[beginner] What's wrong?

[Michael Selik]

On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 4:16 AM Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 3:27 PM, Random832 <random832 at fastmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 1, 2016, at 19:29, Michael Selik wrote:
> >> Humans have always had trouble with this, in many contexts. I remember
> >> being annoyed at folks saying the year 2000 was the first year of the
> new
> >> millennium, rather than 2001. They'd forgotten the Gregorian calendar
> >> starts from AD 1.
> >
> > Naturally, this means the first millennium was only 999 years long, and
> > all subsequent millennia were 1000 years long. (Whereas "millennium" is
> > defined as the set of all years of a given era for a given integer k
> > where y // 1000 == k. How else would you define it?)
> >
> > And if you want to get technical, the gregorian calendar starts from
> > some year no earlier than 1582, depending on the country. The year
> > numbering system has little to do with the calendar type - your
> > assertion in fact regards the BC/AD year numbering system, which was
> > invented by Bede.
> >
> > The astronomical year-numbering system, which does contain a year zero
> > (and uses negative numbers rather than a reverse-numbered "BC" era), and
> > is incidentally used by ISO 8601, was invented by Jacques Cassini in the
> > 17th century.
> >
>
> Are you sure? Because I'm pretty sure these folks were already talking
> about BC.
>
> http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/holybook/quotes/YK.html
>
>
If they'd only used Unicode, they could have said "þou" in prayer and "ðousand"
for the year.

BTW, I finally know why there are all those "Ye Olde ...".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)