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Happy 'Even Day' - the First in 1112 Years 365

Posted by Roblimo from the fun-with-numerology dept.
schmofo writes "Today is the first day since Dec. 28, 888 (12-28-888) to have only even digits in its numerical format (02-02-2000). This is quite an event, and complements the last odd day for as long, which occurred back in November." It's also Groundhog day; take a look at Google's logo o' the day. Cute! Update: There is an error above as submitted, which I should have caught: should have been 08/28/888, 12/28/888.
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Happy 'Even Day' - the First in 1112 Years More

Happy 'Even Day' - the First in 1112 Years

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  • Apocalypse Part II (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Oh NO! Why didn't anyone tell me! I gotta head back down to the bomb shelter, fire up the generator and pray the world doesn't end.... that whole Y2K thing was just a beta test for the real end of the world - the first even digit date.

    I have to go now... good thing I still have a few years worth of canned goods. "Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most." -- Thucydides

  • News You'll Never See on /. (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @05:02AM (#1312123)
    News You'll Never See on /.

    Apologies, Corrections
    Posted by CmdrTaco [cmdrtaco.net] on 3:10 PM February 2nd, 2000
    from the we-were-wrong dept.
    We hereby officially apologize for the past mistakes we've made while reporting the news, flagrant errors such as Microsoft being run by space aliens, the RIAA's involvement in JFK's assassinations, and anything posted by Robin. We will take special care in the future to prevent this from happening, as we know that most people on Slashdot cannot tell the difference between facts, opinions, lies, and FUD.

    ( Read More... )
  • Infact, that date format is formally known as ISO 8601.
  • Minor detail, but there's no Greek Orthodox calendar. The Greek Orthodox Church has used the western calendar for the past hundred years or so. I think the Russian and Serbian Orthodox Churches are the only ones left using the old calendar...
  • So what does that mean for me since my birthday is today? And what does it further mean that my drivers liscense will expire on 02/02/02? Not to mention I was born in 1976 being the bicentenial year of the USA? And geez, I was born around 9:00am which means 2:00pm UTC! Plus, I'm 24 today, that's 2 and (the digit) 2 to the 2 power! And what of the fact that I'm really NOT a groundhog!?!? OMG I really freaking out here! Where's my numerologist!?!?!?
    ---
    Don Rude - AKA - RudeDude
  • Hmmm, I tried this:

    print ($today / 2);

    and got 0 as a result - so $today must be an even number...
  • According to my IRC client, it'd be Sat Sep 8 19:46:40 MDT 2001... so how DID you calculate that time, anyway? :)
  • It's not an official holiday, but it's a longstanding custom in the states that on Feb 2, approximately halfway through the winter season, groundhogs would come out of their holes in the morning; if they saw their shadow, they'd race back inside, predicting another 6 weeks of winter, or if they didn't see it, it would be nearly spring. Obviously a tradition started with farmers worried about when to plant their crops, it's mostly now just a curious aside.

    (You could have also answered "A really wacky movie starring Bill Murray" for credit as well :D )

  • since 02/02/1998. That's numbers as opposed to digits.

    BTW, posted using Mozilla M13 - damn I'm impressed with this thing
  • Yeah, okay - I heard this on the radio this morning and it was an instictive response. I didn't think, I hang my head.

    Happy? :-)

  • Trivia (Score:2)

    by jd ( 1658 )
    If you write the year in reverse order, this would be an Even Prime Day. :)
  • If you think about it, any date after 1000 made it kind of hard to create all even dates, since the first digit was a one. The same thing's true now. We're not going to have an all odd date until 11/11/3111 (or, if you don't count preceding zeros, 1/1/3111).

    Of course, it's all completely irrelevant if you don't go by the Gregorian calendar.

  • Just more Slashdot biases (Score:4)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @06:06AM (#1312134) Homepage
    Why does Slashdot have to always assume that the dating method they use is the one that everyone uses? It's like Taco and Hemos and the others are saying, "Well, we use it, and we're Slashdot, so everyone else must use it, too, because we're the Start Page of the universe!" Well, I got news for you, bubbas, there are other dating systems.

    There's the Muslim calendar. There's the Jewish calendar. There's the Greek Orthodox calendar. Some guy came up with a calendar where every month got 30 days, except December which got 35. Is it Happy Even Day in these cultures? Oh, no, and they're left out of the fun because of it. Personally, I use the Personal calendar, where the date is 154/22 (the 154th day of my 22nd year). Give it a few more months and I'll be celebrating Happy Even Day, but will Slashdot recognize that?! Oh, no. Because Slashdot's calendar is the only calendar.

