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Originator:	mac	Printable Version
Title:	date format, currency, measurement...

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From: mac	On: 2007/01/01 21:31:25
we just don't talk the same measurements! it was exciting when, in the 80's and early 90's, the USA was seriously considering thinking and teaching in metric, but it fizzled like a wet firecracker. to this day, i'm furious at NASA for messing up their "international space station" project because our plans were in inches and the rest of the international project team's plans were in metric! when are we going to get on the stick? as followers and practitioners of an antiquated "dollars and inches" system, we're waisting and squandering the obvious opportunity to get with the rest of the world and talk metric!!! here's the 2007 new years poll: *** begin poll **** "what does the date #1/11/2007# mean (in words) to you?" * end poll ****** to me it's January 11th. how many of us thought "November first"? does this make sence, that we don't talk the same measurements? shit!! and writing a letter to my congressman that doesn't include a sizable "campaign contribution" will do as much good as a fart in the wind. ok - 10 gallons of high-test costs me $20.99 got it.

From: coral47	On: 2007/01/01 22:20:28
Feel better now? >> to me it's January 11th That's the correct answer. Why should we change? Let the rest of the world do it our way.

From: mac	On: 2007/01/01 23:32:20
that's as close to a book as i'm likely to write, thank you very much!

From: Huntress	On: 2007/01/01 23:40:15
Oddly enough, the first thing I thought was 1rst November, 2007.

From: Hooligan	On: 2007/01/02 03:42:07
A mathematical argument against metric is that the number 10 only has factors of 2 and 5, so dividing metric quantities into portions leads to fractional amounts more quickly than with imperial, where the numbers used tend to have more factors. maybe that's ok if you've got a pocket calculator, but something gets lost in all the extra digits. It seems to make things unwieldy when doing things like cookery Of course I've forgotten how many feet there are in a quarter of a mile off the top of my head. There's something nice about multiplying miles per hour by 88 to get feet per minute though. ********** 1/11 means 1st nov to me ********** I've got a message for Mrs Smith in the audience who's one hundred and eleven years old today! (round of applause). Sorry I misread that, I should have said Mrs Smith is ill today.

From: JOK	On: 2007/01/02 04:21:11
5280 * .25 = # feet in 1/4 mile. If you can't remember, you should be able to figure that out in your head...unless you're an American. Try cooking with metric. How many factors are in 1 tablespoon? Or a peck? Is a fluid oz the same as a dry oz? Cooking with cheese is better, unless you want your over age children to leave home. Its "wasting" not "waisting". Another problem with the US's metric effort is that they were also going to use 2.5 instead of 2.54 as the conversion factor for inches to cm. And, of course, we'll all remember 9/11, that day in November when the WTC was attacked.

From: Hooligan	On: 2007/01/02 10:20:45
it's the same in metric with daft measurements how many mega pascals are there in on bar? how many Henrys in a webber per metre squared? Should you measure the polonium dosage in your shushi in sieverts, rads or curies? (ps don't bother trying to tell me what they are, I looked them up in wikipedia) I could go on, but that would just be futile!

From: JOK	On: 2007/01/02 17:31:54
resistance is futile

From: mac	On: 2007/01/02 18:37:56
not true; resistance scuttled the plan! heaven forbid we'd have to change 50 billion speed limit signs, gas pumps, weight scales, trade in our "yard sticks", new car dealers would have to change their lies about how many "kilometers per litre" the new cars get... the resistance is endless.

From: coral47	On: 2007/01/02 23:04:19
[after breaching the hull in an escape attempt] Crow T. Robot: Well believe me, Mike, I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid... and I went ahead anyway.

From: Pino Carafa	On: 2007/01/03 05:40:35
Q: what does 1/11/2007 mean to you? A: different answers Q: what does 2007-01-11 mean to you? A: the 11th day of January, 2007. Nobody with half a brain gets that one wrong, even if one isn't used to it. There's your solution. Over a billion Chinese can't be wrong.

