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Happy 'Even Day' - the First in 1112 Years
schmofo writes "Today is the first day since Dec. 28, 888 (12-28-888) to have only even digits in its numerical format (02-02-2000). This is quite an event, and complements the last odd day for as long, which occurred back in November." It's also Groundhog day; take a look at Google's logo o' the day. Cute! Update: There is an error above as submitted, which I should have caught: should have been 08/28/888, 12/28/888.
News You'll Never See on /.
Apologies, Corrections
Posted by CmdrTaco on 3:10 PM February 2nd, 2000
from the we-were-wrong dept.
We hereby officially apologize for the past mistakes we've made while reporting the news, flagrant errors such as Microsoft being run by space aliens, the RIAA's involvement in JFK's assassinations, and anything posted by Robin. We will take special care in the future to prevent this from happening, as we know that most people on Slashdot cannot tell the difference between facts, opinions, lies, and FUD.
( Read More... )
Minor detail, but there's no Greek Orthodox calendar. The Greek Orthodox Church has used the western calendar for the past hundred years or so. I think the Russian and Serbian Orthodox Churches are the only ones left using the old calendar...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
So what does that mean for me since my birthday is today? And what does it further mean that my drivers liscense will expire on 02/02/02? Not to mention I was born in 1976 being the bicentenial year of the USA? And geez, I was born around 9:00am which means 2:00pm UTC! Plus, I'm 24 today, that's 2 and (the digit) 2 to the 2 power! And what of the fact that I'm really NOT a groundhog!?!? OMG I really freaking out here! Where's my numerologist!?!?!?
---
Don Rude - AKA - RudeDude
RudeDude
Perl/Linux/PHP hacker
(You could have also answered "A really wacky movie starring Bill Murray" for credit as well :D )
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
If you write the year in reverse order, this would be an Even Prime Day. :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If you think about it, any date after 1000 made it kind of hard to create all even dates, since the first digit was a one. The same thing's true now. We're not going to have an all odd date until 11/11/3111 (or, if you don't count preceding zeros, 1/1/3111).
Of course, it's all completely irrelevant if you don't go by the Gregorian calendar.
Why does Slashdot have to always assume that the dating method they use is the one that everyone uses? It's like Taco and Hemos and the others are saying, "Well, we use it, and we're Slashdot, so everyone else must use it, too, because we're the Start Page of the universe!" Well, I got news for you, bubbas, there are other dating systems.
There's the Muslim calendar. There's the Jewish calendar. There's the Greek Orthodox calendar. Some guy came up with a calendar where every month got 30 days, except December which got 35. Is it Happy Even Day in these cultures? Oh, no, and they're left out of the fun because of it. Personally, I use the Personal calendar, where the date is 154/22 (the 154th day of my 22nd year). Give it a few more months and I'll be celebrating Happy Even Day, but will Slashdot recognize that?! Oh, no. Because Slashdot's calendar is the only calendar.
I want news, not this editorial garbage. If Slashdot's truly news for nerds, how come we're not celebrating Happy Even Day on the moment when the number of seconds since the epoch has all even digits, huh?
Sheesh.
NOTE: This post not meant for the humor (or humour) impaired.
Isn't this the day that's supposed to keep repeating until you go mad ?
For those who don't "GroundHog Day" was also a movie.
On a more serious note dose anyone want to recalibrate the calendar ? After all it seams to be running 7 years behind of it's proper time and Christ was apparently born in 7BC. This is an unacceptable situation since it would mean we celebrated the 3nd millennium at the wrong time last year and will have an equally incorrect celebration this year.
I say that in 2002 we reset the calendar to 2000 so we can do the millennium thing properly then we recalibrate it to the actual date in the following year ( 2010 ). Of course the calendar finally working properly should also be cause for celebration on a scale unheard of before.
somewhere in there we will restart the count from 0 2000 years in the past so all those who called january, 1 2000 the dawn of a new millennium would become correct.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
(Not that I'm bitter, of course.)
Regards, Ralph.
"Today is November 19, 1999. The numerical format for today is 11-19-1999. All of the digits are odd. The next Odd day will be 1-1-3111 - which is well over a thousand years away, which we will never see. Days such as 4-13-89 have both even and odd digits, thus, it is neither odd nor even. The next even day will be 2-2-2000 - the first one since 8-28-888. So, now you have a reason to celebrate this Friday as it'll be your last odd day on Earth!!!!!!"
Lord of the Rings Movie Trilogy
Just what the heck is Groundhog Day?
(I really do want to know; even my Canadian wife doesn't have an answer)
Here is a URL that might be helpful and might tell you a bit more about the groundhog day.
--
"News for Nerds", not "News of *real* significance".
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
> he 19th century sort of made it hard to create all even dates
And if you think even harder, you'll see that it was also hard to have even days in the 18th century. And the 17th, 16th... and so on. The last one was in the 9th century.
