What does the system time represent?

Question

When the system time is printed, for example 1331783190854, what time might this be? I'd figure it'd be that many milliseconds (millis was in the code), but the number is too big.

Answer 1

Assuming you mean in terms of System.currentTimeMillis()?

It's the number of milliseconds since midnight on 1st January, 1970, UTC.