Category Archives: History

Epoch time bomb in next 18 years

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Recently was discussing the Epoch time format for a project to be stored in database and doing some time difference checks. Realized that it is fifty years from the date in which the Unix datetime starts (Jan 1, 1970).

Came across an interesting thread that talks of the time bomb that is waiting to explode in devices that bank on this Epoch based timestamps for their needs. It is a 32 bit representation that will reset itself in another 18 years on reaching the max value. Devices will encounter negative value for difference calculation and give weird behaviors!.  It may be like the Y2K issue(on a larger scale), hopefully device manufacturers, software vendors address this as soon as possible!

 

FSF urges open sourcing Win 7

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As of End Jan the petition reached beyond the 6700+ signatories that was requested. Not sure if Microsoft will open source to expose it’s weakness in code structures and also cite presence of code in use in win 10.

Will Win 7 look understandable even if it is done?. what’s your thoughts. Will be interesting though to have a peek at it!.

Mail service joining date – Microsoft says nope

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In continuation of the previous post, was just checking on when did I join the other mail systems, Hotmail(then owned by Sabeer Bhatia) in March 2000 or earlier(that was the date on last mail in my box) and Yahoo mail in Dec 1997.

Microsoft doesn’t have way to detect the date of joining directly or via API, there was a suggestion to send a support request with my account unique ID. This is their response :

we are unable to provide the creation date of your Microsoft account. You have the right to know the following information however, due to privacy and security reasons. We cannot provide the creation date of your Microsoft email address due to the requested information can be used for abuse/mistreat the Microsoft account, and it is considered as a liability to be provided in public.

STRANGE! and BIZZARE!, what’s wrong in knowing my own joining date?

To check your joining date in Yahoo, goto https://yahoo.mydashboard.oath.com/, login with your credentials and it tells when you joined Yahoo family of applications.

For Gmail it was simple, I had the welcome mail 🙂  All other options mentioned in internet to get the date was not working for my account, it was showing dates that are 9 years back where as I joined almost 15 years couple of months it was launched!.

GMail turns 15

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Just saw an alert in my GMail App in mobile that it turned 15, I got an invite from a friend and helped me join it on 23rd June 2004, this was the first mail I got :

One GB was so much!.

First off, welcome. And thanks for agreeing to help us test Gmail. By now you probably know the key ways in which Gmail differs from traditional webmail services. Searching instead of filing. A free gigabyte of storage. Messages displayed in context as conversations.

So what else is new?

Gmail has many other special features that will become apparent as you use your account. You’ll find answers to most of your questions in our searchable help section, which includes a Getting Started guide. You’ll find information there on such topics as:

  • How to use address auto-complete
  • Setting up filters for incoming mail
  • Using advanced search options

You may also have noticed some text ads or related links to the right of this message. They’re placed there in the same way that ads are placed alongside Google search results and, through our AdSense program, on content pages across the web. The matching of ads to content in your Gmail messages is performed entirely by computers; never by people. Because the ads and links are matched to information that is of interest to you, we hope you’ll find them relevant and useful.

You’re one of the very first people to use Gmail. Your input will help determine how it evolves, so we encourage you to send your feedback, suggestions and questions to us. But mostly, we hope you’ll enjoy experimenting with Google’s approach to email.
Speedy Delivery,

The Gmail Team

p.s. You can sign in to your account any time by visiting http://gmail.google.com

NoSQL database landscape update

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Multi-model databases are leading the pack in adoption as compared to the individual NoSQL model that was popular 3 years back as in this post.

Couple of years back noticed databases like ArangoDB,  FoundationDB that were developed as multi-model databases directly. FoundationDB has been opensourced again after a brief period of ownership with Apple. They still don’t support some aspects of the NoSQL models in them.

But only some of the databases are truly multimodel namely capabilities to handle SQL, Key-Value, Columnar, Graph and Object storage and retrieval in one database. Some of them are not opensource based ones and some of them are those that enhanced from supporting couple of models to complete one in the last few years. Some of them are Azure CosmosDB (No direct alternative in AWS and GCP), OrientDB(Complete Open source), Virtuoso (Open source here, haven’t personally tried it).