PS: It was also difficult to have them in the 20th century.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
% tclsh8.0
% clock format 1000000000
Sat Sep 08 21:46:40 EDT 2001
You're off by a few seconds. I'm guessing it took you 25 seconds to enter that into bc...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
I appreciate the reference and did read it completely. In fact, I recollected having read it before.
I asked a question seriously and probably should have made that clear. I was curious why folks would think so. One post was helpful. The rest figured I was complaining. Oh, well...
I had no problem with the "News For Nerds" attribute for this article. I understand number and word play. I just think this particular item doesn't matter a whole lot in the scheme of things.
I also think this communication attempt was not worth the effort (although I accept the blame for not explaining the question); however, I do thank you for your considered response.
For a discussion about zero (and a different conclusion than yours!), follow this link
No. The next even day is Friday - 04/02/2000, then Sunday - 06/02/2000, then Tuesday, 08/02/2000.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Since when is 1 an even digit? 12/28/888 has all even numbers in its numeric representation, but not all even digits. 08/28/888 would have been the last one with all even digits.
1) 0 IS a number! There is a huge difference between "nothing" (in math terms the empty set) and a "something" that has a value 0! In other words {0} (the set with 0 as its only element) is very different from the empty set.
2) 0 is an even number: the definition of "even numbers" is the set E subset of Z {u in Z | u = 0 mod 2}. Is 0 Even? YES! 0%2=0!
Look at street addresses. The buildings with an address ending with zero are always on the same side of the street as the evens.
sup
And Groundhog Day is an old superstition of ours that tries to tell how much longer Winter will last, based on whether or not a small mammal is frightened of his own shadow.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
nope.... 1/11/3111
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
The last even day was 1111 years, 5 months and five days ago. An odd interval!
I don't know that it has any "real" significance, other than an interesting quick of our numbering system. But if the digits of numbers describing natural phenomena obey Benford's law, who knows what sort of wacky stuff number-theory geeks could find in dates?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
2: What debate? 0 is defined to be a number, unless you want to argue that being a member of the reals somehow doesn't qualify it more number status. Infinity is generally not, though IIRC there are exceptions, contexts where the number system is extended to include infinities.
You don't have to write your "proof" here, but surely if this is one of the "greatest debates in math" you can point us to a page with more info.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The other replies to this explain the legend of the groundhog, but I wanted to point out why it's today. February 2nd is the cross-quarter day, midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It's celebrated by many pagans as Imbolg or Candlemas.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
There's all kinds of cool stuff in dates. For example, not only do the leap-year dates follow a pattern that repeats every 400 years, the days of the week (and what dates they correspond to) cycle in exactly the same way.
In this 400-year cycle, the 13th of any given month is most likely to fall on a Friday. Feeling unlucky?
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Uh, is anyone actually claiming that this is relevant?
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I suppose you meant S1G, because an epoch is 2^31 seconds. Yes, the epoch can also mean time 0, but that would make about as much sense as calling the year 2000 problem "the Christ 2000 problem".
BTW, for all you pedants out there, I know that second 1073741824 (2^30) will be more important than second 1000000000, so there's no need to start an argument about what a gigasecond is.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
- 0 is not even.
- 1 is even.
- 3 is even.
- 0 is not a number.
- Infinity is a number.
And now you're telling me that 1 is prime. Hmm, there goes the Fundamental Theory of Arithmetic...--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I always mark Dec 12, at 12:12 and 12 seconds by yelling "NOW!" and pumping my fists in jubilation. Won't you join me?
Actually had a chance to be in Punxsutawney a couple of years ago. Got there with a college friend just in time.
Hundreds of drunk or semi-sober people standing in sub-zero temps on a hill next to Gobbler's Knob (cackle,cackle) while the dear rodent,'Phil', gets yanked out from this stump, and is shown to the world like Simba from the pridelands.
Next, when 'Phil' is sufficiently scared out of his wits, two guys in top hats hold up 'Phil' to their ears and unfurl a scroll. The answer is given, and everyone boos or cheers based on the result.
Afterwards, some people leave and other stick around to have their picture taken with the now terrified 'Phil'. Local TV affiliates are there, choppers and planes fly overhead to get a view, and enough local cops are on the scene to comprise a policeman's ball. Cops, you say? Yes, Cops to wrangle the exodus of people from the afore mentioned freezing hill. Not to mention to help clean up the field that has been strewn with garbage, beer cans, beer bottles, empty 40's, and 2 liters filled with (you guessed it) beer. Apparently the majority of masses camp there the previous night and drink heavily.
It's all part of this strange German tradition that (while being fun) strangely deviates from the famous Bill Murry movie. No deja vu was experienced or mentioned by the staggering attendees, nor any wise homespun insights on life aside from remembering never to travel at 3:00AM to a freezing hill for seeing a traditional rodent on display unless you REALLY want to.
So enjoy today in your nice warm office, cube, house or where ever else you read Slashdot and thank the deity of your choice that you are not 'Phil'
I remember back when years ago when the Inet was new and corporate interests played no part in site design and the big sites often changed they're logos and such around holidays. Not just the major holidays but groundhogs day and such too. I even remember some of the big ones playing April fools jokes. Now it seems that things are just a bit colder out there on the Inet. Sure sites toss up a little story about the holiday, but it's just not the same anymore.
