h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wow Doug, a micro cosmos within the internet, a parallel internet! but why is the server than you're using a 286?

Hmmm, I always thought parallel universes were where all those missing socks went...what makes you think that the server is a 286, I thought those only belonged in museums...

My missing socks are here? Where's the link?
How about that small bag of dry gooey stuff I lost back in '73?
And doesn't this wrap automatically? What kind parallel universe is this?

It's not PRECISELY parallel. In fact, it is expected to collide with the traditional one on New Year's Eve, 2000. Meanwhile, carpe diem.

I think I'l do just that, Lady.

Have a cocktail, too

Oh no!!! I've got to prepare for New Years!!! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

I don't want to panic you but it's the 1st of October now...and y'know what that means -only 85 shopping days left!!!
*runs round squealing in alarm*
And only 91 days to decide what to do for New years

We can celebrate the real (insofar as there is such a thing) millennium.

And we don't have to worry about Y2K.

Don't worry--be happy! Cosmicpolitans on the house! Everybody Mamba!

Ummm...is that like Samba? I can do the Samba

Sorry to get technical, but Y2K means 'Year Two Thousand'. I assume you meant the millenium bug.

We don't have to worry about the year two thousand either as it'll have gone

Us Merkins genly use the terms innerchangeably. Them a us don' blieve the millennium is here yet don' like using millennium in this context anyway. Perticalerly since it don' matter that anything but the hunnerds digit changed. Coulda bin 1899-1900. If we still went by the Roman year count this would be the year 2753 an the prollem (such as it was) would still be 46 years down the pike

The calendar's all wrong anyway, considering the Emperor of Rome who wanted the calendar making gave the job to a

Our calendar is so screwed up, it's unbelievable. You must check out this web site to understand this fully:
http://www.2013.com/dream_machine/calendar/index.html

Basically:

* The Babylonians introduced the 60-minute hour, the Egyptians added 24-hour days, and the Hebrews recorded 7-day weeks, even though the names are pagan.

* The year used to begin in March, but sometime around 700 B.C. the Romans rolled back the New Year to January.Take a look at what happened to these months: The 7th month, September, became the 9th month; the 8th month, October, became the 10th month; the 9th month, November, became the 11th month; and the 10th month, December, became the 12th month.

* Julius Caesar invented named a month after himself, July. He also removed a day from February and added it to July, making July the longest month of the year. Well, February running on only 29 days
made things fall apart fast, so Julius added a leap year every four years. It worked so well that July got to keep the extra day... poor February.

* Emperor Augustus, successor to Julius Caeser, also named a month after himself, August. He removed an additional day from February
and placed it at the end of August... a first-place tie with July. He had to stop there because February would just not work on 27 days...

* Sometime around the collapse of Rome, the Christian Church introduced the convention of B.C., thus, retroactively making the birth of Christ the most important event in the linear universe. The discontinuity that resulted was so disruptive as to cast Europe into a Dark Age for 1000 years.

* Then the Europeans discovered after the Dark Ages that even with the leap year, the solar year is still a little over 9 minutes longer than the calendar year. In 1582 A.D. Pope Gregory XIII noticed that
this added up to 11 days of lost time, so, on October 5, he removed the next 11 days (Poof!) After this band-aid, the Julian Calendar
became known as the Gregorian Calendar. (By the way, it's off by 2 1/2 days again...) And if that isn't unsettling enough, it wasn't until 180 years (and 11 days in error) later that the British adopted the revised calendar. They dropped all the dates between September 2 and September 16. These dates don't exist in British or American history.

There. That is basically what this page explains, although there are a lot more activities that you can try out, so I suggest you visit it. Just thought you'd all want to know...

Sorry to get even more technical, but Y2K, to a computer "geek" such as myself, means year 2048. An upper-case K, in computer jargon, represents 1024, and a lower-case k represents 1000.

I wonderered what all this fuss was about a 2048 bug.

PMP

Well, if you want to get technical [huffy tone of voice] the fact that it came on a 1000 year boundary is totally irrelephant. It would have been just as bad if it came on the turnover from 2799 to 2800 which is still just over forty-two years away.

You do have a valid point. The internal clock in most Microsoft software only runs until 2038, I believe.

Well now, I think I may have found a home! This all seems to be quite interesting and I am enjoying havin' me a look see. Parallel universe? I can comprehend that but sooner or later someone will steal my Octagonal Universe Theory #1. Available in English only at this time, sorry.....ciao