    I want news, not this editorial garbage. If Slashdot's truly news for nerds, how come we're not celebrating Happy Even Day on the moment when the number of seconds since the epoch has all even digits, huh?

    Sheesh.

    NOTE: This post not meant for the humor (or humour) impaired.
  • Isn't this the day that's supposed to keep repeating until you go mad ?

    For those who don't "GroundHog Day" was also a movie.

    On a more serious note dose anyone want to recalibrate the calendar ? After all it seams to be running 7 years behind of it's proper time and Christ was apparently born in 7BC. This is an unacceptable situation since it would mean we celebrated the 3nd millennium at the wrong time last year and will have an equally incorrect celebration this year.

    I say that in 2002 we reset the calendar to 2000 so we can do the millennium thing properly then we recalibrate it to the actual date in the following year ( 2010 ). Of course the calendar finally working properly should also be cause for celebration on a scale unheard of before.

    somewhere in there we will restart the count from 0 2000 years in the past so all those who called january, 1 2000 the dawn of a new millennium would become correct.
  • Well, if They hadn't rejected my submission of this story instead of using this one then we'd all know that the last Even Day was 28th August - not December - 888. Stupid darn frigging eejuts.

    (Not that I'm bitter, of course.)

    Regards, Ralph.

  • > explain to an ignorant european what Groundhog Day is all about?

    Ground Hog is also known as Pork Sausage. Today is the day old time Americans slaughtered the last winter pig and made their last batch of sausage before spring. So all Americans clebrate by having a feast of pork sausages and other kinds of pork. More sausage is consumed on Ground Hog day than on any other single day of the year.
  • Remember, fellow /.ers, that the only proper way to celebrate Ground Hog Day is with a large meal of pork sausage. All those poor pigs died so that you could have ground hog today, Its the least you can do to honor their passing!
  • zero isn't even, it's just not odd, so the next day with all evens will have to wait until 2/2/2222 I'm afraid.

    Although, given the general %02d nature of displaying months, there could be a suggestion that an all-even month number is impossible ...
  • Would this be any relation to the maxim that every spelling flame contains at least on speeling mistake?
    --
  • Maybe not, since in that case 12-30-1998 would have been the last one. I kinda expected this post after the 11-19-1999 hype. Bummer we have to wait until 1-1-3111 now.

    So what's the next hype? The countdown until Sun Sep 9 03:46:39 2001 when we'll hit 999999999 with time_t? Or want to wait a second for the big billion?

  • A number is even if it can be divided evenly by 2

    A number is even if its LSB is zero...
  • Here is the /. post from the last even day, apparently something got screwed up since then. It originally said 8-28-888:

    "Today is November 19, 1999. The numerical format for today is 11-19-1999. All of the digits are odd. The next Odd day will be 1-1-3111 - which is well over a thousand years away, which we will never see. Days such as 4-13-89 have both even and odd digits, thus, it is neither odd nor even. The next even day will be 2-2-2000 - the first one since 8-28-888. So, now you have a reason to celebrate this Friday as it'll be your last odd day on Earth!!!!!!"

    Lord of the Rings Movie Trilogy [bloomnet.com]

  • Serious question for all us non-US Slashdot readers.

    Just what the heck is Groundhog Day?

    (I really do want to know; even my Canadian wife doesn't have an answer)

  • The whole even/odd thing is even cooler for me, as my birthday was 11/19 and my mom's birthday is today. (I was 1976, she was 1950 though).

    heh,
    --sam
  • Groundhog day is when the elders of a town surround the hybernating area of a groundhog and see if it comes out. If it does come out, that symbolises the end of spring and a good summer harvest, if it stays in then the winter would drag on and on.. and on.. (in other words it's a weather man (um.. groundhog))

    Cheers.
    --
  • Here is a URL [cnn.com] that might be helpful and might tell you a bit more about the groundhog day.
    --

  • I guess it would then be : 9/11/3111

    What's wrong with 1/1/3111 ?


