[TUHS] OT: Grace Hopper, Unix epoch, ARPAnet converted to TCP/IP

Kurt H Maier khm at sciops.net
Mon Jan 1 10:59:07 AEST 2018


On Mon, Jan 01, 2018 at 11:15:19AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> 
> My "on this day" policy is to use the local time if it can be narrowed to 
> a particular zone where the event happened (and if it makes sense); if it 
> was universal e.g. moon landings then I'll use UTC; otherwise I'll use the 
> commonly-observed date e.g. the start/end of the world wars.

I support your policy, but I'd say the ARPA in ARPANET makes it at least
feasible to stick with Zulu time for related milestones.

> I'm open to suggestions (including FOAD, in which case I'll simply find 
> something better to do).

Personally, I've enjoyed your posts marking anniversaries of these
events.  

> A lingering gripe that explains my latent anti-Americanism goes back to 

The older I get, the more convinced I am that the "two hard things in
Computer Science" quote came from someone who never had to accurately
report the ages of events predating epoch time.

And I can say as a patriotic American, I did not truly understand the
desperate plight of being a foreigner until I was in Cape Town during
the Super Bowl.  After that I limited international travel to extremely
profitable endeavors; otherwise the ROI just isn't there.

khm 



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