From: mac	On: 2007/01/03 13:00:58
my solution? Chinese??? only if the US of A gets on board from New Jersey to California and from Wisconsin to Texas, and everywhere in between. then i'll set my "local settings" to Chinese and we'll all speak the same language and measurements!

From: Pino Carafa	On: 2007/01/03 13:55:36
The solution, then. I think the problem in many of these cases is that pride gets in the way of common sense. You've said it yourself, it's retarded that the USA is still using the "imperial" system for measuring weight and size. Not because it is "antiquated", but because it is unnecessarily complicated. Think about the French what you will, but their "metric" system is far superior. So ditch the old rubbish and go metric. But the same goes for date formats, except in that case it's the Chinese who got the right idea. The Chinese system is the best for several reasons. Firstly, the most significant number - the year - is placed first from left to right, just like in any other number. And secondly, their system is unambiguous. Nobody will mistake 2007-01-03 for anything other than what it is: 3 January 2007. The other systems aren't all equally bad though. The European system is the best of the rest; at least the figures are still in a consistent order, albeit from least to most significant from left to right, where other numbers are displayed the other way around. Not as good as the Chinese system, but at least consistently crooked. The American system is all over the place though. It starts with the middle significant figure - the "month" number, and then the least one, and finally the most significant number. It's crazy. I'm European, but I'm not proud. Our system of measurements is the best in the world, so metric it is. But the Chinese date system beats ours, so to hell with it, let's go Chinese. At least in that regard.

From: mac	On: 2007/01/03 14:18:34
date –noun

From: JOK	On: 2007/01/03 14:25:30
its all greek to me

From: Pino Carafa	On: 2007/01/04 01:54:42
LOL. Yeah. Their script leaves something to be desired. But I'm talking date format, not language.

From: mac	On: 2007/01/04 06:09:20
ahhhhh, the famed "simple chinese method"... ok, Pino, i'm sorry - taking it to the extreme was too funny. but you're right. i would encourage this date format for all humans, no matter their home or language. and meters and litres, no matter how hard it is to represent 1/4 of a liter, because it's so easy to say 'two hundred and fifty mililiters', like 'give me two hundred and fifty mililiters of petrol, please" :) for gramms, liters and meters, it's Kilo and Mili, Hecto and Centi, Deca and Deci... all factors of 10 (er, 2 and 5). but what's bigger than Kilo and smaller than Mili? that reminds me... Vice President Cheney informed President Bush yesterday that they're going to send in Brazilian troops to help out in Iraq. President Bush responded "That's Wonderful!!! er, how many is a Brazillion?"

