Bill, damn, boy, that's a righteous answer! Y'all a professor or somethin'?
Impressed, Steve in Memphis (And a [Fortune 100] Y2K Veteran ...) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Downall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "RBASE-L Mailing List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 10:00 AM Subject: [RBASE-L] - RE: Two items > No, there's no consensus. People argued about it through from 1998 through > 2000, the late Stephen J. Gould wrote about the history of that debate, (In > 1900 and 1901 the general consensus in newspapers was that 1901 was the > begining of the century) end-times millenialists had one more excuse why > the world hadn't ended yet, and everybody who liked to party partied twice. > > Basically, people with a scientific/mathematical bent say there was no year > zero, so the first decade was years 1-10, the second decade started in 11, > the first century was 1-100, the second started in 101, etc. A more > populist tradition has said that "when the big number changes, something is > new." > > Then again, in R:Base there IS a year zero. Try this: > > SET VAR vDate1 DATE = (RDATE(1,1,0001)) > SHO V vDate1 > SET VAR vDate2 DATE = (.vDate1 - 1) > SHO V vDate2 > > I would say your customer needs to be asked to clarify their request. > > > At 10:38 AM 3/24/2004, Lichty, Tom wrote: > >Also, we had a request from a customer about archiving data before "this > >century". I always thought that meant < 1/1/2000. They pointed out it could > >also be < 1/1/2001. Is there consensus on this? >
