On 2011 Jan 1, at 10:35 AM, Tony Duell wrote: ... Well, it is now an 'historical fact' that hundreds of millions to billions of people celebrated 1999->2000 as the millennial turnover, far more than 2000->2001. Those people make no more an arse of themselves than the people of 'historical fact' who celebrated the beginning of the 20th century at 1901. As 'historical facts', neither proves the 'correctness' of where the decade/century/millenial transition is deemed to occur, although if quantity of people celebrating is the measure, I'm sure 1999->2000 wins. The 2000 celebrators don't have to justify anything, they just chose when to celebrate. If you wish justification though, they can just declare the 1901 celebrators as arses, just as you do of the 2000 celebrators; or make a correction to the century and celebratory practices, much as numerous corrections to the calendar have been made over the centuries. (Over the ages, some years have (been declared to have) over 400 days.) The beginning/end of a year is in relationship to the winter solstice - a natural phenomenon of significant consequence to humans and human society - albeit displaced slightly for historical reasons (cumulative error before a better way of dealing with the error was developed). It is odder to be celebrating (and pedantically insisting on the correctness of) some anniversary from some arbitrary point in the distant past, a point of accepted inaccuracy in relation to the event it is supposed to mark, and that event being of disputed, limited, or disagreed-upon relevance. Which is why I made the suggestion of the 0/1 origin not being of great concern to those excitedly watching the odometer roll over. As I was pointing out, how the calendar is set up (year 1 instead of year 0) at this distance in time is of little relevance, at least for celebratory purposes or labelling of decades.

On 2011 Jan 2, at 10:49 AM, Tony Duell wrote: They can call it a new millennium if they choose. They were celebrating the beginning of the sensibly labelled millennium spanning 2000-2999. Or they were celebrating the third millennium, even if off by a year according to one definition. The astronomical calendar declares a year 0 immediately prior to year 1. By that calendar a new millenium started at year 2000. It isn't important. Millennia, centuries, decades are generally referred to casually regardless (e.g. the 20's). If one needs precision, one specifies it in more formal manners. There are differing reasonings, definitions and perspectives on the matter. Only the pedantically insistent feel the need to call other people wrong, foolish or arses over such matters. ... It's not arbitrary. It was intended to mark the winter solstice / beginning of the seasonal cycle, and originally coincided with the solstice. It now marks 10/11 days after the winter solstice. ANAICF, periodic errors in the Julian calendar accumulated over the centuries, the cumulative error was accounted for in the switch to the Gregorian calendar but for religious reasons Easter took precedence over the solstice, and the displacement of Jan 1st from the solstice was fixed at 10/11 days.

All this brouhaha over "millenium" is futile. "Millenium" is nothing more than a completely arbitrary point in a completely arbitrary calendar. Calling each other "arses" and "idiots" may be true, but why bother? So, Happy New Year to all of the arses and idiots! We had a big celebration over "odometer rollover" and an object lesson, particularly for COBOL programmers and bureaurats, about the flaws in using 2 decimal digits for year. Aside from the unnoticed total collapse of civilization, the planes did not fall from the sky, and my uncle's hearing aids didn't spontaneously combust. I'm still using a checkbook and lots of forms at work that have 19_ preprinted in the year line. We had another celebration a year later. I slept through both of them. For REAL events to monitor, consider the winter solstice in 2012 the Unix epoch (for those still alive almost 30 years from now) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On Tue, 4 Jan 2011, Rich Alderson wrote: I hadn't even considered the possibility of anybody here being alive for another half a millenium! In the meantime, howzbout 2108 for MS-DOS FAT? (16 bit packed bitfield date providing an offset of 128 years from 1980?) Are astronomical coincidences really as important as programming short-sightedness of the 1960s? THAT is what we celebrated at the end of 1999; nothing to do with any sort of "millenium", not disunirregardless of how one defines it. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

Hi My Rover TC2000 made it to 350K. I did have to rebuild it when I first got it with only 60K. Most cars will easily make it to 200K now days. Things like the PCV save the engine and better materials for valves has significantly improve life of engines. Dwight

On 2011 Jan 4, at 1:27 PM, Tony Duell wrote: Aside from just being cheap, that's rather unoriginal. With apologies to Samuel Johnson: Wit is the last refuge of the unreasoning.