Isn't it Time for Metric Time? 1717
xenocytekron writes: "Sure, our time system is ok, but does it make sense? Is it easy? Think about it: 60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, 25 hours to a day, all the way to 365 days to a year. Currently, all the world uses the Metric System except for the US. But what about Time? The solution is Metric Time, that is, a time system which uses Base-10 and Metric Standards. So what do you think: Is it Time, for Metric Time?"
25 Hours in a day? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:25 Hours in a day? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:25 Hours in a day? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:25 Hours in a day? (Score:5, Funny)
-Sara
Re:25 Hours in a day? (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, yes, but you'd get paid for 75 hours a day. Imagine that on your paycheck.
Re:25 Hours in a day? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:25 Hours in a day? (Score:5, Funny)
the days per year thing doesnt match mars.. so that eliminates the possibility that the the poster is a martian....
maybe he was drunk.....
or stoned...
Re:25 Hours in a day? (Score:3, Interesting)
If a human doesn't get any sunlight, he starts living a 25 hour day.
I've always been wondering why it is so.
25h day means that if clocks wouldn't exist, I'd wake up everyday an hour later than on the previous day.
No I think I've understood this thing. You see, mars used to have water. And people. They just didn't care about their Kioto and therefore flooded their lovely planet. Then every plant died and when the water went down again, everything collapsed and the people had to fly to another planet, the third one from the sun.
Now why don't we normal people know about this? Oh! Of course! A conspiracy. What else could it be? Europol, FBI, NSA, Schengen-database, everything. They've been hiding all this for their whole existence.
Maybe I should stop writing.
The point is: We are from mars because mars has 25h days. Thank you.
French revolution (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:25 Hours in a day? (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder if NASA engineers agree?
Re:25 Hours in a day? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:25 Hours in a day? (Score:3, Informative)
Except that they arn't the US pint is 95 ml less than the British pint.
Yup! (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, think about it.
Timothy needs metric time...
25 Hours? (Score:4, Funny)
Cool... Where do you live? I can use an extra hour of coding time every day...
Re:25 Hours? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you'd see a lot of resistence to this idea, since everyone in the world (AFAIN) uses the current time system. The same can't be said about weights and measures.
Also, think of all the s/w that would have to be rewritten.... flight control systems, databases, operating systems, the list is endless! Yikes!
Re:25 Hours? (Score:5, Funny)
Yikes?... Try Who Hoo!!!
Think of all the $$$$ that PHBs were shovelling at Geeks for software and consulting 3 or 4 years ago when they were scared to death of Y2k!! We could do it all over again. This is a GOLDMINE !
Re:25 Hours? (Score:5, Informative)
The human body's "biorhythms" are apparently based on a 25-hour cycle. Now that I'm actually looking for it, I can't find any links to the research, but perhaps someone more "in the know" can provide this information, as I'm positive that I didn't imagine this fact. There've been some really interesting studies done on this and sleep, I wish I could find the link. (I suppose chances are slim that anyone else would happen to have bookmarked a URL for something about 25 hour biorhythms and sleep?) Can anyone help me out here?
Re:25 Hours? (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember this particular study involved moving people into a house a la Big Brother, but actually having that house built completely within a set, kindof like the Truman Show, but more like just limited to controlling the light coming in through the windows to give the residents a sense of sunrise, daylight, sunset and nighttime. They may have even cycled the light every, what, 45 minutes(?) to simulate orbiting the earth.
I don't remember anything about specially controlled clocks that run a little slower to add the extra hour a day. If there are 3,600 seconds in an hour and 86,400 seconds in a day, then each move of the second hand on each clock actually needs to take 1 + 3600/86400 or 1.041666 seconds.. barely noticeable. Don't worry, you're not nuts. I most definitely remember the 25 hours too, not 27 like another poster mentioned, but I think we're remembering a 20 year old study, too.
Re:25 Hours? (Score:4, Informative)
You can read the rest [google.com] of the Google hits.
24.2 Hours! (Score:3, Insightful)
In spaceflight we have a .75:.75 LD cycle (i.e., 45 min. of light followed by 45 min. of dark) and weightlessness. The circadian oscillators are screwed up by this and thus the period retards to approx. 25 hours.
