🚀 go-pugleaf

kaji...@mcnc.org (Lord of Sith) writes:

>Question:  anyone know why the VMS system has a clock that starts about
>November 15 in the late 1800's?  UNIX's clock is a round number like midnight
>of January 1, 1970.

Astronomers use a dating system that is merely a sequential count
of the days since 1 january 4 thousand and something BC. Apparently
a lot of astronomical cycles were more or less in synch on or about
that date. And it's far enough back that they don't need negative
numbers very often.

This count is referred to as the Julian Date. As near as I can
figure VMS starts it's clock on JD 2 400 000. There are *lots*
of algorithms for dealing with Julian Dates. So they cheated...
-- 
Leonard Erickson		...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools.
Let's start with typewriters." -- Solomon Short