From: Pino Carafa	On: 2007/01/04 06:43:46
Don't get hung up on the chinese language and their way of notating numbers either; what I'm advocating is the principle. Obviously we would use the ordinary arabic numerals, so our variation of the Chinese notation for today's date would simply be 2007-01-04, or, if you prefer, 2007/01/04. I'm not sure I understand what you're on about regarding the 1/4 liter thing. Firstly, it is piss-easy to say two-hundred and fifty milliliters. But you're not even obliged to use that measure in the first place. If you prefer, you're quite entitled to say twenty-five centiliter or two-and a half deciliter, or even simply "a quarter of a liter". Whatever you fancy, as long as it is within the metric system. What's more, even old measures have been "translated" into metric, even if they are not officially used, and perfectly acceptable too. In Holland, for example, there must have been something very similar to the old English Imperial system, and they used words like "Pond" (similar to "Pound"), and "ons", (similar to "ounce"). Clearly the measurements weren't exactly the same, especially in the case of "ons", which must have been quite a bit more than the English "ounce", but the words survived the introduction of the metric system, but have been modified. A "Pond" is now colloquially used to mean half a kilo (500 grams), and an "ons" is now used to mean 100 grams or 1/10 of a kilo. Other words died out. The Dutch also had words like "voet" (foot), but it hasn't survived; there isn't a metricised word "voet" still in use. The same thing is still happening today. Ireland went Euro a few years ago. Obviously, this meant that the "Punt" was no longer in use. But before the move to the Euro, we used the word "quid" to mean "Punt" (also still in use in England to mean their Pound Sterling). So 10 quid was IR£10 and in England 10 quid still is Stg £10. And guess what, we happily carried it with us into the Euro age, and now 10 quid is commonly used to mean €10 in Ireland. And Zarathustra shrugged profoundly. The metric system is far superior over the American one. Firstly, the relationship between all weights (gram, kilo, tonne) are simply powers of 10 to each other. Secondly, there is a simple relationship between weight and the most common substance on this planet, water, in that 1 kilogram of water is exactly 1 liter and it is exactly 1 cubic Decimeter (a cubic meter was too big to be practical). That's why the French won that "battle". Face it, nobody in their right mind will ever revert from the metric system to the Imperial one. But apart from three retarded nations all other nations have officially replaced their own inferior measuring systems with the metric one. The USA must be proud to stand up against the inexorable march of the metric system shoulder to shoulder with such enlightened nations as Liberia and self-proclaimed Myanmar. Nobody had a "natural" system better than the metric one (even the French had their own insanity before metric became the norm), and everybody else has seen the benefit of it.

From: Pino Carafa	On: 2007/01/04 06:47:11
Kilo = 1000 Mega = 1 million Giga = 1000 million Tera = 1 million million milli = 1 / 1000 micro = 1 / 1 million Nano = 1 / 1000 million Pico = 1 / million million anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico

From: PaulHews	On: 2007/01/04 07:42:29
>'give me two hundred and fifty mililiters of petrol, please" :) That's easy. "Twenty five cents worth of gas, please." On date formats, Canada has it screwed up. All English Canada uses the American format, but Quebec uses the dd/mm/yyyy format. I believe they do this in a misguided sense of national pride (the nation of Quebec that is.) My feeling is that a bad standard is better than no standard. Canada converted from the imperial system in the seventies. I'm sure it was expensive, but probably worth it. Like most unpleasant things, it's worse in thinking about it than actually doing it.

From: Pino Carafa	On: 2007/01/04 08:08:05
> My feeling is that a bad standard is better than no standard. True.

From: JOK	On: 2007/01/04 09:40:43
Try living in Bilang Canada. Tabernac, eh?

From: Hooligan	On: 2007/01/04 10:30:00
don't agree that 2007-04-23 is better than 23/04/2007 most dates that we are given fall in the near future or near past, with old dates being less likely to be seen. so if youi get given a date for your insurance renewal, as say 23/12/2007 - you want to see that day and month part first, the year is pretty obvious to you, but you want it at the end just as a confirmation. if my newspaper said 2007/01/04 at the top, then I've got to read 2007 every time. Similarly for time, you say quarter past five, because quarter past conveys the important information, you probably already know that it's five - 17:15 just takes longer to assimilate, and in that time you've missed your train. Imperial is harder for computer programming, but I've got skill, so it don't matter

From: Pino Carafa	On: 2007/01/04 10:38:29
If it weren't for the yanks, both systems would be equally good, and accepting what you're saying, Hooligan, I'd have to agree. But they've thrown rather a spanner in the works, and especially because Microsoft and IBM are USA based companies defaults tend to be USA biased, and that is why so often we have problems here in UK and Ireland: the careless amongst us write software based on the standard date format (i.e. DD-MM-YYYY), and then a dumb user who can't be bothered to set their regional settings enters today's date as 04/01/2007, and their stoopid system interprets it as Fool's day. But no matter what your regional settings are, your computer will always interpret a date entered in YYYY-MM-DD format correctly. And it doesn't take that much getting used to for us humans either. After all, 1,000 million Chinese managed it, how hard can it be!?

From: mac	On: 2007/01/04 11:29:11
1,000 million Chinese? i though you said a billion Chinese. which is it????

