The funny part is the math! I believe that when a number is in a bracket, you need to treat it differently ;-)

2009 - (500 + 6) = 2009 - 500 *-* 6 = 1503

But given that the original article say 400 years, that brings it to 1603, when he was actually alive.

U of M is my alma mater as well. Unless I am completely mistaken, this was *not* the system telnet was running on. There was a farm of unix-based computers running there from the late 80's (or earlier) until I left Winnipeg in 1999. Those were the 'telnet' computers.

The mainframe in the article was the old computer that ran "JCL" (Job Control Language) and was used by a lot of geeks (me being one) in the Chemistry department (among others) for large, long calculations.

At least that's the computer I think they're talking about!

-Jim