    --
  • I was there this morning, so I have some idea of what it is :-) To learn quite a bit about the history, and whatnot, you can go to the Official Site of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club [groundhog.org]. These are the guys who pretty much control the show. The actual site of the event is Gobbler's Knob, an area a little bit out of town. At sunrise, Punxsutawney Phil (the groundhog) is pulled out of his enclosure, and then asked by the club if he sees his shadow... As far as the legend behind this, if they claim he saw his shadow, it means 6 more weeks of winter, otherwise there will be an early spring.

    One of the best things I heard this morning, was a fairly large group of college students chanting "Feed Phil Beer!", "Feed Phil Beer!".

    Don't get me wrong, it's one of the oddest things I've ever seen, but it is quite unique.

  • The circumstances under which 12/14/1774 and 6/22/1462 are all-even-digit numbers is...never, as 1 is an odd digit, despite what some wackos who failed math think. And, BTW, 0 is even.

    Sadly, some people are thinking PRIME numbers, which you can argue that 0 and 1 are, aren't, or N/A...but they are even or odd, respectively. And, unlike an extreme case above claimed, they are numbers. Sheesh. What some people will claim.

    Hehehe. Do I get the mug?



    -David T. C.

  • I'm fairly certain eln was being sarcastic.

    -David T. C.
  • Groundhogs are relatively large rodents that live in holes in the ground.
    There is a tradition here (mostly kept alive by people in some little town in PA that get's lots of tourists in today to watch phil the groundhog) that if the groundhog comes of of his hole today and can see his shadow summer is just around the corner, but if he can't we're going to have more winter weather.
    I don't think Phil actually gets to come out of the hole of his own accord, I think he gets yanked out on schedule.
  • The Gregorian Calendar is an iso-standard for international trading etc.
    For example Russia, whose orthodox church still uses the Julian Calendar, uses for public life the Gregorian Calendar.

    Jo
  • > Because you can't have (literal quantity) none of something.

    If I can't have "none" of something, I can't have a negative number of them either. If this is the reason that "0" is not a number, than -1 is not a number, either.
  • > Whatever happened to the 30th of the month??????

    They put an odd-looking "3" in it.
  • "News for Nerds", not "News of *real* significance".
  • > he 19th century sort of made it hard to create all even dates

    And if you think even harder, you'll see that it was also hard to have even days in the 18th century. And the 17th, 16th... and so on. The last one was in the 9th century.

    PS: It was also difficult to have them in the 20th century.
  • % tclsh8.0
    % clock format 1000000000
    Sat Sep 08 21:46:40 EDT 2001

    You're off by a few seconds. I'm guessing it took you 25 seconds to enter that into bc...
  • 02/02/2000
    02/04/2000
    02/06/2000
    02/08/2000
    02/20/2000
    and so on.

    We must be living in a very special year to have all these dates which do not have any odd digits in them. Is it possible? Could all the experts be wrong, and mathematics twisted beyond recognition?? IS THIS REALLY THE START OF A NEW MILLENIUM??? instead of 2001?

    Makes ya wonder, don't it?

    ciao,
  • It was on 30-8-888 (october, november and december
    have a 1 in they numeric representation).

    The combination of even numbers will be very common from now on (just as the combination of odd numbers used to be between 1000 and 1999).

    So what's the fuss all about?

    Marco.
  • Maybe I'm not understanding the whole even day "thing", but won't the next even day be Feb 2nd, 2002?
  • Don't forget that the 1,000,000,000th second of Unix time hits us on the evening of Saturday, Sep 8th (EST)! Get that champagne on ice... ;^)
  • I should add, next year: Sat Sep 8 21:47:20 EDT 2001 Doh!
  • Mmmmm. Unix. Don't you just love it. Now, how would a PC user have done it... ;-)

    Current 'time' in secs since 1 Jan 1970:

    rleyton[1042] date '+%s'
    949514155

    Crank up good 'ol bc, work out how many seconds until the billionth one...

    rleyton[1043] bc
    bc 1.05
    Copyright 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
    This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
    For details type `warranty'.
    1000000000-949514155
    50485845

    Then back to good 'ol date, and ask it to do the hard work:

    rleyton[1044] date --date '50485845 seconds'
    Sat Sep 8 21:47:05 EDT 2001

    (Redhat Linux 2.0.36 incase you're curious).

  • I appreciate the reference and did read it completely. In fact, I recollected having read it before.

    I asked a question seriously and probably should have made that clear. I was curious why folks would think so. One post was helpful. The rest figured I was complaining. Oh, well...

