Ken Paul writes:

>It's good to know that Oct 2, 2016 is a Sunday. For those of you with
>time on your hands you can determine if the leap years were handled
>correctly to come to this conclusion.

Speaking as one of those who appears to be exceptionally bored (and
also having the capability to look up the day in QueryCalc next to me on
my terminal), please allow me to verify that Oct 2, 2016 is indeed a
Sunday.

The problem with verifying such dates is that no one has yet printed
calendars out so far -- thus the verifications have to be done
theoretically. The year 2016 isn't difficult. The problem lies further
out.

QueryCalc's calendar, like virtually all computer-based calendars, will
eventually fail, but it doesn't do that until midnight, December 31,
9999, a little more than 8004 years from now (which by the way, is a
Friday night).

The question is: is that day calculation correct? Although when I
programmed up the calendar I attempted to verify it's accuracy six ways
from Sunday (so to speak), ultimately you simply have to accept on faith
that you performed the arithmetic correctly -- because you simply have
no other recourse.

However I was very pleased at HPWorld '96 when Vladimir Volokh wanted to
show me the new calendar features in MPEX that Eugene had recently
programmed into MPEX (which, BTW, also fails on December 31, 9999).
Thus, after a fit of dueling calendars on side-by-side terminals, we
demonstrated to each other that our two calendars agreed perfectly. That
demonstration was quite reassuring. Eugene's date calculations so far
have been the only completely independent verfication that QueryCalc's
calendar is correct -- or at least wrong in the same way MPEX is.

People sometimes speak of despair and despondency when they speak of the
HP3000 and its long-term future, but it might be worthy of note that
there are at least two vendors on the HP3000 who have sufficient
optimism and faith in the HP3000's future to stave off any real panic
about dates until the beginning of the first decamillenium.

Wirt Atmar