> Now come on, who really cares how long it actually is since Christ? The
> fun part is watching the date move from 1999 to 2000, the first time in
> a 1000 years all four digits change.
>
> Tell me this, is it more fun to watch 1999 roll over to 2000 or 2000 to
> 2001?
If anyone's really interested, there is no way anyone can say with any
certainty that we are 2000 years away from the birth of Christ. This is
so because there were some erroneous calculations when creating the new
calendar. Depending on who you ask, the actual Y2K AD could be anything
from "Select 1 from (1, 4, 6)" years off.
We are not concerned with any of that though. As computer professionals,
the Year 2000 has special significance - again because of errors or thrift
rather on the part of the old timers. We will also have to worry about
Y2.038K which is when our 32bit counter for the number of seconds from Jan
1st 1970 will run out. That is some way off, and methinks that by then we
will all be running 64 bit machines, and can then sleep easy knowing that
the world would probably burn out before that ran out.
(a 64 bit counter will run for 213,503,982,334,601 years) For those who
don't want to decipher that, it's 213.5 trillion years.
Happy celebration of your choice,
Philip
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