    I had no problem with the "News For Nerds" attribute for this article. I understand number and word play. I just think this particular item doesn't matter a whole lot in the scheme of things.

    I also think this communication attempt was not worth the effort (although I accept the blame for not explaining the question); however, I do thank you for your considered response.

  • Zero is most certainly even! Observe the pattern:
    -4: even
    -3: odd
    -2: even
    -1: odd
    0: ???
    1: odd
    2: even
    3: odd
    4: even
    The proper answer is, by inspection, that zero is even. Or, to prove it mathematically, an even number is any number n such that n=2k for some integer k. Since, 0=2*0, it meets this definition, and is thus even.
  • Everyone should be aware that:

    Tue May 9 06:13:20 1995 (800000000)

    was the last, and most recent, all even digit day. The last all odd day was:

    Sun Jul 4 17:58:31 1999 (931111111)

    The next ones are:

    Wed May 18 03:33:20 2033 (2000000000 even)
    Mon Feb 21 05:31:51 2000 (951111111 odd)

    Praise to the epoch!

  • Wrongo (Score:1)

    by Otto ( 17870 )
    5/infinity != 0.

    the limit of 5/x as X approaches infinity is zero.

    You cannot divide a number by a concept. You'll see it done, but this is just shorthand for other ideas. It's not what is actually happening.

    And, zero is a number, by definition.
    ---
  • Is saying this really worth your time? And who the hell wasted time moderating that up? Just don't read the fscking story if you're not interested. Clicking on the Read More link and posting a comment bitching about it is lame. No one cares. Find a better use for your time.
  • So, if we were still on the Julian calendar, we wouldn't have an even day for another 13 days, but on the Gregorian calendar it would not be an even day. Is that odd? It definately isn't an odd day...

    Likewise, our last Gregorian even day would have occured on the Julian date of 9-13-888, 16 days after their last even day. Which is also odd, but not an odd day. As even they would not have an odd day until well into the next millenium.

    Its like opening Christmas presents early. Thanks Pope Gregory.
  • One is a mathematical concept that represents 'one-ness', does that mean it's not odd?
  • If 12 is an even number, which it is then, 12/30/1998 was an even day and an even day is not really that unusual is it.

    I think we are talking about even digits, and the story is screwed.
  • Not always brown. Wiarton Willie, the Canadian version of Phil, is an albino. And three cheers for him, it's his first year. (The last Willie died last year just after his big day...)

    What I never understood is how six more weeks of winter is worse than what we normally get... :-)
  • Look at street addresses. The buildings with an address ending with zero are always on the same side of the street as the evens.

    Which, obviously, is completely absurd. Since zero is obviously neither odd nor even, buildings with addresses ending in zero should always be in the middle of the street.

  • Fascinating as this discussion is, I believe that we "oddballs" must get a life!!! :-)
  • For a discussion about zero (and a different conclusion than yours!), follow this link [straightdope.com]
  • No. The next even day is Friday - 04/02/2000, then Sunday - 06/02/2000, then Tuesday, 08/02/2000.

  • *1*2/28/888??? (Score:4)

    by Whizard ( 25579 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @04:19AM (#1312189) Homepage
    Since when is 1 an even digit? 12/28/888 has all even numbers in its numeric representation, but not all even digits. 08/28/888 would have been the last one with all even digits.
  • Oh, yeah... we're all idiots. Think before you post, mmm'k?
  • >Sometimes I wonder how smart the /. community is (not all.. just a few)

    True enough. The point of the odd day is that it would be the last for a long time, not the first. Dontcha hate it when your ass shows like that?

  • Re:Zero isn't an even number. (Score:4)

    by Tava ( 31002 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @04:58AM (#1312201)
    1) 0 IS a number! There is a huge difference between "nothing" (in math terms the empty set) and a "something" that has a value 0! In other words {0} (the set with 0 as its only element) is very different from the empty set.

    2) 0 is an even number: the definition of "even numbers" is the set E subset of Z {u in Z | u = 0 mod 2}. Is 0 Even? YES! 0%2=0!
  • Look at street addresses. The buildings with an address ending with zero are always on the same side of the street as the evens.
  • A groundhog is kind of like a... Well, it's sort of like one of those... Um... A groundhog is brown.

