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It sorts lexigraphically if it is zero padded.

Only as long as you zero-pad the year according to the maximum year in your list.

I'll dub this "the year 10000" problem.

By the year 10000, hopefully terrestial time is long obsolete, and replaced with whatever makes sense for a multi-planet species.

Assuming that is anyone left that cares about it.

Based upon human stubbornness, every planet will have it's own time and date system that will be divided based on historically obscure details before/during and after colonization. Stuff like Thursday is essentially "Thor's day" and in German it literally says "day of the thunder" (Donnerstag).

ps.: Thursday is also Jupiter's day, so it will probably prevail on any colony / permanent human station orbiting it/it's moons.

pps.: I hope they get over the stupid imperial vs. metric divide though.. that one is really annoying.

Interplanetary daylight savings could be a lot of fun too.

> I'll dub this "the year 10000" problem.

http://longnow.org/about/ "The Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years."

Long Now's use of five-digit years is also supposed to jolt readers and remind them to think in the bigger picture.

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