its not the millenium!!

1999 -> 2000 = A new millenia. BTW, I've seen somewhere that the birthyear of Jesus actually is about year 4. It was misscalculated or something. But don't blame me if this ain't true.

NO, Chris IS right!
__How about thinking of it this way. You have 10 things and you label them numerically. The first one is 1 (which it is in our case becuase there is no year 0.) The last, 10. These are your first ten things.
__Now you go get ten more things. What do you label the first of these next ten things? 11! Not 10! The same thing occurs with years. 2000 is the end of our second set of a thousand years, and 2001 is the begining of our third.

__About year 0 and 4: There is no year 0 becuase you can't count it. There's a first year, a seond year, etc. There's also a first year before, second year before, etc. (->B.C.) We only recently figured out that there is still a 3 year difference in dates after Greggory's (sp?) attempt to fix the calendar.
__Why didn't we fix it like Greg. did? Becuase so many of us are aware of the year. Back then not too many people could tell you what year it was. In general noobody cared. Today it would screw up everything, especially with so many computers.

Ah, drat, have to put off armageddon for another year. *starts packing up the arsenal*

Actually, there's a pretty interesting site on calendars in general at http://astro.nmsu.edu/~lhuber/leaphist.html

As for Y2K, I best like the quote from someone I cannot remember, which basically stated that computers crash all the time, it's just that this time, we're actually expecting it.

-fel
~ A black hole is a place where God divided by zero... ~

Chris F and WhiteHouse, did you really mean to say that Jesus was _born_ on year 0 or 1 or about year 4? Because I think you're missing something fundamental.

I meant that I have seen somewhere that Jesus was infact born in the year we call year 4. I dont't know if that is true or just bullshit but that's an alternative that is possible.

Jesus was jewish and by thier calender it is something like 2017 right now. I find it strange that christians make jesus to be a god, but jews find him as "nice guy".

no no, i only gave jesus as a place holder what i meant was people didnt start counting the years from year 0, its counted from 1 so that means the start of 2000 years since the first year is not next year its the year after

Something you have to realize here is that time really isn't made up of these chunks called years or minutes or seconds or millenia. It's all one big continuous thing, our system of dates is just how we attempt to simplify it enough to understand it. So it doesn't really matter that we get the math of the new millenia wrong. If the people of the world consider it to be the beginning of a new millenium, then it is. Plain and simple

Jonathan

Oh by the way , you start counting from 0 not 1 as SonicSilcion suggests . Think in binary 4 a sec. you have two values , 1 and 0 hence binary . when You try to go above that , you go into a second set , which is 10 hence you count 0 , 1 , 10 .Same applies to decimal (0-9)which are the first ten digits . Humans just ignore the zero and start counting from 1 , which can be very confusing , espacially since their quantitaive system starts at 0 .Just because I dont go around telling pple I got zero Ferrari's Doesn't mean I dont have zero ferraris he he he he he get it!!

Agh well , for agurment sake , ChrisF , the 1999 is counting how many yrs Jesus was alive , Anno Domini (in the year of our lord duh). When he was born the number of years he had been alive = 0 , Therefore according to our calendar , the he was born is supposed to be yr was 0 A.D.

Actually , Jesus was born 4 b.c ( 4 years before the proposed year.) Carbon dating has confirmed that some of documents released at around his birth and some of the building structures are 2003 to 2005 yrs old. Theoratically it should be the yr 2003.

Our calendar is pretty fucked up considering the fact that we have to correct it every 4 yrs.

[This message has been edited by Tha_HoodRat (edited December 10, 1999).]

Of course time is not what we are trying to define here time itself is undefineable i mean you try explaining the smallest unit of time, ha ha or the smallest unit of space, its impossible and no one has yet been able to do it, but what im saying is that there are stupid people locking themselves away because they think the armagedon is coming when really its not coming till next year ha ha

the fact that jesus was born on 4 BC is irrelevent what im saying is that people think that 2000 years after AD is passing this year when really we have counted from 1 AD so 2000 years is not going to end until the year after next

the fact that jesus was born on 4 BC or whenever is irrelevent what im saying is that people think that 2000 years after AD is passing this year when really we have counted from 1 AD so 2000 years is not going to end until the year after next

One thing: when the date on my computer says 2000 and it just 1 second ago said 1999, then I call that the new year called 2000 which is 2*1000 which means that it is a new millenia. Ergo: this new years eve is the end of this millenia and the start of the next.

The fact that he was born 4 BC is relevant because we base our calender on his birth (duh) should have celebrated 4yrs ago.

its not the start of the millenium thats next year, if you start counting from 1 and count 2000, then you reach 2001 not 2000, there is no year 0, atleast people didnt start the clender at year 0

Point Taken:-)

This is not the millenium, 1/1/2001 is, the original post is right, check the naval observitory(official time keepers). And the calendar we have isn't screwed up, we have to correct for leap years because the earth gets around the sun every 365.25 days, and we only count the 1 day every four years.
The earth also gets closer to the sun, and according to the conservation of angular momentum, the earth would circle the sun faster, so that means slightly(very slightly) shorter years. So considering how long ago the calendar was made, and all the movement of the planet...I think it's pretty accurate for all my needs.

I'm sick of all the millenium advertising, and I have a theory that next year, the pitch will be:
"Us media jackasses just realized it's not the millenium yet, so here's our big REAL millenium sale!"
And the commercial madness will continue for another stupid year.
I'm not looking forward to that, but I'm glad someone brought up the topic...I was going to, but even my parents didn't believe me initially, so why risk getting flamed by strangers on a message board(although now I see that most of you are up to par with it)

------------------
When life hands you lemons, throw them at God's head.

What is exciting here is that it occurs once in a thousand yr and many pple don't have the chance to 'go thru' it -- a chance of the life time!

And again, the...
1st millenia starts from 1 to 1000.
2nd millenia starts from 1001 to 2000.
3rd millenia starts from 2001 to 3000.

So we're in the 2nd millenia -- and definitely approaching the last yr in this millenia -- a yr with 3 zeros. Missed it now and u must wait for the next 1000 yrs. BTW, a millenia is 1000yr. Therefore, u need to wait for a millenia to have a year with 3 zeros.

Hey everyone... guess what.. no? I am the Official Person of the New Millenium. Neat title eh? I made it up myself.. sort of like M&M's are the official canday of the new millenium. Now don't you guys try to steal my title cause I called it first!

Anyways, enough with the millenium crap! no one really cares if this is the correct millenium.. cause it's different for every religion, country, timezone, planet.. etc...etc...

Besides, you all know that we are going to have to go through all this once more... next year... too bad, so sad, bye bye.

Get with it grandpa... it's the 00's. Doesn't sound right does it. I'm used to calling time periods by the decade.. like the 70s, 80s, 90s... It's going to be a strange decade.