From LPMeissner@msn.com Mon Dec 20 17:34:02 1999 Received: from smtp.email.msn.com (cpimssmtpu01.email.msn.com [207.46.181.26]) by dkuug.dk (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id RAA84598 for ; Mon, 20 Dec 1999 17:34:01 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from LPMeissner@msn.com) Received: from default - 63.23.28.141 by email.msn.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Mon, 20 Dec 1999 08:35:20 -0800 From: "Loren P Meissner" To: "Phillip Helbig" , , , Subject: RE: Millennium (was: (SC22WG5.1678) J3 web page update) Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1999 08:33:45 -0800 Message-ID: <000601bf4b07$fbf11bc0$8d1c173f@default> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 In-Reply-To: <99122014321906@man.ac.uk> Importance: Normal Since we're off the subject (Fortran, that is) . . . IMHO, the problem of "which year is the Millennium" has nothing to do with "There was no Year Zero." It's all about Ordinals vs. Cardinals. When a child is born, it is "zero" (cardinal) years old until its "first" (ordinal) birthday. We are in the "twentieth" (ordinal) century, most of which consists of year numbers that start with "nineteen" (cardinal). etc. = = However, the "Y2K Problem" has nothing to do with when the Century or the Millennium actually changes. It is all about computers and software etc. A tiny piece of it has gotten all the blame -- I was doing it myself around 1960, truncating year numbers to 2 digits to save record space. But a lot of hardware and software people have been using the Y2K publicity to convince their top management to do badly-needed upgrades, so it's all for the best. = Loren Meissner -----Original Message----- . . . We all know, though, that after 1 B.C. came 1 A.D. Thus, there was no year 0. . . .