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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

#81

Post by h1d »

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…

Funny it needs to be considered rude. I don't know the use of the emperor system except it's wasting our taxes and a huge land.

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

#82

Post by h1d »

blattimwind wrote: post #50
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

"The Imperial Residence, 1-1 Chiyoda, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0001, Japan." Is his phone number 001-0000-0001?

Maybe 090-0000-0001. (090 signifies a mobile phone number)

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

#84

Post by rangibaby »

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?

My grandfather was Akihito’s waiter in the 80s

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

#85

Post by illirik »

h1d wrote: post #80
ginko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is history pointless?

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

#86

Post by unsignedint »

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.

And one of the princes, too. Akishinomiya F (Fumihito) is emperor's second prince.

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

#87

Post by Forge36 »

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?

Coming from a platform which stores time as local times and no time zone (also needing to handle SJIS text formatting on occasion) I wouldn't consider it a common problem, but the amount of code which doesn't handle dates that I with with is surprising high. I wouldn't be shocked if much of Japan's code has similar oddities (I suspect future dates will have a special comparison logic added for the overlap which results)

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

#88

Post by i_made_a_booboo »

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?

Even though it's only user facing you have to remember it's facing Japanese users. They are an extremely fussy demographic to deal with. I worked on enterprise billing systems in Japan before. I can imagine how not fun it is to be dealing with this issue right now.

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

#89

Post by bodas »

nategri wrote: post #71
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Works in C too:

-ve Don't go outside

0s Wear a coat

10s Wear a jacket

20s Wear a t-shirt

30s Don't go outside

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

#90

Post by cosmojg »

bodas wrote: post #89
nategri wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Works in C too: -ve Don't go outside 0s Wear a coat 10s Wear a jacket 20s Wear a t-shirt 30s Don't go outside

What a brilliant comment! In fact, I'd even say it's over 9E+3 photons/s/mm^2/mrad^2/(0.001*Δλ)
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