Altering our time system wont change our LD cycle. So unless we want to slow down the Earth's rotation by about 0.8%, we just need to live with it.
BTW, the study that was mentioned before is Alpatov, AM.Circadian rhythms in a long-term duration space flight. Adv Space Res 1992;12(1):249-52. I have included the abstract below:
Re:25 Hours? (Score:3, Informative)
Relevant Simpsons quote... (Score:5, Funny)
gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!" --Abe Simpson (Homer's dad)
Re:Relevant Simpsons quote... (Score:5, Funny)
"Not only are the trains now running on time, they're running on metric time! Remember this moment, people: 80 past 2 on April 47th!" --Principal Skinner
(Episode "They Saved Lisa's Brain")
[the one where Lisa joins Mensa]
Re:Relevant Simpsons quote... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, one of the cool things about old English liquid measure (and dry measure too, but it took me long enough to exosomatically remember the liquid measures) is that it is base-2 instead of base-10. Unfortunately, we forgot most of the units. For example, I can't recall what goes between ounces and gills, and I can't seem find it on the internet.
2 fluid ounces = 1 ??? = 2^1 fl.oz.
2 ???s = 1 gill = 2^2 fl.oz.
2 gills = 1 chopin (cup) = 2^3 fl.oz.
2 chopins (cups) = 1 pint = 2^4 fl.oz.
2 pints = 1 quart = 2^5 fl.oz.
2 quarts = 1 pottle = 2^6 fl.oz.
2 pottles = 1 gallon = 2^7 fl.oz.
2 gallons = 1 peck = 2^8 fl.oz.
2 pecks = 1 demibushel = 2^9 fl.oz.
2 demibushels = 1 bushel or firken = 2^10 fl.oz.
2 firkens = 1 kinderkin = 2^11 fl.oz.
2 kinderkins = 1 barrel = 2^12 fl.oz.
2 barrels = 1 hogshead = 2^13 fl.oz.
2 hogsheads = 1 pipe = 2^14 fl.oz.
2 pipes = 1 tun = 2^15 fl.oz.
The gas tank on my Dad's old Chevy Suburban holds a barrel and a firken. A full tank of gas costs about $60.
Re:Relevant Simpsons quote... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:40 rods to the hogshead (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
Funny topic, (Score:5, Interesting)
When is the US going to officially switch to the SI unit system. I know it's taught in public schools, typically in science classes, but it isn't used in public places. If so many European countries can switch currencies without huge problems (so far), surely we can switch from our archaic units system! I don't understand why so many people are so vehemently against making the switch. Is it that hard to (re)learn?
Re:Funny topic, (Score:5, Interesting)
1) cost plus on government contracts is going to be a much bigger PLUS
2) it'll hurt US manufacturing by making it easier for those foreigners to sell their products here (without conversion to US measurements)
Re:Funny topic, (Score:4, Interesting)
Carter was in the process of converting the country to Metric.
(I particularly remember gas pumps that displayed both liters and gallons.)
Then he lost the 1980 election to Reagan.
Reagan stopped the conversion in its tracks, saying something like:
"We have become world leaders in Science without the 'benefit' of the Metric system"
(ignoring the fact that most scientific establishments use the Metric system).
Some of the effects of this aborted attempt are felt to this day.
For example, many carbonated beverages are now sold by the liter.
Re:Funny topic, (Score:2, Insightful)
Baring a Constitutional Amendment, it won't happen.
I think people in the US don't want to switch because there is no advantage to a switch. Really, what would the point be? There are 260 million people happy with the current system, why should they switch?
Re:Funny topic, (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about it: mile markers, X miles to [town name], speed limits - all of these signs would have to be replaced.
I wouldn't exactly call our units system archaic, its rather simple once you understand the basis - the human body as compared to the basis of the metric system (base 10 and something involving the earths core or some such).
As for the actual posting: if you mean metric as the SI system, 60 second minutes, 60 minute hours, 24 hours days, etc ARE SI time.
