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Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

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Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#111

Post by jarin »

GreenNight wrote: post #109
lambda wrote: post #73

Have they come up with any estimate of the global cost of the switch, and compared that to the benefit of the new calendar? It seems to change a bunch of stuff, and add a complicated new "leap week", for no particularly good reason. Yeah, it might reduce the cost of printing calendars slightly, though a lot of people use new calendars yearly so they can write on them, and a lot more just use their computer. The cost…

Timezones are not an ugly hack. When you travel to a different timezones you just have to adjust your clock and, without asking, you know that shops open at 8~10am until 4~8pm with or without a midday stop for lunch (12~3). You have dinner at 18~22, and breakfast at 8~10. All the divergences depend on the country you are in but you can get good aproximations that work for 90% of them (breakfast 9, open shops 10, lunc…

I ran into a big problem with timezones when I was in the Navy.

I was in charge of a big supply database server on an aircraft carrier, and every time we changed timezones I had to update the timezone on the server. Heading from East to West was no problem, but when we went from West to East I had to shut the server down for an hour when changing timezones, to prevent timestamps from overlapping.

Admittedly, this was partially due to bad programming, but it's just a small real-world example of problems caused by the existence of timezones.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#112

Post by azernik »

jarin wrote: post #111
GreenNight wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Timezones are not an ugly hack. When you travel to a different timezones you just have to adjust your clock and, without asking, you know that shops open at 8~10am until 4~8pm with or without a midday stop for lunch (12~3). You have dinner at 18~22, and breakfast at 8~10. All the divergences depend on the country you are in but you can get good aproximations that work for 90% of them (breakfast 9, open shops 10, lunc…

I ran into a big problem with timezones when I was in the Navy. I was in charge of a big supply database server on an aircraft carrier, and every time we changed timezones I had to update the timezone on the server. Heading from East to West was no problem, but when we went from West to East I had to shut the server down for an hour when changing timezones, to prevent timestamps from overlapping. Admittedly, this was…

Best practice - whatever time zone the people are using, keep the internal time stamps on a single time zone (usually UTC). Then just convert the times from and to the local zone for input and display, respectively.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#113

Post by nitrogen »

kiwidrew wrote: post #105
vineel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the suggestion is that the working day everywhere should start at X:00. The idea is that 4:00 in California is 4:00 in Britain and 4:00 in China. When the day starts would vary from place to place; perhaps 1:00 somewhere and 12:00 somewhere else. The point is to eliminate the confusion caused by timezones, especially those like Nepal's which are 15 minutes off other time zones for no good reason.

Actually, China did get rid of timezones and daylight savings: officially, everywhere is on "Beijing time" (GMT+8). This understandably causes problems in the far western provinces such as Xinjiang, so everyone just observes an unofficial GMT+6 time instead. This wreaks utter havoc on conversationd about time: bus schedules, shop opening hours, etc. Aside from the ambiguity, since it's not an official time zone, peop…

Aside from the ambiguity, since it's not an official time zone, people overseas just assume they can call you to discuss business at 9am, even though you've barely woken up.... But theanswer[sic] is certainky not to just get rid of them!

Add metadata to all phone records that makes it easy to specify and query the hours in which one would like to be called.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#114

Post by masklinn »

azernik wrote: post #112
jarin wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran into a big problem with timezones when I was in the Navy. I was in charge of a big supply database server on an aircraft carrier, and every time we changed timezones I had to update the timezone on the server. Heading from East to West was no problem, but when we went from West to East I had to shut the server down for an hour when changing timezones, to prevent timestamps from overlapping. Admittedly, this was…

Best practice - whatever time zone the people are using, keep the internal time stamps on a single time zone (usually UTC). Then just convert the times from and to the local zone for input and display, respectively.

> keep the internal time stamps on a single time zone (usually UTC)

Or UNIX time. While not monotonically increasing (it has issues with UTC leap seconds), it's pretty good.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#115

Post by SquareWheel »

martythemaniak wrote: post #60
SquareWheel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, let's just use Unix timestamps when marking future dates. Removes all ambiguity from calendar types, time zones, etc.

I like your idea, let's get together and discuss it over drinks. Hows your 1325357149?

I retract my previous suggestion.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#116

Post by vacri »

They would drop the quadrennial 366-day leap years entirely in favor of an extra week at the end of December every five or six years.

and

The two men also propose eliminating time zones and adopting a universal time around the world to streamline international business.

indicate that there are some fundamental things they don't understand about business.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#117

Post by vacri »

jarin wrote: post #111
GreenNight wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Timezones are not an ugly hack. When you travel to a different timezones you just have to adjust your clock and, without asking, you know that shops open at 8~10am until 4~8pm with or without a midday stop for lunch (12~3). You have dinner at 18~22, and breakfast at 8~10. All the divergences depend on the country you are in but you can get good aproximations that work for 90% of them (breakfast 9, open shops 10, lunc…

I ran into a big problem with timezones when I was in the Navy. I was in charge of a big supply database server on an aircraft carrier, and every time we changed timezones I had to update the timezone on the server. Heading from East to West was no problem, but when we went from West to East I had to shut the server down for an hour when changing timezones, to prevent timestamps from overlapping. Admittedly, this was…

It's wholly due to bad programming. Put the timestamps in epoch time - that never changes, then read them back in whatever your current timezone is. If you're in a situation like you were where timezones change frequently, you'll also need to record the timezone when the entry was made for reference.

Given that servers frequently changing timezones can be sorted out by a modicum of thought by programmers and is actually pretty rare in the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's too heavy a price to pay.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#118

Post by vacri »

mooism2 wrote: post #97
beagle3 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't. Quarters just become 13 weeks. They'd mostly correspond to existing quarters as well, give or take a couple of days at each end.

OK, it breaks the assumption that quarters are a whole number of months. 12 is a handy number of months to have in the year. 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Not by 5, but you can't have everything (unless we had 60 months of 6 or 7 days each... let's not go there). 13 is prime. I think not bothering with months at all would be better than having a 13 month year.

I like New York in weeks 22 to 25, how about you?

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#119

Post by vacri »

kellenfujimoto wrote: post #82

The whole "everybody should adopt UTC" business makes no sense to me. If a business needs to use UTC because of time zones or whatnot, they already are. It'd be weird having the day of the week change in the middle of the day in Japan, too.

That's an excellent point: "We'll need to be ready by Tuesday morning"... does morning mean 'sunrise' or does it mean 'time near where Tuesday 'starts'?

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#120

Post by LaGrange »

notatoad wrote: post #59
scythe wrote: post #55

Why preserve the seven-day week? The appropriate factorization of 365 is 73*5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian_calendar Plus, the Discordian calendar has the advantage of already being implemented in Linux!

if you read the linked article, you see the explanation: the fourth commandment specifies resting on the seventh day. any proposed calendar that doesn't have a seven day week will never be adopted as long as religion still exists. and even if it weren't for religion, everything is structured around a seven day week. changing that would mean a drastic lifestyle change for most people.

Then make the week 73 days long. You can rest on 7th day, and corporations would really like it.
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