13th August 2004, 12:15 PM
:troll:
Anyway, yes from the mathematical perspective, all decades, centuries, and so on should be considered to start in XXX1 as opposed to XXX0. But, it's much more attractive to think of it in the terms of just IGNORING the past and focusing ONLY on what the numbers themselves say. I'd say the same thing if it was binary mind you. Of course, we'd be celebrating binades every 2 years that way (1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000) (10 = 2's place, 100 = 4's place, 1000 = 8's place, 10000 = 16's place), but hey, eh. I'll just consider 1 BC to be the year 0 :D.
I do kinda wonder why no one brought up the issue until 2000 though... I mean, decades and centuries obey the same rule, so why didn't anyone say anything when 1990 rolled around and it was technically not the new decade until 1991 (making the SNES a system released first year of the 199X's).
Anyway, yes from the mathematical perspective, all decades, centuries, and so on should be considered to start in XXX1 as opposed to XXX0. But, it's much more attractive to think of it in the terms of just IGNORING the past and focusing ONLY on what the numbers themselves say. I'd say the same thing if it was binary mind you. Of course, we'd be celebrating binades every 2 years that way (1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000) (10 = 2's place, 100 = 4's place, 1000 = 8's place, 10000 = 16's place), but hey, eh. I'll just consider 1 BC to be the year 0 :D.
I do kinda wonder why no one brought up the issue until 2000 though... I mean, decades and centuries obey the same rule, so why didn't anyone say anything when 1990 rolled around and it was technically not the new decade until 1991 (making the SNES a system released first year of the 199X's).
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)