Discussion on question by Hashim: What exactly does the Avast "remind me next century" option actually do?

Feeds

17:59

Q: What exactly does the Avast "remind me next century" option actually do?

When Avast needs to restart your computer after a program update, it provides an option to remind you "next century": Based on anecdotal responses to it that I've come across, it definitely doesn't wait an actual century, so just what exactly does the option do, and how long does it wait?

Journeyman Geek

Clearly the solution is to wait a century. Or set your PC clock ahead 99 years, 364 days (365 in some cases) 11 hours, 55 minutes....

SDsolar

Funny programmer. Hahahaha.

BoundaryImposition

@Ramhound: Actually it may not be - "wait forever" = "do nothing" = "optimum laziness"

Goufalite

FYI the longest delay value for windows' shutdown command is 10 years (315360000 seconds).

JFL

next century =/= in one hundred year , like, tomorrow =/= in 24 hour.

OrangeDog

17:59

How exactly do you know "it definitely doesn't wait an actual century"?

orlp

@Ramhound Or malicious compliance. Manager said there wasn't allowed to be a 'forever' postpone option, so he went with a century.

BoundaryImposition

@Ramhound: Link please? (and it's "Red Hat")

@Ramhound: Actually I don't have to trust you, and it's still "Red Hat", and I assume you mean "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" because "Red Hat 7.3" was released in 2002. Why you would "refuse to indicate" why you can't prove your claim, is strange. To me, coupled with the further claim that you could provide evidence, that suggests you made the whole thing up. :)

Ramhound

Fine; Don't believe me. I am talking about RHEL 7.3. My intial comment was speaking of the company, I was being vague in that original comment on purpose, I later was refering to RHEL. I have my reasons not to link to commit that fix this bug.

Hellion

I would hazard a guess that if you chose "next century" and it prompted you again less than a century later, that would be because it had updated itself again and therefore needed another restart.

Siguza

@JFL But "in 24h" and "in 100 years" will always fall into "tomorrow" and "next century" respectively, and are easier to implement. :P

jpmc26

17:59

@JFL This is a computer savvy website. Use <> or !=. =p

Hashim

The "it definitely doesn't wait an actual century" was based on this Twitter thread that I came across while searching Google after I first came across the option. In that thread, one user replied saying it came up a few hours later. That made me wonder about the possibility that the option just randomises the amount of time it waits.

cat

@JourneymanGeek assuming your computer is 64-bits and can count that high, but if OP's computer's clock ends in 2038...

tomsv

Perhaps it was easier to implement a time far into the future than to implement 'never'. Also how would you write a test case for 'never'? It cannot be tested in finite time.