QuakeCon Schedule

(Lanz) #21

The only system that makes sence to anyone is the system used locally, because that’s what everyone is used to.

But sure looking at it from a swedish perspective, inches, foots, miles and stones really feels a bit 16th century to me. :slight_smile:

(Loffy) #22

At the beginning of JAG which I watch on channel 5 here in Sweden there is often a time reference in the opening sequence, like 15:00 Zulu. Zulu refers to Z but what is that?

(Salteh) #23

:moo:

(Joe999) #24

of course, but writing month/day/year is absolutely chaotic and i wonder in how far that makes sense at all. it’s as stupid as eg the 1 and 2 cent coins, or 2 euro coins instead of a banknote. these are the things in daily life that someone introduced and someone agreed to, and imo both parties have no brain and yet someone must have voted for them in policy.

(jimb0) #25

You will be assimilated.

(mortis) #26

It’s confusing, but look at the way we write dates:

August 2, 2006 (month day year)
8-2-2006 (month day year)

compared to the French for instance:

2 août 2006 (day month year)
8-2-2006 (day month year)

So English makes just as much sense in terms of consistency.

But it’s just a system…look at decimals. If you grow up using one or the other, it just becomes totally automatic.

English:
I earned $51,042.68 during the last year. (comma for thousands, period for decimals)

French:
J’ai gagné $51.042,68 pendant l’année passée. (period for thousands, comma for decimals)

Many Americans have no idea what kilometers, liters, kilograms or any of the metric measurements signify, except for 2 liter soda bottles. But if you ask them to drive 5.4 miles at 27.2 mph, they can do that. Ask them to drive 8,69 km at 43,77 km/hr and they’ll think you’ve gone mad.

The real question is why don’t we use digital time? Take the lenth of a day, divide it into 1000 smaller units called millidays (new seconds), 100 centidays (new minutes), 10 decidays (new hours). People would get used to it in maybe 100 years.

(jimb0) #27

compared to the French for instance:

2 août 2006 (day month year)
8-2-2006 (month day year, wtf?)

Wikipedia says France uses d/m/y too, and their French version also corroborates that. And this one page too.

In France, the all-numeric form for dates is in the order day-month-year, using a slash as the separator. Example: 31/12/1992 or 31/12/92. Years can be written with two or four digits, and numbers may be written with or without leading zero.

Personally, I’m with ISO 8601 - works better when sorting lines/file names. yyyy-mm-dd ftw!

(nUllSkillZ) #28

Isn’t there a swatch time that divides the day in 100 pieces.
There’s also a clock available that ranges from 0 to 100.

Edit:

swatch beat
1000 beats are one day

(mortis) #29

Quote:
compared to the French for instance:

2 août 2006 (day month year)
8-2-2006 (day month year)

Wikipedia says France uses d/m/y too, and their French version also corroborates that. And this one page too.

True, that what I was originally thinking, but I got confused. I tend to think in only one language at a time. I knew that the numbers were in the right spot but it seemed weird somehow. Like I said, it can be very confusing if you use both systems (as I do, as a translator).

(Joe999) #30

english makes no sense at all. the french write it at least once in a reasonable way.

austria:
02.08.2006
02. august 2006

^ that makes sense, at least there’s some kind of order in it.

but imo the hungarian is the best: first year, then month, then day.

(mortis) #31

English makes sense, it’s just backwards:

English:
8-2-2006
August 2, 2006

austria:
02.08.2006
02. august 2006

I screwed up by the way. The French system makes just as much sense based on their language; I should have said both systems are equally valid from a linguistic point of view.

To avoid confusion, ET:QW better use Zulu Swatch Time and a Universal Date Format :slight_smile:

(Joe999) #32

see, that’s my point. i don’t see where month-day-year makes any sense at all. please elaborate on that one, i wanna understand it :slight_smile:

does it derive from the fact that the peasants worte only the month as date of expiry on their jars? :uhoh:

(mortis) #33

I have no idea as to the historical reasons. There’s probably a reason, but I think it’s probably moot.

It’s sort of like how in some countries you drive on right side of the road, and in some countries on the left. The origin of that had to do with where drivers used to sit while driving coaches, and how they needed to see if there was enough clearance when passing another coach.

Why do Bavarian girls look cute in a dirndl? I don’t know, but I just appreciate it the way it is. :slight_smile:

(carnage) #34

here is another realted think

why do we have 12 month of varying length in a year when if we had 13 we would have exactly 4 weeks in each year making it much simpler for orgonising anthing from social meatings to business matters

13 months ftw!

(Black_Forky) #35

You would need an extra day somewhere. 13 * 28 = 364 :huh:

(Nail) #36

social meatings

hmmmm, sounds scary to me

(jimb0) #37

Oh, you mean american english, not english english. English english is dd/mm/yy too.

To be honest, the only system that I think that doesn’t make sense is the american, because it’s not really forward (321, ISO 8601) or backward (123, dd/mm/yy) when you add the year, just mangled (213). Sure, saying “august 8th” (even though there’s “4th of july” instead of “july 4th”…) or whatever makes sense in the language, because it’s how it has developed, but as a notation it’s pretty weird - the scale is neither left nor right.

But like someone said, whatever people has grown up with is what makes sense to them. Vive la difference.

(carnage) #38

You would need an extra day somewhere. 13 * 28 = 364

shhhhhhhh

we can just count the day as an extra holiday. and besides were already 1/4 of a day out every year already so why worry

Quote:
social meatings

hmmmm, sounds scary to me

of course by that i mean arnage dates to play on ET servers with people you have met on the intermaweb

(EB) #39

So will there be a booth at Quakecon discussing how the world relates to time ?

(mortis) #40

Exactly. And some hawt video.