[Colonol Dekker]

Bad news.  In the past couple of days, the 1st Fleet detected and neutralized several dozen Shivan scouting patrols in the Sol system.  Nothing more than fighters at the moment, but today the SD Lucifer reappeared on sensors for the first time in weeks.  Guess where we think it's heading.  If you've got any family or friends on Earth, try to discreetly convince them to take an off-planet vacation for a week or so.

Here's the good news.  We've been able to translate those Ancient records -- or enough to get the information we need, anyway -- and it looks like we might actually be able to beat the Lucifer.  The only question is whether we'll be able to do it before it reaches Earth; I have a sick feeling we may not be able to.

I don't hate the Vasudans anymore.  That doesn't mean I want to be all buddy-buddy with any of them, but I'm no longer out for revenge.  The desolation of their home planet more than paid for all of the atrocities they committed during the T-V war; I have no desire to demand anything past that.

I am, however, pretty worried about whether we deserve the same thing.  Someone has to be pulling the strings up there; the discovery of those Ancient records was the single greatest instance of good timing in all of Terran history.  But if there is such a thing as karma, and if Vasudans have taken their medicine, then we're next in line.

Check the original topic quoted, it was posted back in they year of 1926........ Is this relevant to the task at hand?

[Nuclear1]

Yeah, we were speculating on that in the Always One Step Behind thread.  Haven't seen any importance yet though.

[Vip]

This is still bothering me. Why 1926 ? And why even the months and days don't match our time ? That's most definitely not a coincidence, and I would guess that this is the thing that Goober mentioned as being unsolved.

[MikeRoz]

My money is still on some kind of Unix ephoc overflow.

[terran_emperor]

Ive looked up 1926 -

Some interesting event that year:
The British General Strike - during which martial law was declared
The May Coup in Poland
Hirohito is crowned emperor of Japan and the period of Japanese expansionism begins

Whether these events have any relevence, ive no idea

I can see no relevence in the number itself either

[faxi]

My money is still on some kind of Unix ephoc overflow.

Well, since Unix timestamps are signed integers (which I didn't know until reading up on this), they can have negative values after overflowing, meaning that they actually can (in a crude manner) represent dates in the year 1926. But if his posts are really from 2235, they would have had to overflow quite a few times.

Here are the dates together with the negative, overflowed timestamps that the forum uses (you can get these, when quoting one of Aadarsh's posts) and with the timestamps for the presumed post dates on Aadarsh's calendar (calculated with http://www.csgnetwork.com/time2unixdscalc.html)

10/10/26   17:07:28   Can anyone hear me                    -1364086352   11520810448     Jan     30 2335 (16 days before next post => news report that peace with Vasudans is because of Shivan attack)
26/10/26   18:54:58   Not as it appears                          -1362697502    11522199298     Feb.   15 2335 (4 days before next post, "uploaded on the 15th" => news talk about HoL as Rogue Vasucan faction)
30/10/26   18:18:24   Interesting Times                           -1362354096   11522542704    Feb.   19 2335 (6 days before next post)
05/11/26   02:34:55   Some more Highlights                  -1361892305    11523004495   Feb.   25 2335 (4 days before next post)
09/11/26   11:02:32   On the destruction of a Multidude -1361516248    11523380552  March 1 2335 (news about finished destruction Vasuda => 3 news entries: Vasuda destroyed; Bastion helps with evacuation; Shivan assault continues)
16/11/26   01:39:14   Always one Step behind                 -1360945246   11523951554  March 8 2335 (7 days after prev. post)
07/12/26   11:42:23   Analysis and speculation               -1359094657   11525802143  March 29 2335 (21  days after prev post)

Is there anyone who sees a pattern or who at least can confirm the correctness of these timestamps?

[phreak]

Your unix time converter does not take into account integer overflow, but the nearest non-overflow number would be 3*(2^32)=12,884,901,888

as an example using the first post time:

11,520,810,448 - 12,884,901,888 = -1,364,091,440, which is close to -1,364,086,352.  Probably the only difference is timezone

[Colonol Dekker]

After reading through all this, i'm guessing a Red Herring may have been dumped in our collective laps.

[Stormkeeper]

Possible. Wouldn't put it past Goob.

[CaptJosh]

"I know! It was Redd Herring!"
"I've told you a hundred times, Jones. I didn't do it!"

 

[Mongoose]

Oh lord...other people have sat through that show?

[MikeRoz]

I don't think the dates are so much a red herring as another layer of accuracy.

If someone from the 24th century were to somehow post on these boards, that's what the date would be set to. The forum software doesn't take into account the idea that someone is overflowing their date int.

[Snail]

Y2K?

More like G5K.