Understandably, the year 2000 is a current topic of discussion for many
people. Since the year is the turn of a millenium, there is excitement
surrounding it. However, let's assume that the human race had adopted the
Alternate Number System rather than the existing one. The year 2000 in ENS
is the year 199A in ANS.
In ANS, we have the years 1997, 1998, 1999 and the next year is 199A - that's dissapointing! If we call the digit A, ten, then 199A is the year nineteen ninety ten. This may sound a bit odd, but it's no different from nineteen ninety nine. The year 199A is followed by 19A1 and so on. Notice that the Y2K problem, where a two digit year is used, still exists in ANS. However, instead of running into the problem in the year 2000 due to the digits 00, in ANS the problem would occur at the year 1A11 (2011 in ENS), since 11 would be confused with the year 1911. Anyway, ANS would give us another decade of time to work on the problem.
In ENS, we consider a change in the most significant digit, or an increase in the number of digits as a "turning point". In ENS, the second millenium started following the year 999 (ie. 1000). But in ANS, 1000 = 99A and the three digit years continue until the year AAA and is followed by 1111. So, using ANS, the second millenium began in the year 1111 and ends in the year 1AAA (2110 in ENS) so the third millenium does not occur until the year 2111. So according to ANS, the human race has to wait for over a hundred years for the millenium to change! Who knows, perhaps future generations will adopt ANS, and the celebrations of 2111 will be even greater than the year 2000!
Happy New Year and enjoy.