What are “zip files”?
• When is the new Millennium GeoClock of course has no problems with the year 2000 (or years between 100 CE and 5000 CE for that matter). Everyone knows what the first day of the year 2000 is, but there seems to be some confusion as to what the first day of the third millennium is. If you do not think about it at all, January 1, 2000 seems the obvious date for the first day of the third Millennium. If you think about it just a little, January 1, 2001 seems the right date (since the first AD day of the current BC/AD calendar was January 1, 1 AD). However, a little thinking is often dangerous, and this is one case where it leads to the wrong conclusion. Until about 1200 years ago, the years were marked by reference to some historical event (5 years after the flood, 2 years after the new king, etc). A monk about 1500 years ago first advocated numbering the years from the birth of Jesus, and this was adopted several hundred years later. Since new years were marked at the beginning of sprin
Zip files are computer files with the file name extension .zip. These files are compressed using the popular PC program PKZIP and must be uncompressed before they can be used. File compression squeezes programs down so they are smaller and take up much less room on a storage device (hard disk) and take less time to transfer over a network.
“zip file” is an archive of several files stuck together then compressed, much like a Stuffit “sit file.” When people want to distribute a group of files (such as the ROM files for an arcade game) over the Internet, it’s common to put them into a zip file. Stuffit Expander can expand this zip file and turn it back into a folder full of files. MacMAME can read zip files directly without you needing to expand them. Games are typically available online as zip files (“pacman.zip”, for example). Just put the zip files into your “Roms” folder, and you’ll be able to play them. There’s no benefit to expanding the zip files; if you unzip them, they’ll only take up more space on your hard drive.
