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Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

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Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#151

Post by anamax »

gahahaha wrote: post #130
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…

"""Have they come up with any estimate of the global cost of the switch, and compared that to the benefit of the new calendar?""" If there are ANY benefits at all from switching, then that benefit can be enjoyed every year forever, dwarfing the one-time cost of switching no matter how big that cost is.

> If there are ANY benefits at all from switching, then that benefit can be enjoyed every year forever, dwarfing the one-time cost of switching no matter how big that cost is.

Give me $1000 and I'll give you (and your heirs, their heirs, etc) $0.01/year forever. Give me $10k and I'll sweeten the deal to $0.15/year. Give me $100k and go to $2/year.

What? You don't believe that any forever benefit justifies any one time cost?

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#152

Post by lambda »

demallien wrote: post #142
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…

The most recent one, the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, lasted for about 400 years, as different countries transitioned at different times, with, I'm sure, plenty of friction caused by the lack of synchronization. Sure, but back then there wasn't even a globally recognised calendar. Nor did they have a near-instantaneous global communications network, or a global governing body such as…

The UN is not a "global governing body." It has no real power; and it doesn't deal with things like calendar standards. And it would take a lot more than "sign off" from some global standards body to get people to actually switch. It would require completely re-writing every piece of date handling software ever.

The Y2K bug is a very different case. That's a case in which the calendar system was perfectly able to deal with reality, but some people had buggy code implementing it. All it took was those people fixing their bugs, mostly completely independently, not some big coordinated effort.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#153

Post by mikeash »

Someone wrote: post #143
mikeash wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With time zones, you have to know which time zone you're in and set your watch accordingly. With no time zones, you have to know what time local noon is and interpret your watch accordingly. The amount of information required, and the difficulty of using it, appears to be the same to me.

For the common case of infrequent changes in time zones (relative to the number of times one does a time lookup or talks about time), I think what we use now is less difficult to use. You only have to make the adjustment once, instead of every time you talk about times.

It seems to me like the opposite is the case. I have to coordinate times across time zones way more often than I actually travel (for online meetings and such). If there was a single time zone, I'd never have to make adjustments for those, and only adjust things when traveling.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#154

Post by ars »

Navarr wrote: post #136
ars wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. Making a day not be part of any week breaks the strict 7 day cycle, and will be rejected be the vast majority of the world.

But if its only for seasonal holidays (lets say the two equinoxes, the solstices, and leap day) they'd make for worldwide accepted celebration points that wouldn't disrupt the "working week" It'd be a little strange, but its really not any worse than adding a day in February every four years.

No, it would not be accepted. The 7 day cycle is strict - you can not add or remove days from it. It might be fine for work, but it will not be fine for religious observance.

If you tried then those who observe religious days will keep their cycle, and will not go to work on the real weekend (even those who otherwise wouldn't care would make a point about it), which will be out of sync with the new calendar weekend. It won't take many people doing that for the calendar to fail to be accepted.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#155

Post by Navarr »

ars wrote: post #154
Navarr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if its only for seasonal holidays (lets say the two equinoxes, the solstices, and leap day) they'd make for worldwide accepted celebration points that wouldn't disrupt the "working week" It'd be a little strange, but its really not any worse than adding a day in February every four years.

No, it would not be accepted. The 7 day cycle is strict - you can not add or remove days from it. It might be fine for work, but it will not be fine for religious observance. If you tried then those who observe religious days will keep their cycle, and will not go to work on the real weekend (even those who otherwise wouldn't care would make a point about it), which will be out of sync with the new calendar weekend.…

Dammit. This is why we can't have nice things.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#156

Post by demallien »

lambda wrote: post #152
demallien wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most recent one, the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, lasted for about 400 years, as different countries transitioned at different times, with, I'm sure, plenty of friction caused by the lack of synchronization. Sure, but back then there wasn't even a globally recognised calendar. Nor did they have a near-instantaneous global communications network, or a global governing body such as…

The UN is not a "global governing body." It has no real power; and it doesn't deal with things like calendar standards. And it would take a lot more than "sign off" from some global standards body to get people to actually switch. It would require completely re-writing every piece of date handling software ever. The Y2K bug is a very different case. That's a case in which the calendar system was perfectly able to dea…

Sigh. You know what, I actually tried to find a better term than "governing body" but at the end of the day, I didn't really find an alternative that wouldn't immediately get some peanut objecting to its exactness, so I went with governing body. Thankyou for being the peanut. So, international politics 101. The UN is a body whereby the nations of the planet can get together and discuss global problems and their solutions. This type of body did not exist 1500 years ago. Yes, like any reasonably well-educated adult on the planet I'm aware that the UN can't make laws, and couldn't enforce them if it did. But in the real world there are other means available to the UN to pressure member states to do the right thing. If 99% of nations voted for a new calendar, the remaining 1% are going to look pretty silly if they stay on the old calendar.

As for y2k, you know what, I could have stuck a load of different examples in there. Changes to http for example. Or how about the switch from national currencies to the Euro in Europe. Each one is different, but they all demonstrate that important changes can be made to large interconnected systems, and that the change can be activated at the flick of a switch if the need for synchronisation exists. Also, I assume you're too young to know much about y2k if you can talk so blithely about people working independently in an uncoordinated manner. Y2k was huge - if you change one system to requiring 4 digit years, but just one of the systems it communicates with requires two digit years, your system stops working. Both need to switch to 4 year dates on that interface simultaneously. When the systems you're talking about are command and control circuits, financial transfer systems etc, this was a major issue.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#157

Post by tonyt »

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…

>Now, moving to a single worldwide time standard (just use UTC for everyone for everyday use) seems to make a little more sense. While I understand the desire to make the hours line up with the solar day in a reasonably uniform way around the world, timezones (and daylight savings time) are an ugly hack that add a lot of cost and give you only a very rough approximation of what you are trying to achieve.

This is the part that makes the least sense to me - I could buy the rest until then, but after that it starts to read like some sort of elaborate joke.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#159

Post by throw_away »

eigenvector wrote: post #140
hogu wrote: post #124

what if your birthday is on that leap week that occurs every 5-6 yrs?

You would probably do exactly what people who are born on February 29 do.

I wonder what these leap year babies (I am one of them) would do were we to adopt this new calendar, as presumably that date would no longer exist.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#160

Post by ianstormtaylor »

demallien wrote: post #156
lambda wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UN is not a "global governing body." It has no real power; and it doesn't deal with things like calendar standards. And it would take a lot more than "sign off" from some global standards body to get people to actually switch. It would require completely re-writing every piece of date handling software ever. The Y2K bug is a very different case. That's a case in which the calendar system was perfectly able to dea…

Sigh. You know what, I actually tried to find a better term than "governing body" but at the end of the day, I didn't really find an alternative that wouldn't immediately get some peanut objecting to its exactness, so I went with governing body. Thankyou for being the peanut. So, international politics 101. The UN is a body whereby the nations of the planet can get together and discuss global problems and their solut…

Thank you for making such a good argument against his ridiculous straw man comparing the transition pre-globalization to a transition nowadays.
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