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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

#71

Post by nategri »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #46
ben_w wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, I’d forgotten wine and beer were different. I wonder what further examples of mixed up units the UK has?

Well there is a tendency to still use Fahrenheit during summer like "it's in the 80s", and "it's in the 90s" this month, but most use Celcius for winters when it gets below freezing. There must be a grey area in the 50s and 60s F. Both approaches often seen in headlines. :)

I'm a physicist and I still feel compelled to die on the following hill, re: Fahrenheit---it just maps better to human perception:

30s: Wear a heavy coat

40s: Wear a light coat

50s: Wear a jacket

60s: Wear a hoodie

70s: Wear a t-shirt

80s: Wear shorts

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

#72

Post by hsivonen »

wodenokoto wrote: post #13

Why can't the Unicode consortium not reserve codepoints for the next 10-50 eras and simply wait with filling in how it should look and what to be called?

Some character properties need to be immutable and can't be set correctly until the committee has an actual character to analyze.

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

#73

Post by dragonwriter »

repolfx wrote: post #69
dragonwriter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 clo…

Prince William is a professional coast guard helicopter pilot. He has done real work in the past, at least.

> Prince William is a professional coast guard helicopter pilot.

That was among his military roles, yes; perhaps more to the point he took a paid (though his entire salary was donated) position as a pilot with the East Anglia Air Ambulance for a couple years, which I think was a bit unusual (but as it was paid work for a charity with the whole salary donated back to the charity, arguably is really a form of charity volunteer work, which probably should be listed as an exception along with military service for the close royal family.)

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

#74

Post by uremog »

Isamu wrote: post #52
kaybe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I (3) believe one of my friends (2) served one of the princesses (1) tea at a ceremony once when they visited Hawaii.

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

#75

Post by yoz-y »

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.

At least in some parts of central Europe it is common to buy beverages per decilitre and meat by dekagrams.

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

#76

Post by h1d »

veidr wrote: post #19
yoz-y wrote: post #2

How pervasive is the Japanese calendar in computing actually? I suppose most programs calculate all dates internally using UNIX timestamps or UTC and only convert that to Japanese dates for display purposes. Anybody has any experience with this?

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…

It's sad this date system is there for no reason today. Systems never like it and neither do people. I rarely use it and it's mostly bank related but every time I do, I look it up on Google to make sure I remember the number right. This needs to be dropped.

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

#77

Post by h1d »

samatman wrote: post #34
pwim wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, sometimes the system is used for future dates. For instance, my drivers license expires in September of H.31, which I guess will never happen now.

Does this imply that the driver's license becomes invalid and must be replaced with one in the new date system? Real question

It will stay valid. Consider having have to replace millions and millions right after the swap, it will be chaos. The system is simply stupid, not even citizens want it.

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

#78

Post by h1d »

ben_w wrote: post #32
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…

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.

Any movement to slowly unify the spreads?

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

#79

Post by h1d »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #10
yoz-y wrote: post #2

How pervasive is the Japanese calendar in computing actually? I suppose most programs calculate all dates internally using UNIX timestamps or UTC and only convert that to Japanese dates for display purposes. Anybody has any experience with this?

I've just been on a 3 week trip to Japan and didn't see traditional Japanese dates used anywhere except on museum exhibits. Train tickets, bus tickets, hotel check-in / out dates, credit card receipts, tickets for various attractions etc. all displayed the date in ISO-8601 format. It's interesting to ponder, but the traditional date format seems to have fallen out of use (probably with the advent of the computer era)…

You'll see more in banks and sometimes registering papers and I admit I hate it because I don't remember it as I use it maybe only once or twice a year and it provides no benefit to anyone.

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

#80

Post by h1d »

ginko wrote: post #12
yoz-y wrote: post #2

How pervasive is the Japanese calendar in computing actually? I suppose most programs calculate all dates internally using UNIX timestamps or UTC and only convert that to Japanese dates for display purposes. Anybody has any experience with this?

At least train tickets show dates in Japanese era years. Like this one for instance: https://blue-works.com/jprail/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/res... The date at the bottom left is April 26th of the year Heisei 22 (so 2010)

At least it's clear it's not 2022 in 2010 but imagine if they were close... Now we're resetting it down to 1, perhaps no big confusion but still, a pointless system.
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