A Date With Tim Peters...

[Martijn Faassen]

Ivan Van Laningham <ivanlan at callware.com> wrote:
[snip]
> However, if you're an astronomer, a calendar freak, or a logician, you
> might find yourself working in what has lately become known as the
> Common Era calendar, simply because the math is far easier when there's
> a year 0, and you don't have to "special case the snot out of
> everything."  The timeline then becomes:

> BCE--------0---------CE

> BCE = Before the Common Era; years negative, i.e., -1 on back
> CE  = Common Era; years positive, 1 forward

> Thus, years 0-99 form the "first century CE"; year 0 through -99 form
> the "first century BCE"; and so on.  0-999 is the first millennium,
> 1000-1999 the second, 2000-2999 the third.

Cool, these astronomers, calendar freaks and logicians must have read my 
previous post, as this is just the proposal I've sent off to the W3C! 
(though I add an XML implementation of course :)

> This of course begs the question "where the hell is century zero"?  ;-)

> I think the argument will go on for at least another millennium. ...

After that the programmers will win! Muahaha!

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?