> On Jul 17, 2016, at 6:03 PM, Peter Coghlan <cct...@beyondthepale.ie> wrote:
>
> ...
> I think that dates/times were done pretty well on VMS with the exception
> of a couple of blunders - not going further back than 1858 for the base
> date and not having the system manage time in UTC while allowing
> individual users to deal with time in whatever timezone they want to be
> in.
Not using UTC is indeed unfortunate in a way. Then again, using UTC internally
comes with problems too, because the local time as displayed comes out wrong
whenever the politicians change the rules with insufficient lead time. Some
countries know to avoid this; a lot do not, as those living in Turkey or Egypt
have recently discovered.
As for 1858, that's not 0 but it's a lot earlier than 1969. And if you go back
much further, you run into some interesting issues: Julian or Georgian
calendar? Actually, that's an issue even after 1858, but only for a few
countries.
paul