Re:Funny topic, (Score:5, Interesting)
Moose Jaw 200 miles
now read
Moose Jaw 320 km
Instead of trying to convert kilometers back to miles, most people simply divided the distance by the speed limit (which stayed the same after conversion to metric) to get the approximate time to their destination. This became very simple because most highway speed limits are now 100 km/h. So 3.2 hours at 60 MPH is roughly 180+ miles. After a while most people stopped doing the second part of the conversion and simply started thinking of distances in terms of time. I'm sure most people who've visited Canada have had this strange conversation:
Non-Canadian: Excuse me, how far is it to the nearest gas station?
Canadian: About ten minutes.
Re:Funny topic, (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Funny topic, (Score:5, Interesting)
Firstly, material is sized using feet and inches (ie. a sheet of plywood is exactly (well, *almost* exactly) 8'x4')... using the metric system, current material would be sized at some really weird rational number of meters. In order to use the metric system efficiently on a job site, all of the material would have to be resized to 'metric-friendly' sizes; and don't just say "Follow the blueprint!", because those things are never right anyways (they're a nice guide, but it's not uncommon to have to move a door over 2 feet so that it's not sitting in a wall intersection in Real Life(tm) ).
Secondly, it just 'sounds right' saying that you need a piece cut to "one-fourteen and an eighth" (114.125 inches) than to say "two hundred eighty-nine point eight eight" (289.88 centimeters), or worse "two point eight nine eight eight" (2.8988 meters).
BTW, I'm in Canada, and we're far more metric than the US is (our road signs are all metric, etc), but Imperial measurements still prevail on construction sites.
I think that the Imperial system will remain in the construction industry for a long while to come...
- Jester
Re:Funny topic, (Score:4, Insightful)
Australia and England both changed over easily. It took a while for the adults to adapt, and some still haven't, but the kids just started learning to count in tens, and they picked it up easily. I know my megas and centis and kilos quite well, but I still don't know how many ploods there are in a gurlang and why three eighths of a bottolf is a spork.
Oh, and as for road signs: easy solution is not to change them until they need changing. In Australia, the old mile signs remained until they were no longer readable and needed to be replaced anyhow, and the new signs either had "km" on them instead of "miles", or else had the speed inside a distinctive red circle to indicate km/h. A bit of an ad campaign to explain it, and voila! It helps that mph speed signs tend to end in 5 and all the km/h speed signs are multiples of 20. And look at it this way: if you upgrade from 55mph to 100km/h, you get to drive 13% FASTER! It hasn't killed all that many of us, and our beer is much stronger than yours...
: Fruitbat
Re:Funny topic, (Score:5, Insightful)
We're still using miles for distance, and miles per hour for speed (in fact, horse racing uses furlongs).
Land is still measured in acres
It's only in the last two years that lose produce, meat and fish have to be weighed and priced in kilograms - and that cuased a HUGE outcry, including a number of retailers making a stand and going all the way to the European court (and lost)
cloth and fabric is still sold by yards
Most people still measure their bodyweight in stones and pounds
There's probably more, but I have to go do some work!
Re:Funny topic, (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, if only the number of Planck time units in a day would come out evenly...
Re:Funny topic, (Score:3, Insightful)
First: If so many European countries can switch...
The idea that one counting system is better than another doesn't seem to have primacy here. It seems that we have a cultural hegemony issue--that the rest of the wolrd is doing something one way means we should jump in line and switch.
Second:
That everything can be understood in a Hegelian/Spencerian view that our society is evolving and that social progress is made by abandoning the old and embracing the new.
That organic systems (meaning they evolve on their own rather than being created ad hoc) can and should be replaced by ideas born of theory. This Hegelianism so pervades our understanding of history and the progress of time that we don't bat an eye when someone comes along and wants to create their own cutural, social, or political systems. You can trace a direct line from Hegel and Goethe's Faust through Marx and Nietzsche thorugh Leninism and Nazism, Maosim, 60's and 70's cultural and politcal radicalism, 80's Feminism, and the post-modernist/post-structuralist movements(or their popular bastard child of relativism) of today. That human systems are simple and understandable like anything observable in science and that they can be modified and replaced by anyone who theorizes that that they know better.
