BOC: Various replies

[Eric Siegerman]

On Fri, Jan 28, 2000 at 02:18:07PM +0000, Jonathan Jarrett wrote:
>         Now, that's not what I meant, but it's an interesting point. All
> I meant was that the so-called Millennium Bug would have been a problem
> in 1900 too had there been electronic clocks at that time, and any other
> point when a year ended in ..00. So it's not just a thousand-year thing.
>
>         But decades are different, aren't they,

Well, in the summer of 1980, shortly after I started my first
full-time job, I had to do some work on a COBOL program of
late-50's or early-60's vintage, which only stored *one* digit of
the year.  It had a problem every decade.  This code already been
through either two or three decade rollovers without getting
fixed...

That was when my eyes first widened, and I went, "man, just think
how big a problem there's gonna be at the turn of the century".

> because we think of e.g.
> the 1930s as a decade, which suggests that decades and centuries start at
> a different point (and therefore that the first decade AD had only nine
> years in it). Anyone any thoughts?

Seems to me I heard the same debate 10 years ago (or 20, or both
-- probably 20 now that I think of it, 'cause I was still in
school, and it seems like a university kind of discussion
somehow).  Just not as loud or shrill because turns-of-the-decade
aren't as heavily hyped.

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics at telepres.com
|  |  /
Microsoft Lego would have square pips.