    And Groundhog Day is an old superstition of ours that tries to tell how much longer Winter will last, based on whether or not a small mammal is frightened of his own shadow.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • The last even day was 1111 years, 5 months and five days ago. An odd interval!

  • Re:*1*2/28/888??? (Score:3)

    by GoofyBoy ( 44399 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @05:16AM (#1312230) Journal

    >12 is an even number ... hence 12/28/888

    Then the last even date would be 12/30/1998. What did they teach you in second grade?
  • The countdown until Sun Sep 9 03:46:39 2001 when we'll hit 999999999 with time_t? Or want to wait a second for the big billion?
    Is that UTC?

    That means that somewhere around September 20, 2001, (have to look up the exact time on my birth certificate and figure in time zones and daylight savings time) I'll have been around for one billion seconds. Time for a party!

  • I don't know that it has any "real" significance, other than an interesting quick of our numbering system. But if the digits of numbers describing natural phenomena obey Benford's law [newscientist.com], who knows what sort of wacky stuff number-theory geeks could find in dates?

  • So because your compiler says there is a difference between 0 and NULL, we just solved one of the greatest debates in math.
    1: In C, NULL is 0. That doesn't meant that the null pointer is 0, however. (I.e., the compiler might not make (char *)0 point at memory location zero.) As an abstraction, though, I highly recommend using NULL for pointers, '\0' for chars, and 0 for ints.

    2: What debate? 0 is defined to be a number, unless you want to argue that being a member of the reals somehow doesn't qualify it more number status. Infinity is generally not, though IIRC there are exceptions, contexts where the number system is extended to include infinities.

    You don't have to write your "proof" here, but surely if this is one of the "greatest debates in math" you can point us to a page with more info.

  • The other replies to this explain the legend of the groundhog, but I wanted to point out why it's today. February 2nd is the cross-quarter day, midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It's celebrated by many pagans as Imbolg or Candlemas [paganet.org].

  • There's all kinds of cool stuff in dates. For example, not only do the leap-year dates follow a pattern that repeats every 400 years, the days of the week (and what dates they correspond to) cycle in exactly the same way.

    In this 400-year cycle, the 13th of any given month is most likely to fall on a Friday. Feeling unlucky?

    --
  • Uh, is anyone actually claiming that this is relevant?
    --
  • I suppose you meant S1G, because an epoch is 2^31 seconds. Yes, the epoch can also mean time 0, but that would make about as much sense as calling the year 2000 problem "the Christ 2000 problem".

    BTW, for all you pedants out there, I know that second 1073741824 (2^30) will be more important than second 1000000000, so there's no need to start an argument about what a gigasecond is.

    --

  • Re:Other dates of paramount significance: (Score:3)

    by PurpleBob ( 63566 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @05:11PM (#1312254)
    Wow! Look at all I learned from Slashdot today! All of these were stated outright or implied in comments here:
    • 0 is not even.
    • 1 is even.
    • 3 is even.
    • 0 is not a number.
    • Infinity is a number.
    And now you're telling me that 1 is prime. Hmm, there goes the Fundamental Theory of Arithmetic...
    --
  • I always mark Dec 12, at 12:12 and 12 seconds by yelling "NOW!" and pumping my fists in jubilation. Won't you join me?
  • Actually had a chance to be in Punxsutawney a couple of years ago. Got there with a college friend just in time.

    Hundreds of drunk or semi-sober people standing in sub-zero temps on a hill next to Gobbler's Knob (cackle,cackle) while the dear rodent,'Phil', gets yanked out from this stump, and is shown to the world like Simba from the pridelands.

    Next, when 'Phil' is sufficiently scared out of his wits, two guys in top hats hold up 'Phil' to their ears and unfurl a scroll. The answer is given, and everyone boos or cheers based on the result.

    Afterwards, some people leave and other stick around to have their picture taken with the now terrified 'Phil'. Local TV affiliates are there, choppers and planes fly overhead to get a view, and enough local cops are on the scene to comprise a policeman's ball. Cops, you say? Yes, Cops to wrangle the exodus of people from the afore mentioned freezing hill. Not to mention to help clean up the field that has been strewn with garbage, beer cans, beer bottles, empty 40's, and 2 liters filled with (you guessed it) beer. Apparently the majority of masses camp there the previous night and drink heavily.

    It's all part of this strange German tradition that (while being fun) strangely deviates from the famous Bill Murry movie. No deja vu was experienced or mentioned by the staggering attendees, nor any wise homespun insights on life aside from remembering never to travel at 3:00AM to a freezing hill for seeing a traditional rodent on display unless you REALLY want to.