Why do we need to switch our numeric system? Because the future depends on our progress! Onward and upward!!
I don't like SI (Score:5, Interesting)
The meter is the worst of them. A foot is a good unit of measure. It's a scale that is about right for a lot of measurements. For instance, the meter is bad for measuring height -- most people falling between one and two meters. Square meters are huge. Meter sticks are long. Centimeters are too small, and decimeters are odd and never used. All this because some idiot thought the unit should be based on the size of the Earth, instead of the size of the people who would use the unit.
And it's nice to have a lot of different units. I find it easy to think in terms of a pint of ice cream, or a gallon of milk. I like a cup of flour, or a teaspoon of cinnamon. Not just because I've grown up with these units -- these units give me words for the quantities I deal with. I don't want long numbers, I don't want 750ml of something. That number is out of scale with the way the mind works.
Also, base 12 is a lot better than base 10. You can divide 12 by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Being divisable by 3 is particularly useful. That's why people use degrees, and no one uses gradians -- degrees are vastly superior for normal measurements. And of course, that's why time will never go metric. Not all English measurements are base 12, but when they are it's nice. I'm not sure when base 10 was really decided on -- was it the Romans or the Indians or the Arabs who made that conclusion? Maybe it was earlier -- it probably was a vague evolution. It's too bad they didn't follow the Babylonians.
Anyway, SI units are great for engineers. They have to multiply and convert all the time anyway, and it makes that easier. SI units are bad for people. They don't give us the language to describe our world. That the US is slow to adopt metric, and the UK still trails Europe, might have something to do with who is in control of the culture. For instance, no one dictates what is proper English -- proper English is what people use, in practice and by definition. This is not true in much of Europe -- their languages are prescribed. There are many official bodies that define what is correct and incorrect language. Unsurprising that their units are prescribed too. (Of course, generalizing this cultural power too far might be a bad idea -- but language and units go together)
The Hot Dog problem (Score:3, Funny)
This is all well and good, but until we standardise on one or the other we'll still have the ultimate decimal vs imperial problem: Hot Dogs come in 10s, Finger Rolls come in 12s. This means you have to make 60 hot dogs in order to avoid waste!
Re:Funny topic, (Score:3)
For all I know the US has already tried to officially switch twice, one of them had former President Carter signing something like a law or executive directive, but no one took notice not even public schools nor public roads nor state regulations.
Re:Funny topic, (Score:2, Funny)
Wooo-hooo! Is that the version of IP protocol that's been secretly developed during 25th hour every day?
Am I just dumb or everybody here is drunk? Or, perhaps both?
British Shizophrenia (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we 'officially' changed back in 1971 when we changed our currency to decimal. So, because we had a really silly money system (pounds, shillings, pence) which needed rationalising, we have been able to sort-of, nearly, part-change to a metric system in just 30 years!
For example, speed limits are still in MPH, petrol stations only recently stopped advertising prices both per galleon and per litre, people talk about your height in feet, but it's in metres in your passport. If you go to a pub you buy a pint, but buy beer by the litre (or half-litre) at a supermarket. If I'm talking about a distance I will use metres unless it's vague (a couple of feet), but talk about miles not kilometres. Temperature is also a bit confused - weather reporters will usually give Centigrade & Fareignheit - I generally use centigrade *except* when taking my own temperature.
There was a big fuss a couple of years ago about the EU trying to mandate metric measures in all shops - and I think there have been court cases where people have been prosecuted for selling goods in pounds/ounces!
So perhaps the UK isn't the best role-model for changing systems
Re:British Shizophrenia (Score:4, Insightful)
Weighing in cooking I do in grams, though I will always think of pastry as "8, 4, 2, 1" in terms of ounces of flour, butter, egg and sugar. This among other recipies which I think of in imperial units I do because I learnt them from my parents, not a book. I find it no problem whatsoever to convert between grams and ounces, and I'm sure in 10 years time when I have children, I will only teach them grams.
As for measurement, I tend to use yards and metres interchangeably as most often you are saying an approximate value for them so the difference isn't that much. I use yards when dealing with older people, who often shut off when one talks of metrs, and in my experience I'm usually so out with my estimates the unit doesn't matter
The only thing we refuse to change on is miles and kilometers. I'm sure if we started putting both on road signs everywhere, the new generation will easily switch. It is only because this has not been done that we lag behind.