From: Pino Carafa	On: 2007/01/04 12:06:15
1,000 million. And then some. But nowhere near a billion, which is a million million. In the long scale that is. In the short scale it's the same thing.

From: mac	On: 2007/01/04 14:26:13
damn formatting!

From: Hooligan	On: 2007/01/05 02:04:26
I've encountered programmers who store dates in the dd/mm/yy format as text, they didn't like it when I pointed out some of the drawbacks of this system.

From: Pino Carafa	On: 2007/01/05 02:16:11
LOL

From: JOK	On: 2007/01/05 03:09:38
A billion is a thousand million.

From: Pino Carafa	On: 2007/01/05 03:18:01
Yes, in the short scale it is. In the long scale, a billion is a million million.

From: PaulHews	On: 2007/01/05 13:02:33
>Yes, in the short scale it is. Except when it's equal to 1073741824.

From: mac	On: 2007/01/06 05:35:19
what's that, a Giga-chinese?

From: PaulHews	On: 2007/01/06 11:56:27
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte

From: Baldrick	On: 2007/01/08 05:48:22
Surely that's a Gibibyte? Metrication or no metrication, some arsehole will insist on fouling things up. Lawyers, probably. They're anal-retentive pricks with a tenuous grasp of kindergarten mathematics. Bastards.

From: Pino Carafa	On: 2007/01/08 05:55:30
A valiant attempt to remove the confusion but I gather it's too late now. But think of the possibilities.... BibiByte HubbiByte TeliByte TubiByte TeliTubiByte

From: JOK	On: 2007/01/08 06:36:43
OverByte

From: mac	On: 2007/01/08 10:59:04
2 ^50 = petabyte please, nobody make the animal joke .... or 2 ^80, yottabyte's inevitable jedi master joke

From: Pino Carafa	On: 2007/01/09 02:19:02
<whoosh> What's that sound? It's the sound of that comment going right over my head.

From: shekerra	On: 2007/01/09 22:34:50
(((TeliTubiByte)))

From: Hooligan	On: 2007/01/10 06:29:55
Lawyers and judges are bad at statistics, they seem to be continuing to represent DNA evidence statistics in a misleading fashion. No one seems to be bothering to explain that if a DNA profile is shared by one-in-a-hundred million people, then there is a fair chance that there is another person in the country with that DNA.

From: mac	On: 2007/01/12 12:44:06
<whoosh?> well then i guess the "yottabyte" jedi master joke wasn't so inevitable after all!

From: rspahitz	On: 2007/01/23 00:18:02
Man, you guys are all so Terra-centric and Sapien-centric! 1/11/2007 should mean: Universal year 1, Deci-Year 11, Centi-year 2007 that was shortly after the Big Bang. Star Trek tried to get it right with their Star Date concept, but they simply missed and chose an arbitrary starting point, like most calendars that pick a "zero" year and go from there...that's kind of like Celsius which starts at 273°K...why not just start at zero like most other logical people? and measurements are based on number of hydrogen frequencies. Then again, why are you guys still using the arbitrary base 10? Everything should be in the much more pleasant base 256.

From: rspahitz	On: 2007/01/23 00:31:34
BTW...Hooligan's logic about skipping year and seeing day first then month is good except that when I talk about having something on the 5th, does that mean the previous month or next month....and THAT's why we put the month first. The year is rarely important in everyday dates (except dates of birth) but the month is important most of the time so that goes first...not saying it's right, just that's why it's there. I personally like the year first then work your way down...and if everyone were using that system, then the variations become intuitive... 2007 01 11 12 36 45 is tough to read without formatting so add some: 2007-01-11 12:36:45 To shortcut it, you can leave off the year and/or time: 01-11 must be Jan 11. 12:36 must be 36 minutes after 12 2007-01 must be Jan 2007 Not all variations work, but these are the important ones plus combinations like 01-11 12:36

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