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In a popular online video game (World of Warcraft) there's a friends list displaying how long since each friend is online. Recently, there's been a bug where many friends show as being offline for 41 Years. Is there any significance to this number? I checked if it matched a max int timestamp, but no suck luck.

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Jul 23 '10 at 16:59

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Computer time is often measured from Jan 1 1970 (know as "the epoch"). It's been 40.5 years since then, rounded up to 41.

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See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time – Dominic Rodger Jul 23 '10 at 16:58
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So essentially, the "LastOnlineTime" for some users was set to DateTime.Minimum – Neil N Jul 23 '10 at 16:59
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xkcd.com/376 – Wayne Werner Jul 23 '10 at 17:00
Thanks - seems obvious now you say it! I was looking at all sorts of significant numbers represented as a timestamp, but didn't think of comparing the current date! My guess is they don't have a default value, so for anyone who hasn't been seen online at all, it would default to 0, or the epoch itself. – Jim Jul 31 '10 at 19:11

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