Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days • Hacker News Board

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#161

Post by ianstormtaylor » Fri, Dec 30, 2011, 7:45 AM UTC

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…

Did you actually read the article or is this: "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." made to be a straw man on purpose?

It seems like you thought "redesigning the calendar of every single organization in the world" meant re-printing the shifted dates when it actually means doing all of the work that has to go into scheduling events.

You also missed: "From simple mortgages to complex financial derivatives, he said, calculations could be made much simpler if there were only one calendar to use, year after year."

And: "Hanke said drug prescriptions could be more accurate with a fixed calendar, sports teams could have a fixed playing schedule year after year, and schools and universities wouldn't have to waste time devising each new academic year."

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#162

Post by fr0sty » Fri, Dec 30, 2011, 7:54 AM UTC

Sorpigal wrote: post #147

colanderman wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure they're not advocating screwing with the Circadian cycle. You still wake up and go to sleep with the sun; just now you wake up at 13h00 instead of 8:00 AM.

Read it again, they are. Quote from the proposal: "For example, the adoption of Universal Time would give new flexibility to economic management in the vast East-West expanse of Russia: everyone would know exactly what time it is everywhere, at every moment. Opening and closing times of businesses could be specified for every class of business and activity. If thought desirable, banks and financial institutions throu…

A world in which the state mandates that your work day begins before the sun rises...

Where do I sign up??

sarcasm off

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#163

Post by jsharpe » Fri, Dec 30, 2011, 9:00 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #153

Someone wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem there is that in a lot of cases you pretty much use timezones implicitly anyway. If you want to call someone in China from North America, for instance, if it's 3pm where you are, you might know that it's 3pm in China (in this hypothetical no-timezone world), but that still doesn't tell you if it's a reasonable time to call. You have to think, "Well, people in China usually work from time X to time Y, so their time X is my 9am, which means the offset is Z, which means 3pm in China is equivalent to my 3pm + Z, which means it is/isn't a good time to call."

You basically have to reinvent timezones every time you make any kind of calculation involving people in another timezone.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#164

Post by chrisbennet » Fri, Dec 30, 2011, 1:12 PM UTC

wavephorm wrote: post #58

A more simple solution is to have 13 months of exactly 28 days, plus one day for new years day. That's even better because every month is exactly the same number of days which means semi-monthly and bi-weekly billing systems are the same thing. And because there's the same number of days anything billed per month can be easily prorated per day, and any billing cycle will match up with every other billing cycle... so…

Tertiary?

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#165

Post by colanderman » Fri, Dec 30, 2011, 2:26 PM UTC

Sorpigal wrote: post #147

colanderman wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure they're not advocating screwing with the Circadian cycle. You still wake up and go to sleep with the sun; just now you wake up at 13h00 instead of 8:00 AM.

Read it again, they are. Quote from the proposal: "For example, the adoption of Universal Time would give new flexibility to economic management in the vast East-West expanse of Russia: everyone would know exactly what time it is everywhere, at every moment. Opening and closing times of businesses could be specified for every class of business and activity. If thought desirable, banks and financial institutions throu…

Ah I missed that part. Crazy!!

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#166

Post by Navarr » Fri, Dec 30, 2011, 2:54 PM UTC

Sorpigal wrote: post #127

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.

The real innovation in this calendar, which I don't rememebr seeing in previous perpetual calendar proposals, is the system for 7-day-week seasonal drift adjustment. Adding an "extra" 5 days to every year is much more common, but not popular. What I can't figure out is what algorithm they use to calculate when to add an extra week. It seems slightly irregular, but I asssume there must be a simple formula I could use…

