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'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

theguardian.com

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Re: 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

#51

Post by dragonwriter »

kaybe wrote: post #40
rspeer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it generally true that, if the Emperor has to refer to himself by name, he'll use his birth name? The one case I've seen that seems this way is that the first author of this paper on fish genetics [1] is listed as "Akihito". [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26475939

Oh wow, it must be insane to be co-author to the emperor ! From the outside it's a weird juxtaposion of a traditional, old (from a European point of view) system of state and an everyday modern way of conducting scientific research. You'd just not expect this kind of contact, somehow.

> From the outside it's a weird juxtaposion of a traditional, old (from a European point of view) system of state and an everyday modern way of conducting scientific research. You'd just not expect this kind of contact, somehow.

Well, what seems to be the most visible European monarchy outside of its own country (the British) seems to still largely adhere to the custom of the monarch (and, to a lesser extent, the close royal family) refraining from anything that looks like work (military service of the close royal family being a notable exception) outside of royal duties, which might color that expectation.

Re: 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

#52

Post by Isamu »

kaybe wrote: post #40
rspeer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it generally true that, if the Emperor has to refer to himself by name, he'll use his birth name? The one case I've seen that seems this way is that the first author of this paper on fish genetics [1] is listed as "Akihito". [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26475939

Oh wow, it must be insane to be co-author to the emperor ! From the outside it's a weird juxtaposion of a traditional, old (from a European point of view) system of state and an everyday modern way of conducting scientific research. You'd just not expect this kind of contact, somehow.

So the co-authors have an Akihito Number of 1. Does anybody on the thread have an Akihito Number of 3 or less?

Re: 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

#53

Post by brodsky »

walrus01 wrote: post #28
veidr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I have been doing software development in Japan for the past decade. Of course you are right that no sane person would contemplate this calendar for any purpose other than user-facing display, and even then only where it is absolutely required. But the insane WTF thing is that it does still seem to be widely required on any kind of financial document. Expense reports, salary statements, that kind of thing. All m…

Canada isn't much better re: feet, miles. Things are officially metric, but because of proximity to the US and inertia, half of everything is still standard. Buying construction supplies and consumables? All in US units. People talk about square footage of condos, buy carpet in square feet, all fasteners are in US units. But gasoline is sold by the liter. People know how tall they are in feet and inches, not cm. Ever…

but to further confuse things, your height on the driver's license is in cm, not ft-in. and while some imperial units are widely used, I've never heard anyone using yards or gallons, and very rarely miles. I find it rather adorable.

Re: 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

#54

Post by stock_toaster »

athenot wrote: post #47
jerf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the problem; I think that's the one thing that's not a problem. Monotonic time is not that hard. The hardest thing about it is just convincing programmers to use it, and making sure your libraries use it properly. I don't want to say it's trivial, but it's not that hard once both you and your code base internalize "convert everything to internal UTC representation as quickly as possible, convert…

UTC is good but not enough; it may still bite you in the behind. What's the time difference between these 2 timestamps: 2016-12-31 23:59:50 UTC (unix time 1483232390) 2017-01-01 00:00:10 UTC (unix time 1483232410) That's right: 21 seconds, due to the added leap second 23:59:60. So then your next option is to use TAI (international atomic time). Of course for most applications, this extra/missing leap second doesn't m…

I wrote a TAI parser library for Go (tai64/tai64n), and I agree that TAI timestamps are... terse..

Nice format though, other than readability. ;)

Re: 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

#55

Post by brodsky »

mrob wrote: post #41
ben_w wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. UK is also weird: food is weighed in metric units, people in imperial; Drinks bought in supermarkets are measured in metric, pubs use imperial (by law in both cases, IIRC); Distances on signs can be meters or miles, both initialised as “m” (context being the only clue); fuel is sold by the litre, fuel efficiency is miles per gallon.

Beer and cider is sold in pubs in imperial pints (bigger than US pints), but wines and spirits are sold in milliliters. See https://www.gov.uk/weights-measures-and-packaging-the-law

don't some parts of Europe also use decilitres for beverage packaging? I've seen bottles that are like "75dl", and it took me a few minutes to clue in.

Re: 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

#57

Post by walrus01 »

brodsky wrote: post #53
walrus01 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada isn't much better re: feet, miles. Things are officially metric, but because of proximity to the US and inertia, half of everything is still standard. Buying construction supplies and consumables? All in US units. People talk about square footage of condos, buy carpet in square feet, all fasteners are in US units. But gasoline is sold by the liter. People know how tall they are in feet and inches, not cm. Ever…

but to further confuse things, your height on the driver's license is in cm, not ft-in. and while some imperial units are widely used, I've never heard anyone using yards or gallons, and very rarely miles. I find it rather adorable.

concrete pours are still priced by the cubic yard (such as if doing a radio tower foundation or any commercial project).

a lot of construction related things that are priced by the cubic volume are still in cubic yards.

Re: 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

#58

Post by praseodym »

brodsky wrote: post #55
mrob wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beer and cider is sold in pubs in imperial pints (bigger than US pints), but wines and spirits are sold in milliliters. See https://www.gov.uk/weights-measures-and-packaging-the-law

don't some parts of Europe also use decilitres for beverage packaging? I've seen bottles that are like "75dl", and it took me a few minutes to clue in.

That would be centiliters, for example, wine is most commonly sold in 75cl bottles. Millilitres is also a common unit for smaller quantities in e.g. cosmetics.

Re: 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

#59

Post by bertil »

athenot wrote: post #47
jerf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the problem; I think that's the one thing that's not a problem. Monotonic time is not that hard. The hardest thing about it is just convincing programmers to use it, and making sure your libraries use it properly. I don't want to say it's trivial, but it's not that hard once both you and your code base internalize "convert everything to internal UTC representation as quickly as possible, convert…

UTC is good but not enough; it may still bite you in the behind. What's the time difference between these 2 timestamps: 2016-12-31 23:59:50 UTC (unix time 1483232390) 2017-01-01 00:00:10 UTC (unix time 1483232410) That's right: 21 seconds, due to the added leap second 23:59:60. So then your next option is to use TAI (international atomic time). Of course for most applications, this extra/missing leap second doesn't m…

Wait: are you saying that Unix time does not take into account the leap second?!

Re: 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdication

#60

Post by sdiq »

amyjess wrote: post #22
Isamu wrote: post #21

How are the eras named? This will be the end of the Heisei era. I grew up in the Showa era (apparently.)

The Japanese emperor picks a regnal name when he takes the throne, just like the Pope. The name is actually the name of the emperor, not the name of the era. In Japan, nobody uses the emperor's birth name; they just use the regnal name. For example, nobody in Japan says "Hirohito"; they refer to him as "Emperor Showa" instead (though nobody calls Akihito "Emperor Heisei" now, because it's considered rude to refer to…

Thanks. This contextualises something for me. In 1989, I asked a Japanese friend about Hirohito - his death or something - and the guy just couldn't understand what I was talking about. My friend's English wasn't very good and my pronunciation of the name possibly also didn't help.
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