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From: nreadwin@micrognosis.co.uk (Neil Readwin)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: CNews - now a pedantic software! : -(
Message-ID: <1991Apr14.145357.24620@micrognosis.co.uk>
Date: 14 Apr 91 14:53:57 GMT
References: <5077@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> <1991Apr09.160444.25262@looking.on.ca> <1991Apr9.185748.11721@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1991Apr13.003126.2977@brainiac.mn.org>
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Reply-To: nreadwin@micrognosis.co.uk (Neil Readwin)
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In article <1991Apr13.003126.2977@brainiac.mn.org>, jrc@brainiac.mn.org
(Jeffrey Comstock) writes:
|> VMS has a really strange one [epoch].  I think it starts on Feb 14, 1758.

It starts on November 17, 1858, which is the base of the Modified Julian Day
system adopted by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in 1957 for
satellite tracking. The year 1858 preceded the oldest star catalog in use at 
SAO, which also avoided having to use negative time in any of the satellite 
tracking calculations

 Phone: +44 71 528 8282  E-mail: nreadwin@micrognosis.co.uk
 Quote: The 64 bit signed value has a range of approximately 29,000 years; 
 VMS development has not developed a plan for what to do when it overflows.