Well, with 364 days that means there's 1.25 days pushed into the buffer every year. That means that the buffer would be full (mathematically) every 5.6 years hence the "every five or six years." In order to keep general season alignment, I figure they vary between the two. This decimal doesn't go away until after 28 years - so I assume some combination of fives and sixes that add up to 28. Lets say three sixes and two fives. (18+10). So in order to make any pattern they might do something like 6 5 6 5 6 6 5 6 5 6. And now, looking at the leap years, I think my theory is confirmed: 2015-2020 (5) 2020-2026 (6) 2026-2032 (6) 2032-2037 (5) 2037-2043 (6) 2043-2048 (5) 2048-2054 (6) 2054-2060 (6)

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#167

Post by mikeash » Fri, Dec 30, 2011, 3:36 PM UTC

jsharpe wrote: post #163

mikeash wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem there is that in a lot of cases you pretty much use timezones implicitly anyway. If you want to call someone in China from North America, for instance, if it's 3pm where you are, you might know that it's 3pm in China (in this hypothetical no-timezone world), but that still doesn't tell you if it's a reasonable time to call. You have to think, "Well, people in China usually work from time X to time Y, so t…

Right, so you do the same calculations in those cases, but, when someone proposes meeting at 3PM, you don't have to do any conversions. Some upside, no downside, unless I've missed something.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#168

Post by kbolino » Fri, Dec 30, 2011, 5:07 PM UTC

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…

None of which ultimately matters. The United States, which for better or worse has significant influence on the world (UN included) could not even switch to the metric system on a time frame and manner of its own choosing. How well do you think we could transition from one system of time- and date-keeping to another, which is arguably more integral to people's lives than other types of measurement, especially when done by fiat through an external body?

You might be able to get Europeans to transition, you might even get the whole rest of the world to transition, but without the United States, it's not truly a universal system.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#169

Post by Someone » Sat, Dec 31, 2011, 3:16 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #167

jsharpe wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem there is that in a lot of cases you pretty much use timezones implicitly anyway. If you want to call someone in China from North America, for instance, if it's 3pm where you are, you might know that it's 3pm in China (in this hypothetical no-timezone world), but that still doesn't tell you if it's a reasonable time to call. You have to think, "Well, people in China usually work from time X to time Y, so t…

Right, so you do the same calculations in those cases, but , when someone proposes meeting at 3PM, you don't have to do any conversions. Some upside, no downside, unless I've missed something.

OK. So you are traveling and your plane goes at 15:00 (with this hypothetical clock, I would drop the PM stuff). Do you have time for lunch beforehand? Should you try to?

Similarly, you are on holiday and someone tells you a museum is open till 04:30. Can you go to dinner first?

I guess that a main question is what kind of query is more frequent: "What time is it now in X", or "At what time is X where I am now?". I thought the former was way more frequent, but now, I do not know anymore.

Maybe the best thing to do is to drop absolute references altogether. IMO, "Shall we meet in 3 hours" is easier for handling across timezone discussions, and will work equally well for "in a different timezone than the one I am used to".

Of course, your SMS/ping/twitter/email client would have to automatically count down such timers for you.

Re: Scientists' proposed calendar synchronizes dates with days

#170

Post by mikeash » Sat, Dec 31, 2011, 4:08 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #169

mikeash wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so you do the same calculations in those cases, but , when someone proposes meeting at 3PM, you don't have to do any conversions. Some upside, no downside, unless I've missed something.

OK. So you are traveling and your plane goes at 15:00 (with this hypothetical clock, I would drop the PM stuff). Do you have time for lunch beforehand? Should you try to? Similarly, you are on holiday and someone tells you a museum is open till 04:30. Can you go to dinner first? I guess that a main question is what kind of query is more frequent: "What time is it now in X", or "At what time is X where I am now?". I t…

Your travel examples are indeed more difficult, but I travel much less than I coordinate times across time zones, and I suspect most other people do as well, even if it's something as simple as calling family in another state.

For someone who travels a lot, a single time zone may well be more inconvenient, hard to say.

Times relative to now would work well but could be unwieldy. How do you do it if you're e-mailing or texting? If you want to meet next Monday afternoon, do you say "in 2 days and 5 hours"?