Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 20:46:14 +0200 From: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.tfs.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: Wolfram Schneider <wosch@cs.tu-berlin.de>, asami@cs.berkeley.edu (Satoshi Asami), peter@freefall.freebsd.org, CVS-committers@freefall.freebsd.org, cvs-all@freefall.freebsd.org, cvs-usrbin@freefall.freebsd.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/usr.bin/chpass Makefile chpass.c edit.c table.c util.c Message-ID: <10529.840566774@critter.tfs.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 20 Aug 1996 11:46:11 PDT." <3977.840566771@time.cdrom.com>
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In message <3977.840566771@time.cdrom.com>, "Jordan K. Hubbard" writes: >I think that everyone will standardize on "bookkeeper's notation" anyway >(and what I use on all my checks - confuses the bank sometimes :-) > > YYYYMMDD > >It sorts nicely and everything. Accountants have been using 4 digit >years forever anyway - some old firms have records going back to the >late 1800's, and they've already faced this problem once. :-) Except then they had highly trained (by comparison) heuristical computers that could judge from the context, as opposed to binary atomatons that blindly subtract numbers. We have on record in Denmark, that King Christan IV around 1605 complained about ``this lazyness that possess certain people and make them neglect to write the "centurium" but only the "annum", and thereby causing needless confusion.'' He didn't pass a law to mend it though, he merely complained. It's certainly not a new problem. I belive I read somewhere that the catholic church was also wondering if the change to 1000 from 999 would make too much trouble, disregarding of course the significant minority who were convinced that it wouldn't even happen. The really funny day will probably be march 1st 2000. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | phk@FreeBSD.ORG FreeBSD Core-team. http://www.freebsd.org/~phk | phk@login.dknet.dk Private mailbox. whois: [PHK] | phk@ref.tfs.com TRW Financial Systems, Inc. Future will arrive by its own means, progress not so.
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