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From: kka059@MIPL3.JPL.NASA.GOV
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Times and Time Zones
Message-ID: <871105071449.002@Mipl3.JPL.Nasa.Gov>
Date: Thu, 5-Nov-87 10:14:49 EST
Article-I.D.: Mipl3.871105071449.002
Posted: Thu Nov  5 10:14:49 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Nov-87 02:25:20 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 62

Here's a second attempt to post this message...

In message <1362@bsu-cs.UUCP>, Rahul Dhesi writes:

>In article <4709@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> david@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (David Robinson) 
>writes:
>>Simply have DEC maintain in kernel
>>all times in a fixed timezone (GMT?) ...
>
>It's bad enough that the quaint ancient practice of referring to Her
>Majesty's Royal Greenwich Observatory's local time as a standard hasn't
>died yet.  Worse, you folks now want modern, state-of-the-art operating
>systems such as VMS to be defiled in this manner.

Does this mean that no one objects to having all VAX system times defined
in terms of a standard that no one (unless they dwell deep inside of DEC)
recognizes?  The standard to which I refer is:

	...the system base date and time, which is 00:00 o'clock [sic]
	November 17, 1858 (the Smithsonian base data and time for the
	astronomical calendar)...

			VAX/VMS System Services Reference Manual
			page 9-2, Section 9.1 The System Time Format

Unfortunately, no one at either the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.
or at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Massachusetts had *ever*
heard of this ``astronomical calendar;'' not to mention that they were
supposed to have been responsible for it!

If anyone at DEC can shed some rays of enlightenment upon this mysterious
standard, it would be delightful.  (I also have a gentlemanly wager upon
it.)

Also, in message <8711020746.AA21981@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, Jerry Leichter
refers to ``UCT'' as some time standard.  I wonder whether he meant ``UTC,''
having neglected to note that it is part of the SI, i.e. metric system,
of weights and measures.  The French have a delightful syntax wherein
the adjectives follow the modified nouns (remember *all* rules have
exceptions).  Therefore, Universal Coordinated Time is UTC, universalle
time coordinate (please excuse any misspellings of the French).

Come to think of it though, aren't we all being just a bit quaint to use
a time system based upon the hypothesized date of birth, now believed
by scholars to be off by some seven years, of an historical figure and 
developed by a significant (according to some people) force of colonial 
repression, the Roman catholic church?

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