As for time, well I have always thought it would be a good idea to change it to decimal. It could be easily done, but perhaps we would need new names for the degrees of time. This would stop all confusion as there is occasionally in circumstances such as saying "tonne" and "ton". I personally don't think it would be too difficult to change. All we need is a long cross-over period. It has been done before, why not now? It all depends on whether we think it is worth it- is it really a huge bother that it is not a metric unit? For the every day person, there is no difficulty, it is simply the norm. The second is a universal unit, nobody else has anything different- there is no difficulty of different nations measuring time in different ways and there is very little confusion over what is meant when a time is stated. It can only be through vanity of wanting a totally metric system that changing the unit of time would come about. I think it's worth it as we are at a point in time (no pun intended) where change is almost universally seen as a positive move.
Re:Funny topic, (Score:4, Informative)
3 feet to a yard, 22 yards to a chain, 1760 yards to a mile, etc.
10 mm to a cm, 100 cm to a metre, 1000 metres to a kilometre
The numbers are easier to remember. The pound and yard seem just as arbitrary as a kilogram or metre do. It's as easy to learn (hold hands up) 'this is about a yard' as it is (hold hands a little further apart) 'this is about a metre'.
do your homework (Score:5, Insightful)
That article was written by someone who obviously knows little about the metric system. His assertion, for example, that "Metric measurements are in the form of four digit numbers." is completely bogus.
Why should we assume that the metric system is automatically superior, simply because it's newer?
What makes you think it's newer? The metric system evolved roughly in parallel with the other systems.
The Imperial system of weights and measures is a highly refined system
The US doesn't use the Imperial system, it uses the US system. The units are different. For example, 1 US gallon = 0.833 Imperial gallons (US units are generally a little smaller--I wonder why).
If it's better for their purposes, then people will eventually switch.
Oh, and how, praytell, can I express my preference? I can't get a metric car, speed limits are not posted in metric, government communications use metric, etc. Paper is even more ridiculous: there is US paper and everybody else. In part, that's because of a path dependence. In part, it's because many people in the US mistake this for a matter of national pride. And in part, it's a good deal of protectionism.
I don't think the government should force private companies to switch, but the US government can and should set metric standards for public highways, cars, and all government related communications.
Note, incidentally, that the US measures are already referenced to the metric measures: the inch is defined as an oddball fraction of the meter standard. Furthermore, the metric system is already widely used in science, engineering, and medicine, and that will not go away; continued use of US units just imposes unnecessary costs and increased risk (medical mistakes, spectacular engineering failures, multiple versions of products).
For more information, take a look here [colostate.edu].
Overall, I think the main reason why the US isn't switching is as a trade barrier, to give domestic manufacturers and advantage. The fact that attitude plays well to US nationalistic feelings is a side benefit.
Re:The metric system offers no advantages (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they're not equal. But they're both completely arbitrary anyways.
Now, let's say for the sake of argument that you've got 1kg of ground beef. For a particular recipie, you're going to need 200g of ground beef for each serving. How many servings can you make? Pretty easy considering that you've got 1000g divided into 200g servings.
Re:The metric system offers no advantages (Score:4, Funny)
all imperial measurements (or at least most) are tangible.
1mile is the distance that a roman army can travel with 1000 strides( or something like that) so 1mile == 1000 strides.
1pint is the volume of x grains of wheat
also imperial measurements are often divisible by 2 and 3 several times, e.g. 12 pennies in a shilling, you can easily work out a 1/4 of a shilling, or a 1/3 of a shilling, try working out 1/3 in metric.
can I have a 1/3 or a kilo please, as you watch the 3's vanish of of the edge of the weighing machine.
Re:The metric system offers no advantages (Score:5, Funny)
We call that "a half a kilo". Shocking, I know.
What do you call your 2 litre bottles of pop?
already ./ed (Score:4, Informative)
Google cache is here [216.239.33.100]
Cost of conversion? (Score:2, Redundant)
Much like the previous article on changing US bills for the sake of convenience, I think the amount of work it would take to not only convert all the hardware and software out there, but getting people used to it, would outweigh the benefits for far too long.
