Re: 5th USENIX Conf on Object-Oriented Tech & Sys (COOTS'99) - CFP

[Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk>]

Stephen.Leake@gsfc.nasa.gov wrote:
> Who says the next millenium can't start with 2000? That's when most of
> the digits change. That's when the 21st century begins (the "century"
> is the first two digits of the year, plus one). That's when all the
> non-Y2K programs will break. The current millenium started in 1000 AD,
> the one before that in 0 AD, the one before that in ... hmm, things
> get tricky for BC, but I'll just ignore that.

The problem is that the Christian year numbering system was
invented before the integer numbers where invented. There is no
year 0 AD, the year before 1 AD is called 1 BC. Astronomers however
have agreed in their community to abandon this silly Christian
system of year numbers and to use integers instead: 1 AD -> 1,
1 BC -> 0, 2 BC -> -1, etc. Progress in astronomy was often
closely coupled to disagreeing with the Christian belief system, so
the negative year numbers became popular quickly in that community.
By the way, the media did not notice the start of a new century
in 1901-01-01. We have all become C programmers who start to count
with 0 long ago ...

Markus

-- 
Markus G. Kuhn, Security Group, Computer Lab, Cambridge University, UK
email: mkuhn at acm.org,  home page: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>