Portable general timestamp format, not 2038-limited

[Ilya Zakharevich]

[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
James Harris 
<james.harris.1 at googlemail.com>], who wrote in article <1183665370.643503.157060 at m36g2000hse.googlegroups.com>:
> On 5 Jul, 02:53, greg <g... at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> > James Harris wrote:
> > > With that the time would range to +/- 9000
> > > quintillion years (18 digits)
> >
> > Use the Big Bang as the epoch, and you won't have
> > to worry about negative timestamps.

In pedantic mode: negative timestamps make sense with Big Bang as the
epoch as well.  (AFAIU, the current way of thinking is that it was
"just too hot" before the big bang, it is not that "there was
nothing".)

Hope this helps,
Ilya