The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well......

At the third stroke, the Unix time will be 1234567890. At precisely 23:31:30 on Friday 13th 2009, the ten-digit clock used by Unix computers will display all ten decimal digits in sequence.

Alice, being human, was under the impression that today was merely Friday February 13 in the year of our Lord, 2009.

Computers count time differently. They simply count the seconds from "Co-ordinated Standard Time", or to human beings, the seconds elapsed from midnight, January 1, 1970 - the digital equivalent of the birth of Christ. Unix time is how many seconds there have been since then (not including leap seconds, in case you were wondering).

But why is 1234567890 a more significant moment in time than any other sequence of numbers?

"All calendars are just arbitrary,celebrating the millennium - why do that? It was just like any other day, the Earth rotates on its axis and it moves around the Sun. A

Alice said it was the beauty of the number sequence that was worthy of celebration. The same computer scientists who are alone in celebrating the 1234567890 moment are the ones we will now rely on to update modern computer systems to a new counting system that will use a 64-bit integer. This will allow computers to count back 20 times the age of the universe, and around 293 billion years into the future. At which point, if man and machine are still around, they will have to deal with same problem all over again...

... Down, down, down. Would the fall NEVER come to an end! `I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?' she said aloud. ....

Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head though the doorway; `and even if my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, `it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know how to begin.' For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.....