    So enjoy today in your nice warm office, cube, house or where ever else you read Slashdot and thank the deity of your choice that you are not 'Phil'

  • since when is 0 an even number

    Um, since the Arabs used it.

    You see, since "0" sits either between a "9" and a "1", or a "-1" and a "1" (or, technically, a "-9" and -1"), it is even because "1" and "9" are both odd. See, let's go the sequence of whole nubmers:

    0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

    Now, lets move all the odd numbers up

    _1 3 5 7 9
    0 2 4 6 8
    (ignore the "_"; I need it to push that row over a bit)

    As you can see, be using the "even second number, from 1, is odd" rule, the "0" is definitely even.

    Continuing on:
    Odd____1___3___5___7___9__11__13
    Even_0___2___4___6___8__10__12

    Looking at the final digits at the last 6 numbers, we see again that "0" is even.

  • YAY Google (Score:3)

    by Duxup ( 72775 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @05:47AM (#1312264) Homepage
    I remember back when years ago when the Inet was new and corporate interests played no part in site design and the big sites often changed they're logos and such around holidays. Not just the major holidays but groundhogs day and such too. I even remember some of the big ones playing April fools jokes. Now it seems that things are just a bit colder out there on the Inet. Sure sites toss up a little story about the holiday, but it's just not the same anymore.
    I say YAY to Google for keeping a little humanity and fun on the internet. It's not a big deal, but it's nice to see.
  • For years, especially while Y2K fears were building, I advocated the One True Date Format: YYYY-MM-DD (punctuation is optional and either dots or dashes may be substituted). It sorts correctly. It is locale-independent. It is Y3K-compliant. You need not use it for human interaction, but it should be used to store the dates and transmit them in internal protocols whenever they must be in a printable form. Binary equivalents are acceptable, but may not easily extend to Y10K compliance (see RFC 2550: Y10K and Beyond [isi.edu]).

    When you use this format, placing the most significant digits first (2000-02-02, see Jargon File 4.2.0: big-endian [tuxedo.org]), it is painfully obvious that there is going to be a 2 in the high-order digit for the rest of our expected lifespan.
  • February 2 2000 or something to that effect. There is NO (simple) WAY that this could be misunderstood.

    By humans, perhaps (English speaking ones certainly). However, unless you hard code the English month names, parsing this is going to fail for non-English locales. Let's not introduce an internationalization problem just to solve a date problem.
  • I'm surprised that your Canadian wife has never heard of Wiarton Willie [wiarton-willie.org]. He's the freaky ground hog that Canadians scare the shi* out of every year. I think they killed him last year.

    It was funny to read their site. Apparently their groundhog festival is "the" festival of all festivals on February second. It also made me laugh to note that the town had Trademarked the name "Wiarton Willie".

    *All mentions of "Wiarton Willie" used entirely without permission.

  • Big Willie Style (Score:3)

    by Cplus ( 79286 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @06:28AM (#1312271) Homepage Journal
    I'm surprised that your Canadian wife has never heard of Wiaton Willie [wiarton-willie.org]. He's the freaky ground hog that Canadians scare the shi* out of every year. I think they killed him last year.

    It was funny to read their site. Apparently their groundhog festival is "the" festival of all festivals on February second. It also made me laugh to note that the Town had Trademarked the name "Wiarton Willie".

    *All mentions of "Wiarton Willie" used entirely without permission
  • Since at the moment of this writing, the unix time is:
    949509356
    And the next even time should be:
    1000000000
    We will have to wait until:
    time_t p = 1000000000;
    printf("%s\n",ctime(&p));

    Sun Sep 9 03:46:40 2001

  • doh! I meant the next even unix time should be:
    2000000000!
    Which is:
    Wed May 18 05:33:20 2033

  • >There is a ring (math term) term for what zero >represents, but unfortunately I don't recall it >immediately. Perhaps someone can post it.

    It's a more general Algebraic term, not just in rings, also groups, fields, etc.

    Given the normal integers with our normal operation of addition zero is the additive identity. i.e. the number you can add to anything to get itself. As a side note in this situation with normal multiplication 1 is the multiplicative identity.

