The Next Three Days are the x86 Days

Pinky wrote in to note that "Today, tomorrow and the next day are the only days we'll get dates like this: 2/8/6 3/8/6 4/8/6 like the x86 computers :-)" And yes folks, in the August news cycle vortex, even this strikes my fancy. In recent years we've seen numerical giants like 3/1/4, 6/6/6 and 1/2/3, but now really, what do any of us have to look forward to? Is our future dull and meaningless without cool numbers in dates? Oh the humanity of it all ...

what about the lucky sevens?

In Canada, where m/d/y is more common we already experienced this on February 8, March 8 and April 8, respectively.

Life is good living three steps ahead of the taco.

Personally I look forward to the lucky 7's, 7/7/7, a day where CmdrTaco and I can celebrate our slot machine winnings together.

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

Only two days? C'mon, you just move the holiday to a Monday so it's a three day holiday. Then you'll want to leave on Friday to take full advantage of it. But everyone's leaving on Friday and everyone wants to beat the traffic, so leave on Thursday. And if you're leaving on Thursday, why not Wednesday night? And you can't come back on Monday, that's still a holiday. And you can't come back on Tuesday, cause everybody comes back on Tuesday, so you outsmart everybody and you come back on Wednesday. So now you're leaving on Wednesday and coming back on Wednesday and suddenly a one day holiday is now a week! (Apologies to Scott Adams)

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

I've lived in Canada my entire life, and everyone I know uses dd/mm/yy.

In fact, I recall being taught to do it that way in grade 2.

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

" I've lived in Canada my entire life, and everyone I know uses dd/mm/yy."

Ok...guess it is early...I was wondering what the hell planet these posts were from...

I looked at the date on my calendar and on my computer desktop, and it said 08/02/06...cobwebs cleared and I remembered that in other places, they switch the day and month around.

Just curious...how many places do it d/m/y vs. m/d/y. I'd never seen the d/m/y thing till a couple of years ago....

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

Just curious...how many places do it d/m/y vs. m/d/y. I'd never seen the d/m/y thing till a couple of years ago....

Every place that speaks French use d/m/y. It's because it's the way it's naturally spoken in French : 2 août 2006.

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

Every place that speaks English does too, except the USA (and a handful of Pacific nations who caught it from the US).

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

In software one should sort using this date format:

YYYYMMDD-HHMM

Also: HH should be military/24-hour time, NOT HHMM(a|p)

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

I've been brainwashed in california to use ddMMMyy (eg. 02Aug06) for all my dates. They do that in the international Pharmacuetical/BioTech industry to cut down on this exact confusion.

Which begs the question: is 02Aug06 the 2nd of August 2006 or the 6th of August 2002. Are my pills just expiring or 4 years out of date? Any possible format that leaves ambiguity WILL be misunderstood. Two digit years are an abomination!

And, to reply to a previous poster, do you alphabetize your dictionary by last letter of the word? yyyy-mm-dd is, by systems of ordering that have been around for millenia, the most logical.

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

>I am a native English speaker and have said "It's the 2nd of August, 2006" all my life.

Well, then... congratulations - For the first time in your life, you are correct!

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

All my life, in my surroundings, if someone asked you the date something was going to happen, you'd say "August 22nd"

Wow, what a boring place. What did you guys do for the other 364 days?

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

Nope, in the US, if you asked what time it was, you would most likely get the answer "three-twenty".
Occasionally you'll get it the way you mentioned (twenty after three), but, most of the time I hear it hour-minute.

And that raises a couple of interesting points.

• Brevity. "Three twenty" is less of a mouthful than "Twenty past three". "August 8th, 2006" is somewhat shorter than "The 8th of August, 2006" (no possessives or articles; their function is implied in the shorter pharaseology.) Are we Americans hasty?
• The "decline" of the analog clock. Does anyone in the US say "A quarter till 4 PM?" A quarter of a what? The notion of an hour as a divisible entity (vice an integral entity, accompanied by an integral entity called the minute) is most intuitive if you can see the quarter-circle of the full-circle hour, as marked by the "big hand". I'm middle-aged; I was taught to read the classic analog clock, but now I have to think about it because the digital "hour:minute" format dominates. I wonder if my babies, as they grow up, will be taught in school to read analog clock faces at all? (I'll see to it that they learn, but I wonder if it won't fall out of public school curriculum.)
• The format of shortcut dates in the US verus elsewhere. I think it matches the syntax of the abbreviated US spoken date. That's speculation, but I find it fascinating that some of our English correspondents in this topic tend to speak out dates in ISO (or traditional European) numerical date format order, even if it requires the use of syntactic glue words. ("the 8th of August, 2006." I guess you could drop the glue, but it would sound funny and a bit spastic to me. But maybe that's how we 'merkans look to y'all anyways.)
• So, what of the notable US exception, the Fourth of July? I think it stopped being just a date a long time ago. If, God forfend, the government here in the US tries to make this holiday another "federally observed on the Monday of the week it falls on" holiday, it'll still be called "The Fourth of July" even if it's observed on the 30th of June.

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

Maybe we should all use the "Official" ISO [w3.org] date format - YYYY-MM-DD and avoid confusion. I have a system that I administer that uses the ISO dates, and every single one of my users hates it.

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

That's what the military and most "with it" government organization use. I've also adopted myself because (a) it is completely unambiguous and (b) I'm an asshole.

ISO date vs DoD date

"That's what the military and most "with it" government organization use. I've also adopted myself because (a) it is completely unambiguous and (b) I'm an asshole."

You don't say whose military or government. The US DoD, at least, is large enough that there are multiple "standards". I've seen MM/DD/YY (08/02/06) and YYYY-MMM-DD (2006-AUG-02) most often, I think. The ISO date form is YYYY-MM-DD (2006-08-02) or YYYYMMDD (20060802).

