Date - difference between JDK1.3.1 and 1.4.2 ???

Question

I tried running this piece of code on JDK1.3.1_08 and JDK1.4.2 - and the output i different! Why???
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.TimeZone;
public class Test {
     public static void main(String[] args) {
          long longDate = Long.parseLong("-883620000000");
          Date date = new Date(longDate);
          TimeZone zone = TimeZone.getDefault();
          System.out.println("Zone : " + zone.getID());
          System.out.println("Date value : " + date.getTime());
          System.out.println("Date string: " + date.toString());
Output with JDK1.3.1_08:
Zone : Europe/Berlin
Date value : -883620000000
Date string: Wed Dec 31 23:00:00 CET 1941
Output with JDK1.4.2
Zone : Europe/Berlin
Date value : -883620000000
Date string: Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 CEST 1942
This is pretty troublesome while my Swing Client is running on 1.4+ and the appserver on 1.3.1.

Answer 1

It looks more like a timezone difference between the
two. SDK 1.4 supports a much larger set of timezones than earlier versions of the language, and it looks like they are more historically correct too. No doubt there were changes in the daylight saving rules in Germany between 1941 and 1970 (you'll recall there were a lot of things going on back then), and my guess is that 1.4 is more likely to be correct.
As limeybrit9 suggests, you may want to set a specific timezone to make your applications consistent.