I say YAY to Google for keeping a little humanity and fun on the internet. It's not a big deal, but it's nice to see.
For years, especially while Y2K fears were building, I advocated the One True Date Format: YYYY-MM-DD (punctuation is optional and either dots or dashes may be substituted). It sorts correctly. It is locale-independent. It is Y3K-compliant. You need not use it for human interaction, but it should be used to store the dates and transmit them in internal protocols whenever they must be in a printable form. Binary equivalents are acceptable, but may not easily extend to Y10K compliance (see RFC 2550: Y10K and Beyond).
When you use this format, placing the most significant digits first (2000-02-02, see Jargon File 4.2.0: big-endian), it is painfully obvious that there is going to be a 2 in the high-order digit for the rest of our expected lifespan.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I'm surprised that your Canadian wife has never heard of Wiarton Willie. He's the freaky ground hog that Canadians scare the shi* out of every year. I think they killed him last year.
It was funny to read their site. Apparently their groundhog festival is "the" festival of all festivals on February second. It also made me laugh to note that the town had Trademarked the name "Wiarton Willie".
*All mentions of "Wiarton Willie" used entirely without permission.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
I'm surprised that your Canadian wife has never heard of Wiaton Willie. He's the freaky ground hog that Canadians scare the shi* out of every year. I think they killed him last year.
It was funny to read their site. Apparently their groundhog festival is "the" festival of all festivals on February second. It also made me laugh to note that the Town had Trademarked the name "Wiarton Willie".
*All mentions of "Wiarton Willie" used entirely without permission
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
949509356
And the next even time should be:
1000000000
We will have to wait until:
time_t p = 1000000000;
printf("%s\n",ctime(&p));
Sun Sep 9 03:46:40 2001
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
>There is a ring (math term) term for what zero >represents, but unfortunately I don't recall it >immediately. Perhaps someone can post it.
It's a more general Algebraic term, not just in rings, also groups, fields, etc.
Given the normal integers with our normal operation of addition zero is the additive identity. i.e. the number you can add to anything to get itself. As a side note in this situation with normal multiplication 1 is the multiplicative identity.
P.S. 0 is both even and a number. What idiot moderated the above statements to the contrary up. Here's a hot tip. If you don't KNOW, please don't moderate the comments.
---CONFLICT!!---
Incidently both 28-08-888 and 02-02-2000 are both Wednesdays..... A topic worthy of discussion on /. ? or who gives a f**k !!
I noticed that the Google groundhog is not casting a shadow, which should indicate a quick end to this winter. On the other hand, all the Google letters are casting shadows, so without the appropriate amount of caffeine, I am unable to determine the significance of this augury.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
An Integer of the form N=2n, where n is an Integer. The even numbers are therefore ..., -4, -2, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, ...
If this is wrong, can you explain to me why 0 isn't even?
Never knock on Death's door:
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Even if the day has to be shared with Phil the evenkeeled rodent,
Even if the 2nd month is an uneven leap year month and is evenly spaced every four years,
Even if the year will eventually end with the dawn of an even millennium,
Even though this is Slashdot and this post has an even number of lines, and even number of words and an even number of letters, it's still Wednesday.
Isn't that odd?
Never knock on Death's door:
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Why? So you can get your long distance for less?
--
Intelligence is definitely a recessive trait.
called for a boycott of Groundhog Day until the groundhog releases Spring under the GPL.
Sad really.
Why can't your computer can't figure out what x/0 is? Because 0 is not actually a nuber. 0 can be mathmatically defined by any number divided by infinity (which is another concept). 5/infinity is 0, so is 1,000,000/infinity. Now bear with me here, HTML sucks for this.
A true number can be divided by itself and will equal 1. (5/5 = 1 , 10/10 = 1 , etc.) Now, if that was true for 0, then 0/0 = 1. But since I just said that 5/infinity is 0 and 1,000,000/infinity is 0, then:
(5/infinity)/(1,000,000/infinity) = 1
Assuming that infinity is a constant for this, then we would get that 5/1,000,000 = 1. Not quite right. That's why 0 is not a number. QED.
kwsNI
Assume that 0 is a number. How do you define even? I would say that if a number is divisible by two without leaving a remainder, then it is even. Since 0/2 = 0, I would say that 0 is even.
stty erase ^H
I'm dissapointed, so I am giving a slashdot mug to the first person to post a reply to this post, explaining in which circumstances the dates 12/14/1774 and 6/22/1462 are all-even-digit numbers. The year in the original post (1642) is wrong.
I'm serious!
Conditions:
1 - The timestamp will be the criterium.
2 - The answer is posted today.
3 - AC's will not be accepted
4 - I will talk to the winner through his e-mail, as shown in the discussion page, spam-proofing is ok.
5 - Think Geek must be able to ship the mug to the location.
6 - Most important: This message is not moderated down. (And, no, I do not have another account with moderation points)