By Andy McCue
Published: Tuesday 30 November 2004
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Name
KDMcMullan
Location
Belfast, UK
Occupation
Aeronautical Software Engineer
Comment
A 64-bit signed MILLISECOND clock centred around the start of the Christian era would allow +/- 292 million years. (I realise how selfish a suggestion this is but it seems to be quite a widely used calendar.) In 292 million years the number of bits in the millisecond clock probably won't be terribly important. I wonder if we should start the clock a few million years BC as contemporary computers are more likely to count further back in time than forward.
(Assuming the cost of BIOS EEPROM was the sole reason for only using 32 bits, this hurdle has been removed: memory is not at the premium it was 40 years ago.)
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