Personally, I find the mixed number/letter forms like "2006 AUG 2" and "2 Aug 2006" work best when dealing with other humans who speak the same language. It's unambiguous -- there's only one sane way to interpret it -- and the letter/number distinction stands out more than dashes. For computers and other kinds of filing, though, the ISO form definately wins. It makes sorting so much easier.

Long live the UNIX timestamp

Today is 1154536012. None of this mm/dd/yy bullcrap.

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

Dd/mm/yy seems to be far more common than mm/dd/yy.

Here's a list [wikipedia.org] of used date formats in various countries. Looks like Canada has them all. ;)

m/d/y (month, day, year) is used by:

* Canada (Although most official documents use the y-m-d format, the m/d/y format is also understood due to influences from the United States.)
* Federated States of Micronesia
* Palau
* Philippines (formerly d/m/y. May still be found in certain contexts)
* United States (Although Independence Day is often referred to as "the Fourth of July.")

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

Just curious...how many places do it d/m/y vs. m/d/y. I'd never seen the d/m/y thing till a couple of years ago....

Basically, everywhere except the USA. You don't get out much do you?

If you do plan on travelling, also note that in the rest of the world we use degrees Celsius for temperature -- 30 degrees is hot, not cold, so pack appropriately. But most surprising of all, not everyone in the world speaks English!

Re:what about the lucky sevens?

If you knew how much hassle I've had with American software that always defaults to MDY dates, and somtimes can't be changed, you might excuse my getting a dig in. If Americans spent a few minutes to consider that their way isn't the only way of doing things, a lot of problems could be avoided, and I'm not just talking about software.

It's funny. Laugh.

Behold:

It's funny. Laugh.

Stay your flamethrower, thou saucy fellow. Nay, let us instead rejoice in the most accurate story in the history of this fine website.

Re:Except..

Nuh-uh! They ran a story about this back in 6 too, but back then we were still pretty bummed about jesus' death, so we didn't really celebrate it much.

Februrary, March and April

"today, tomorrow and the next day are the only days we'll get dates like this: 2/8/6 3/8/6 4/8/6 like the x86 computers :-)"

That all depends on your locale settings - other people had thier x86 days several months back

Saturday

Instead of getting dates of their own, Saturday and subsequent days will be known as "Pentium", "Pentium II", "Pentium IV", "Pentium 5", "Pentium 6", and of course "Xeon".

Re:Saturday

Of course, Itanium already had its day on April 14, 1912.

I'm a Mac user...

I'm a Mac user, how long do I have to wait for 6/80/40?

Re:Psht!

http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime [w3.org]

Concur.

Re:ISO 8601 Please!

Whats ISO 8601? Here in Europe we use ISO 0186 for date formats.

A slight oversight it would seem

"today, tomorrow and the next day are the only days we'll get dates like this: 2/8/6 3/8/6 4/8/6"

Ummm... you mean this century right?

I'm still surprised this made the front page. I mean, I'm a geek, but even I think this is lame.

What about yesterday?

The 80186 was also an Intel processor, wasn't it?

Re:What about yesterday?

It still is, and is still popular with the embedded crowd.

The Best Day Already Was...

I still remember 12:34 pm on May 6, 1978 as the best such thing of all time. It was 1234 on 5/6/78!

What about the 586?

The i586 DOES exist. Same as the i686. I don't care what Intel marketing pushed down people's throats, I still call them 586 and 686 systems. So does the Linux kernel...

d/m/y?

"today, tomorrow and the next day are the only days we'll get dates like this: 2/8/6 3/8/6 4/8/6 like the x86 computers :-)"

Has Y2K taught you nothing? Using a single digit to store the year? You are among programmers! Hang your head in shame!

March 10th

So okay, this is news?

Every year March 10th comes around and we don't get a bunch of news posts from Nintendo fans because it's MAR10 day yet again.

It can't be that slow on a Tuesday in August. What is the world coming to?

Donald Becker quote

In a discussion involving both 3Com's 3C509 and 3C905 network cards, Donald Becker came up with this gem:

"3Com only purchased rights to the numbers '3' '5' and '9'. Intel
owns '4', '8', '6', and '2'. '0' and '1' are still in the public
domain."

What about time for pi ?

3/14/15 9:26:53

Mmmmmm.... pi...

See, there's still stuff to look forward to!

Re:SORRY!

Sorry, but here in Europe, where the current calendar system was invented, we put the day first, so today is 2/8/6!

Re:SORRY!

I look at it differently again, so perhaps we have to agree to disagree...

2006/8/2 is I agree then "best" way to represent a date - The majority of human-use number systems put the least-significant information to the right hand side. This has the bonus that sorting on a computer (mechanical or electrical) is simplified. Systems that include this are HH:MM:SS and good 'ol decimal numbering Hundreds-Tens-Units.

An alternative in the LSB/MSB world is 2/8/2006 - Computers can be (and are) architected to deal with this type of reversal. Humans can deal with the LSB being at the left hand end of the information. This is still "useful" as processing left-to-right and right-to-left are not really that different. I consider this to be "next best" as it retains a certain amount of logic.

The final option is to ignore whether your data has an order or significance, and just jumble it up. How is MM/DD/YYYY differnt to YYYY/DD/MM ? Would you consider YYYY/DD/MM valid or useful? I am afraid that I personally would not, and but the same token consider MM/DD/YYYY to be not-useful. Perhaps we should just switch to MM/YYYY/DD for fun? :)

I would be seriously interested to know where/why the different system in the USA originated, and by what measure you determine the USA system to be next-best and the European system to be "Fucked up"