My computer = time machine?

**No Cow: Time seems to be running backwards. Beware of paradoxes: please avoid killing your father.**

It's this attention to detail that I love...

I'm so happy someone ran into that one In the absence of a time machine, none of that was ever tested.

And yes, when I was writing the ping timeouts, I realised that I was assuming that time was doing normal sensible stuff, progressing by about a second for every second that the computer counted. And in a world of timezone-crossing jet-setters and daylight saving time and network lag and people with interestingly configured system clocks, there was no reason that an effect could not precede the cause, or a program could not receive a "ping" dated at some point in the future, or from before the previous "ping" received, or something.

Since, to a computer, time is generally measured in seconds since 1970, this will appear to happen at least once every 66 years, as the computer runs out of fingers to count the seconds on, and has to start over. Some systems count milliseconds since the computer was turned on: they run out of fingers lots faster, and to them, time goes back to the beginning every few days instead. One version of windows (win 95?) didn't take this into account, and fell over every few days, until they patched it.

And I remembered a unix quote file entry I read many years ago:

To a nonprogrammer, just a throwaway line about the silliness of geeks. To a programmer, a cautionary tale not to take anything for granted. So I programmed in that test, so that it wouldn't fall over if time ran backwards

If you set your clock back a minute or two, I think you should also get a confirmation once time sorts itself out again. Again, not thoroughly tested.

if you need someone to test it... my system clock is about two minutes per half an hour faster than a normal clock, so at least till i finally have my new motherboard (which will hopefully not have that problem) i will have plenty of motivation to test that

Go for it

so i didn't get any confirmations at all. just the no cow. when i set it back by one minute immediately after setting it back by three i didn't get an error for the one minute though. and the out of cheese errors came with the usual reconnecting stuff.

i find that when my computer becomes i time machine i should stop drinking for a while,but that's just me,you guys seem to be involved in something a bit more technical tho