Besides, Swatch's internet time has been around forever, and few besides the geeky have paid attention to it.
Metric natural time (Score:2)
Re:Metric natural time (Score:5, Insightful)
"Well... it's been only one day but my watch says 1.2314. I'm glad we switched to this new version of time!"
Don't go screwing with a good thing. The time system we have now is somewhat an average of what ancient astronomy has come up with... it's worked pretty good so far.
It would screw up the calculations (Score:2)
Ob Google cache (Score:2, Informative)
Metric Time (Score:2, Insightful)
i think time haw to relate to how long it takes the earth to go around the sun and how long it takes the earth to spin about... not like distance or wieght which really isn't based on anything... maybe the article covers this, but i can't get to it.
Metric Time Basis (Score:2, Funny)
and the other measurements? (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny thing is.... (Score:5, Informative)
The division into 60 is a Sumerian system, but their native system is to divide the day into powers of 60.
The uniform hours divided by base 60 is a Greek invention. The Romans divided the hour into 12 uncia. [The romans used weight-fractions: the unit = 1 libra: therefore a scruple of time is 12 1/2 seconds = 1/288 hour]
The metric system was meant to replace the angle and the length with a decimally divided quadrant: so it would be appropriate to divide the quarter day likewise. It makes some sense to do it like this.
Of course, you can consistantly divide the circle, day, and circumference into any system. Eg I use a circle divided into powers of 120, a nautical system of a marinal (9120 ft) of 120 segments (76 ft). This is the 'minute' and 'second' of the base 120 system. The day is divided into 12 hours of 120 min of 120 seconds
You can use other divisions as well, eg a decimally divided circle.
One thing I keep in mind is the clock division. In our clock, the hours use the major markings, which serve as multiples of the minute. So you could, in something like base 14, use a day divided into 16 hours of 56 minutes a peice. The clock is divided into hour-octants, each of sevenths.
Re:and the other measurements? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:and the other measurements? (Score:5, Insightful)
To bring this round to slashdot-types: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not so easy, hmmm (Score:2)
Americans.....
Disclaimer: I too am an American, calm down.
what the (Score:2)
ummmm.... ?
i think we found who stole the crack from the space shuttle...
Time (Score:2, Informative)
The time system in current use is a standard that the SI has signed off on, so it is Metric Time.
Actually, there is absolutly no reason to revamp how the global standards for time keeping are operated.
Good page about time history.
http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Time/tim
Here are Yahoo links to the page about alternative schemes.
http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Measurements_and_U
Oh yeah, like that's going to work (Score:2, Flamebait)
10 months to a year, 10 days to the month, 10 hours to the day. 10 minutes to the hour, 10 seconds to the minute. Might as well force pi to be 3 while you're at it. Or how about 10?
TV programs (Score:2, Funny)
Personally, I think metric time would lead to exactly what it led to in France: lots and lots of public decapitations.
Re:TV programs (Score:2)
Working under strict time constraints definately can lead to better work, so I'm not claiming that more time = better programs. But for some sorts of shows, it certainly COULD leave much more room for better programs.
I believe that it was Saturday Night Live... (Score:2)
Wish I could find an MPG of that. Wonder why no one else seems to remember it...
Actually, we should at least standardize... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Actually, we should at least standardize... (Score:2, Insightful)
What is the point of putting it in such an arbitrary order as month, day, year anyway?
There should be symbols meaning "day" and "month" (Score:3, Interesting)
(where <year> is the ideogram meaning "year", etc.) They also have characters for the days of the week which can be written much faster than English words. I can't write Japanese in a slashdot post, but check out for example the "old stories" sidebar on the right on slashdot.jp [slashdot.jp] to see what it looks like.
This is so neat that I wish English would adopt a similar system. If we introduced a few simple symbols that meant "year", "month" and "day" and appended them to the numbers, there would never be a problem. Unfortunately, because our writing system is so glyph-starved, and it never even occurs to anybody that characters outside our 40 or so symbols could exist, this will probably never happen.
