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From: LYNCH@A.ISI.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  Ask not for whom the chimes tinkle
Message-ID: <8701040412.AA21966@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Sat, 3-Jan-87 20:58:17 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8701040412.AA21966
Posted: Sat Jan  3 20:58:17 1987
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Dave,  Your IRIG time story brings back gorry memories for me.
I was a "computor" in the USAF about 20 years ago and the reason
we had those ghastly BCD encodings of time was because we humans
had to read that time data manually when in debug or panic mode.
Have you ever tried to look for a specific time, like 3 PM, in 
binary milleseconds since anything???  We were grateful for
that encoding scheme even though we knew it was wasteful.

The bit about not being able to note the change of year was also
amusing.  Because I was designing a missile tracking system and
we did not think the enemy would give us a grace period on New Year's
Eve, we had to put in logic to snake around that wraparound so we
could track the suckers through the (last?) champaigne toasts.
And, oh yes, we even tested that code...

Dan
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