X-no-Archive:yes
Actually this argument has been raging for quite a while now. Most people
see 2000 and think ,ah ah new lustrum/decade/century/millennium. In fact
Bill Clinton in his last state of the union show stated that that address
was the last one for the 20th century and that next year he would be making
the first one of the 21st century. Just remember we heard this from
impeached sources. :)
But many people also know that 2001 is really the technical start of the
new lustrum/decade/century/millenium. So what is one to do? Argue with
everybody that 2001 is the start and not 2000? Not me. I decided a while
ago that I will celebrate 2000 and 2001. The entire year 2000 should be
one big party year. And the party deserves to be a year long, after all
it's not every year that you change the first digit in the year :). Also,
we have been deluged and bombarded with
insert-favorite-name-of-program/product-here 2000 for so long that we
should be able to take the time and enjoy getting to 2000.
The millennium year (2000), being end and start of the millennia has been
an icon for a long time, it will be interesting to see what the advertising
community will come up for the next time-related icon. 2100 is too far
away, and 2010 just doesn't have any ring to it. So maybe we will see a
paradigm shift to another form of time-related icon, or it may disappear
altogether (doubtful).
Before the celebrations begin we must first jump over the Y2K hoop. I
can't help but think that in some ways we are fortunate that the date is
not 1899. After all changing from 1899 to 1900 would have more of an
impact that changing from 1999 to 2000. Why? Because 1900 is not a leap
year. Most programs calculate a leap year by dividing the year by 4. 0
mod 4 is 0 and 1900 mod 4 is 0 and 2000 mod 4 is 0, yet in real life 1900
is not a leap year. Even if the programs only do the "year mod 4" bit, it
is accurate from 1901 to 2099. It is only the ones that try to be fancy
with the "year mod 100" bit that will get screwy results, unless they go
one step further and do the "year mod 400" calculation also. In 1899 there
would probably be a lot of programs that would have only the "year mod 4"
calculation. But that is only conjecture, of course.
BTW, before others jump in and point out that in their
religion/belief/country they have already gone way beyond 2000 and are
already approaching year 10000 or some such thing, let me just say this . .
.
Kind regards,
Denys. . .
Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP America, Inc.
(800) 323-8863 (281) 288-7438 Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com www.hicomp.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Roy Buzdor [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, 15 April, 1999 11:10 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What dates to use for testing of Y2K-compliance?
Jay Willis wrote:
> I am in the process of testing my programs for
> Y2K-compliance and was wondering what dates are being
> used to test against. This is the list of dates that
> I have come up with:
>
> 12/31/99...............last date of this millenium
> 01/01/2000...........first date of the next millenium
> 01/02/2000...........2nd date of the next millenium
I know that this has been argued over and over, but
technically, the AD dating scheme began with the year
*1*, there was no year *0*, so while 1/1/2000 is the
first year starting with a "2", the millenium does not
end until 12/31/2000, and the next one does not start
until 1/1/2001 (hence the movie).
(Or was this just a troll to catch those obsessive
folk like me...if so, reel me in.)
--
Buz (8
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