The ISO 8601 Date Format! (Score:3, Interesting)
Fortunately the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) already solved this problem ages ago.
I use the ISO 8601 for ALL my date's (e.g. cheque books, invoices, legal documents) because it's ambiguity free, the format being:
YYYY-M-D (e.g. 2002-7-5)
It would be much easier if everyone could get used to doing this. I like to rant on bank clerks and anybody who asks me to date a legal document and who don't understand this as all international organisations (e.g. banks) should be using this format (especially ones here in London and in other international cities like New York).
The ISO 8601 date standard also makes sense from a decimal point of view in that it is "biggest to smallest".
Re:The ISO 8601 Date Format! (Score:3, Interesting)
American English, at least. In the UK it's much more common to hear people say "the 3rd of August" rather than "August 3rd". To my UK ears the second one sounds very American.
Which is probably why the UK date format is DD/MM/YYYY whereas American usually seems to be MM/DD/YYYY.
So essentially you're correct, if you take localised phrasing into account :-)
Tim
And on the Net we *do* use letters for months (Score:3, Interesting)
As for the Metric system - for time - if anyone wants to see Decimal Time in use, there needs to be a simple way of marking decimal time as Decimal time (a D up the front, perhaps?) so that people don't get confused. Handy conversion ratios and utilities would also help. Then it can be adopted by a few groups of people, bit by bit, and spread as appropriate to its usefulness
The normal 'second' is pretty well entrenched. Come to that, I've seen 'kiloseconds' in use in some scientific contexts.
I find it interesting that I thought the most awkward thing with establishing metric time would be finding good names for the units (especially the 'hour' equivalents, 1/10th of a day) - then I read the article, and that's a large part of what it covers
Rachel
Sounds like a SNL joke... (Score:2, Funny)
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75rdecabet.phtm
base 60 makes more sense (Score:2, Informative)
More Simpsons- (Score:2)
What's the line, and when was the last time they played that episode?
Time be time (Score:3, Insightful)
60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, 25 hours to a day, all the way to 365 days to a year.
Yeah, we should really change it to 100 days per year, that would be much easier. The only time we may need a new time format is if we seriously get into space, and I can't see that happening in my lifetime.
Personally, I'd just be happy if people started writing dates and times in a common format, even if it's the USA's confusing mm/dd/yyyy version.
iso-8601 (Score:5, Informative)
Most people who have tried it quickly like it. It's also trivial to sort dates without special logic.
Unfortunately, I think Windows apps may still not really support it. I remember trying to switch to it during Y2K, and a lot of programs barfed on this format (giving me an oh-so-useful blank field) even while working on silly formats like d/y/m.
Well. (Score:2)
It was just too much of an adjustment.
Seconds were okay... minutes were too short, hours were too long... things just didn't quite seem right.
Is it just me .... (Score:2)
Swatch Time (Score:2)
Humor (Score:2)
So what is a third of an hour then?? (Score:5, Interesting)
To wit..
60 can be evenly divided by 2, 3, and 5 (and multiples of those).
24 can be evenly divided by 2 and 3 (and multiples of those).
It is also one of the reasons why 12 inches is still popular ( 12 can be divided by 2, and 3) so that you can have 1/2 and 1/3 (or multiples of those) of a foot without getting into fractional inches.
However decimal (metric) runs into problems. You only get 2 and 5 as the multiples without getting into "weird" decimals. Exactly how many centimeters is 1/3 of a meter? how many millimeters?
Metric time (Score:2)
The system was actually a division of the world circumference into 400, eg 40,000 km. Dividing the day into 40 kilohesits, each of 1000 hesits wuld make 1 km/kh = 1 m/h, etc.
If the plan had been to base a system on decimal divisions of the circle/day/earth circumference, then a unit of 4 km, divided into 10000 units of 400 m/m, would be more appropriate: 1 mph = 1 eps.
But why bother with decimal time, when there is base 120?
