OS/360 and UNIX predate that, and CP/M and the microcomputer OSs postdate it.
Dad
I was assuming this was the
I was assuming this was the Unix epoch, although it begins only about 15 million seconds after the moon landing.
I note that it’s quoted as 15 million elsewhere:
http://www.umsl.edu/~sauter/languages/endure.html
http://www.usenet-archive.de/comp.arch/202261-Re_Integer_types_for_128_bit_addressing_.php
so I have to wonder if the 100 million figure is specific to this ebook edition, perhaps an intentional variance from the original text to all ow the publisher to trace the source if the text is distributed elsewhere.
Unix was officially
Unix was officially available for the PDP‑7 in 1969. It had been run on the 7 for several years before that, more if you count when it was called Unics. It was a clone of the earlier Multics. Your 15 million seconds must refer to the release of the PDP-11 version, at least 200,000,000 seconds after it’s first appearance. It wasn’t until 1975 that it was rewritten in C (sacrificing speed for portability), so Vinge’s little bit of C timer code had to have been written between 1972 (when the C conversion began)and 1975 (when it was released.) I would suspect that the timer code was written fairly early in the development cycle. VBG.
I am keeping my eye out for Vige’s books. They look interesting.…
Dad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_epoch –way more info there than I know. For my part, I like the fact that I was born only around 349,200 seconds before the Epoch began. Oh, I guess you’re partly responsible for that. Thanks! Anyhow, do keep an eye out for Vernor Vinge. I think there’s good reason he won all those awards. He’s really restored my faith in sci-fi.