    P.S. 0 is both even and a number. What idiot moderated the above statements to the contrary up. Here's a hot tip. If you don't KNOW, please don't moderate the comments.
    ---CONFLICT!!---
  • Incidently both 28-08-888 and 02-02-2000 are both Wednesdays..... A topic worthy of discussion on /. ? or who gives a f**k !!

  • Re:Just more Slashdot biases (Score:3)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @06:32AM (#1312308) Journal
    "If Slashdot's truly news for nerds, how come we're not celebrating Happy Even Day on the moment when the number of seconds since the epoch has all even digits, huh?"

    You mean to tell me that you're not?

    Weird...

  • sorta OT -- Google's logo (Score:3)

    by LMacG ( 118321 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @04:43AM (#1312314) Journal
    I noticed that the Google groundhog is not casting a shadow, which should indicate a quick end to this winter. On the other hand, all the Google letters are casting shadows, so without the appropriate amount of caffeine, I am unable to determine the significance of this augury.

  • I don't think so... (Score:3)

    by Rusty Shackelford ( 122264 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @04:53AM (#1312321)
    From Eric Wesstein's World of Mathematics [wolfram.com] the definition of an even number is as follows:

    An Integer of the form N=2n, where n is an Integer. The even numbers are therefore ..., -4, -2, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, ...

    If this is wrong, can you explain to me why 0 isn't even?

  • Re:*1*2/28/888??? (Score:4)

    by gravis777 ( 123605 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @05:22AM (#1312323)
    I was hoping someone would state this. 08/28/888 was the last day this hapened, and not in December. HOWEVER, weren't we on a slightly different callender in 888? I think we were on the Roman calender by this date, but I know it is not the same calender we use today. Can anyone shed a little more lite on this?
  • :) . Day Prime Even an be would this ,order reverse in year the write you if.

    Never knock on Death's door:

  • That's odd. . . (Score:3)

    by 348 ( 124012 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @04:29AM (#1312325) Homepage
    Even if the date has all even numbers evenly spaced,
    Even if the day has to be shared with Phil the evenkeeled rodent,
    Even if the 2nd month is an uneven leap year month and is evenly spaced every four years,
    Even if the year will eventually end with the dawn of an even millennium,
    Even though this is Slashdot and this post has an even number of lines, and even number of words and an even number of letters, it's still Wednesday.
    Isn't that odd?

    Never knock on Death's door:

  • Re:Two months more! (Score:3)

    by clyons ( 126664 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @04:38AM (#1312331)
    I think that should be 10-28-888!

    Why? So you can get your long distance for less?

  • Stallman has... (Score:3)

    by GNUs-Not-Good ( 130016 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @05:20AM (#1312337)
    called for a boycott of Groundhog Day until the groundhog releases Spring under the GPL.

    Sad really.
  • Zero, by itself, is not a number (meaning that when it's paired with another number, it can be an actual number - for instance 10 is an even number).

    Why can't your computer can't figure out what x/0 is? Because 0 is not actually a nuber. 0 can be mathmatically defined by any number divided by infinity (which is another concept). 5/infinity is 0, so is 1,000,000/infinity. Now bear with me here, HTML sucks for this.
    A true number can be divided by itself and will equal 1. (5/5 = 1 , 10/10 = 1 , etc.) Now, if that was true for 0, then 0/0 = 1. But since I just said that 5/infinity is 0 and 1,000,000/infinity is 0, then:
    (5/infinity)/(1,000,000/infinity) = 1
    Assuming that infinity is a constant for this, then we would get that 5/1,000,000 = 1. Not quite right. That's why 0 is not a number. QED.

    kwsNI

  • Assume that 0 is a number. How do you define even? I would say that if a number is divisible by two without leaving a remainder, then it is even. Since 0/2 = 0, I would say that 0 is even.

  • I'm dissapointed, so I am giving a slashdot mug [thinkgeek.com] to the first person to post a reply to this post, explaining in which circumstances the dates 12/14/1774 and 6/22/1462 are all-even-digit numbers. The year in the original post (1642) is wrong.
    I'm serious!

    Conditions:
    1 - The timestamp will be the criterium.
    2 - The answer is posted today.
    3 - AC's will not be accepted
    4 - I will talk to the winner through his e-mail, as shown in the discussion page, spam-proofing is ok.
    5 - Think Geek must be able to ship the mug to the location.
    6 - Most important: This message is not moderated down. (And, no, I do not have another account with moderation points)

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