Damn Nerds! (Score:4, Funny)
I just don't get it. VCR programming now this.
base-10 feasable, but 13 months really needed. (Score:3, Interesting)
But, enough of my rambling. I think a 13 28-day month calendar, with 4 perfect 7-day weeks a month, is better. Yes, then you could change the individual days to have metric times, such as 10 'hours', with 100 'minutes' per hour, and 100 seconds per minute. That comes out to 1.14 new seconds per old second. (so a 'new second' would be only slightly faster/shorter than an old second.)
While we're at it, we need to re-number the years. One: Most of the world isn't Christian. Two: It has been determined that the current calendar is something like 6 years off. So, based on when Jesus was actually born, it should really be A.D. 2008. (I think. I know the 'real' figure has been determined, I just can't remember what it is.) We should re-number based on something definite, that we know factually exactly when it happened. There was one organization a few years back that was trying to get it re-numbered based on the moon landing (it also recommended a 13-month calendar, with 'new years' falling on what is currently July 20, being newly called 'Armstrong Day', and leap day would be 'Aldrin Day', to keep all 13 months always at 28 days.)
Unfortunately, what havok would THAT cause to computers?!
Base 10 vs. Base 12 (Score:5, Informative)
Time is based on bases 24 and 60, which are multiples of 12. It's easy to count exacly half a day (12 hours), one third of a day (8 hours) and one quarter of a day (6 hours). The happen to correspond (roughly) to day / night, awake / asleep and morning / day / afternoon / night, which are "important" periods from a biological & natural point of view. Same goes for years (if a year had 10 months, each season would be 2.5 months long, and seasons are not quite as "artificial" as they may seem).
Here are a couple of pages about base 12:
DGSB [orbix.co.uk]
StudyWorks [studyworksonline.com]
Of course, changing everything from base 10 to base 12 would be more trouble than it's worth, but there's no reason to "downgrade" the way we count time just to comply with a "rule" that exists only because some people count by their fingers. I suppose men could learn to use base 11 with a bit of training...
The main problem with the way we keep time is converting quickly (mentally) between seconds, minutes and hours. But the solution is pretty simple: always work in seconds (the SI unit).
P.S. - In fact, it's possible to count up to 32 using just one hand (think binary), but I've never met anyone who does it intuitively.
RMN
~~~
365 days to a year (Score:5, Funny)
I think that perhaps, he underestimates the difficulty involved in slowing the planet down to 100 revolutions per orbit.
Andrew
Re:365 days to a year (Score:3, Funny)
France tried it (Score:5, Informative)
After the revolution.
The new "de-christianised" calendar started in 1793 and was retroactive to 1792. The year started on September 22nd and consisted of 12 months of 30 days apiece. Each month was divided into decades of 10 days.
The end of the year had 5 days (6 on leap years) designated by roman numerals.
This was France's official calendar until 1806.
I don't think they changed the number of hours in the day though.
Re:Russia also tried it (Score:5, Interesting)
It was a complete disaster, the idea was to get an extra boost from worker productivity by not allowing weekends or other time off. It had the opposite effect, workers were exhausted after 29 days of continuous work, and productivity fell dramatically.
In 1931, they switched to a 6 day week, with 5 week months, and one day each week was a rest day for everyone. Productivity jumped 50% or more in the first few months of using the new calendar.
This should be a lesson to managers who try to pull too much work out of their employees. People need time off on a regular basis to recover from the effects of working 8+ hours per day for 5 or 6 days. After spending too much time working, the body and mind can't maintain the output.
the AC
The french revolutionary calendar started with year 1, but they made it retroactive a year and called that year 0. Programmers!
Re:Gone already?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you mean 0.12 kiloseconds?
Re:Gone already?!? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Slashdot sucks (Score:2)
We've been asking for it all along.
A lot of good its done
-Restil
Re:Divisibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The train isn't just running on time... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Metric time? blah! (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I beleive the metric calendar the french tried had days divided into 10 hours of 100 minutes each (and each minute has 100 seconds).
10 days to a metric week
3 metric weeks a year
12 months (yes, it's a departure, but it fit)
If you do the math, that leaves out 5 days.
Every day but these had a name. Rose day. Tree day. etc.. whatever. The 5 days were called the nameless days, and were meant as a holiday. (they did not have days of the week, or anything.. the calendar just went on hold for 5 days.