From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,2ed09815e1f9264a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Markus Kuhn Subject: Re: 5th USENIX Conf on Object-Oriented Tech & Sys (COOTS'99) - CFP Date: 1998/05/16 Message-ID: <355D50AB.38AF517C@cl.cam.ac.uk>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 353756133 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <199805141444.QAA10968@basement.replay.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: Cambridge University, Computer Laboratory Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-05-16T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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: