11–20 of 103 posts
It was a nice idea but I think Swatch made a big mistake by taking their headquarters as the base to calculate it. It needed to be an independant concept to bring other companies/competitors on board.
I've always loved this idea. It just makes sense. People argue against the "circular notation" of a clock face and how it relates to 60 minutes/seconds, but all that analog stuff is dead.
And as long as we're discussing "out there" time notations, I'll throw out my support for a calendar system that makes more sense. 12 30-day months with a 5 (or 6) day "Holiday Month" at the end. Adjusting the "week" to be 10 days instead of 7. 3 weeks a month, 9 weeks a quarter, 36 weeks a year. Work 7 of the 10 days in a week would be the same as a 5-day work week (2 more days off a year actually).
I've always loved this idea. It just makes sense. People argue against the "circular notation" of a clock face and how it relates to 60 minutes/seconds, but all that analog stuff is dead.
And as long as we're discussing "out there" time notations, I'll throw out my support for a calendar system that makes more sense. 12 30-day months with a 5 (or 6) day "Holiday Month" at the end. Adjusting the "week" to be 10 days instead of 7. 3 weeks a month, 9 weeks a quarter, 36 weeks a year. Work 7 of the 10 days in a week would be the same as a 5-day work week (2 more days off a year actually).
I remember it still being used at Kodak when I was a kid and my father worked there.
I've always loved this idea. It just makes sense. People argue against the "circular notation" of a clock face and how it relates to 60 minutes/seconds, but all that analog stuff is dead.
And as long as we're discussing "out there" time notations, I'll throw out my support for a calendar system that makes more sense. 12 30-day months with a 5 (or 6) day "Holiday Month" at the end. Adjusting the "week" to be 10 days instead of 7. 3 weeks a month, 9 weeks a quarter, 36 weeks a year. Work 7 of the 10 days in a week would be the same as a 5-day work week (2 more days off a year actually).
There's a great collection if decimal time ideas, many of which are linked at the bottom of that wikipedia page. I personally always liked the idea of making 1 day into the base unit. Then 0.5 would give you noon, 0.75 is 6pm. It seemed less arbitrary than making a unit into a 10th of a day, since that has no value except in reference to a day.
This is solvable using arbitrary-precision decimal libraries, but relying on one of those for just dealing with general time stuff is a Bad Idea.
It could stay the 24h/day time format, but timezones are a pain - I always have to recalculate them for local time. Why couldn't everybody work with UTC?
And by the way: when will we finally get rid of the daylight savings time?!?
I've always loved this idea. It just makes sense. People argue against the "circular notation" of a clock face and how it relates to 60 minutes/seconds, but all that analog stuff is dead.
"but all that analog stuff is dead." I still wear a analog Watch
There's a great collection if decimal time ideas, many of which are linked at the bottom of that wikipedia page. I personally always liked the idea of making 1 day into the base unit. Then 0.5 would give you noon, 0.75 is 6pm. It seemed less arbitrary than making a unit into a 10th of a day, since that has no value except in reference to a day.
Having worked at a software company whose internal date format was indeed based on days as the base unit, I suggest that this is an extremely bad idea. 0.75 may be 6pm, but what is 7pm? 0.7916666666666666 is as close as computers will generally come, but of course it's lossy; try adding increments of an hour and sooner or later you've got an irritating rounding issue. This is solvable using arbitrary-precision decima…
Lots of things would be easier if everybody uses the same time. It could stay the 24h/day time format, but timezones are a pain - I always have to recalculate them for local time. Why couldn't everybody work with UTC? And by the way: when will we finally get rid of the daylight savings time?!?
A) Everyone uses UTC. Now you have to know the business hours in Tokyo because it is not universally 8-6 anymore.
B) Everyone uses local time. Now you have to know their local time.