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Calendar: Code, Free Speech, Or Mathematics?
jdavidb writes: "Dr. John Conway (author of the famous "Game of Life") has a wonderful algorithm for finding the day of the week for any year in history that you can do in your head. It's so easy and elegant, in fact, that someone has decided to write a poem about it. Shades of DeCSS haikus! What a marvelous example of how mathematics is a form of (free and protected) speech.
As if to further illustrate that computer code is just another form of speech, there is an implementation of this algorithm (in Perl of course)!"
If the Bible was a little more specific in the number of days between "begats", we could find out exactly on what day the heavens and the earth were created.
;-)
I'm sure the canonical theory is that it was created on a Sunday, with God resting on Saturday, but of course that only comes with 14% probability of being correct.
Slash Doter
Has someone else gotten the impression that stories are accepted or rejected using some sort of script these days? In preudo code:
I've been using this for almost 30 years
, 2))-2.5)-1), Z1$
$ (1 ,2))+9,12)*2.6+.4)+NUM(D0$
00100 rem "getday - 03/16/72 (bdc)
00110 enter d0$,z1$
00120 rem d0$=day of the week, Z1$=return value
00130 let D0=MOD(NUM(D0$(7,2))+20,100)+80+SGN(SGN(NUM(D0$(1
00130:="WednesdayThursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday ", Z1
00130:$=Z1$(1+9*MOD(D0+INT(D0/4)+INT(MOD(NUM(D0
00130:(4,2)),7),9)
00140 exit
Sorry... Just saw "Wargames" again recently.
There is no magic to multiplying 5 digit numbers in one's head. Systems like The Trachtenberg System of Speed Mathematics (called Basic mathematics in the edition of the book that I have) can teach this trick to anyone who is good with figures.
Anyone else notice this?
I think the problem with this is the pesky ratio of 365.25 days to a year. While everything else (hours, minutes, weeks, months) are fairly arbitrary, you would have to keep this ratio if you wanted the seasons to stay at the same time of the year. If you don't then you are fine but it does defeat the purpose of having a year. You might as well go for milliseconds since the epoch...
Damn it! I can't even get first Google here!
Odd though, their "Day of week calculator" on that website won't accept a date before 1900 or past 1999.
"Year 19yy" is listed above the input box, and it will accept only 00-99 as input for that field.
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The major exception is Great Britian which, due to the feud between the Catholic and Anglican Churches, did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until September 14, 1752.
And if you want to see something weird, but nifty, type the following into your local shell prompt:
cal 9 1752
You can do it in John Conway's head.
--Jim
...has a wonderful algorithm for finding the day of the week for any year in history that you can do in your head.
That should read "...that one can do in one's head." I could no sooner do that in my head than I could give birth.
-Waldo
Pure FUD.
Linux has supported bongs with any number of chambers since kernel 2.4.1 The generic waterpipe driver has been re-written from the ground up to support bongs up to 1024 inches. The only trouble items are the so-called winpipes. These pipes don't have an actual bowl, they're just an empty tube and a driver that makes windows *act* like it's stoned. Due to poor real-world performance and their unsatisfactory smoking experience, they are unlikely to ever be supported.
Hookah support for multiple users is now available through the tokin' ring network device. The new tokin' ring driver also supports 128-bit encryption of the smokestream, to prevent "sniffing" of the connection by local police.
0 1 - just my two bits
Whining about old news has been around since Ecclesiastes, and whining in general is even older...
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Heck, if you could tell what the stock market was going to do that far in the future, why not just predict it about a year in advance and make a killing? Unless that stardate really is next year...
(posted w/o a shred of sarcasm because it took me three reading to realize you meant Day-Of-Week.)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I'd like to point out an alternative method that I have found. I started out with a method that I read in a memory improvement book and made some modifications for the sake of simplicity and speed. What I came up with is described in the Memory Howto I've written. The method requires the memorization of 12 one-digit numbers (one for each month) which will be extraordinarily easy if you learn the other tricks in the howto such as the peg. It takes a bit of practice, but it can be very fast and IMO is simpler. Link to entire essay is in my tagline below:
----
Celebrate the finer things in life
Many years ago, I stumbled upon a book that contained an alternate method for finding the weekday for a given date. Wish I could remember the reference, but I do remember the method :-)
:)
You just need to remember twelve numbers, one for each month:
Jan = 0 Feb = 3 Mar = 3 Apr = 6 May = 1 June = 4
Jul = 6 Aug = 2 Sep = 5 Oct = 0 Nov = 3 Dec = 5
(You can derive these on the fly by remembering how many days are in each month, modulo 7)
Now, subtract 1900 from your year, and take the difference modulo 7.
( 2001 - 1900 ) mod 7 ===> 101 mod 7 ===> 3
Add the number of Leap Years between the year of interest and 1900 (include the current year if it's a leap year, and the date you want is after 28th February)
(2001 - 1900) / 4 = 25 leap years
Add the two numbers, modulo 7: (25 + 3) modulo 7 = 28 modulo 7 == 0
Add the number of the month, above, modulo 7: June = 4, (4 + 0) mod 7 = 4
Add the day of the month, modulo 7: 5th June = 5, (5 + 4) mod 7 = 9 mod 7 = 2
Now, 0 == Sunday, 1 == Monday . . . 6 == Saturday, so:
5th June, 2001 is a Tuesday (if you didn't know already
Works for years prior to 1900 as well, just remember how additive moduli work with negative numbers (add, don't subtract), and subtract the number of leap years, don't add them.
Let's try 20th September, 1989 (no reason in particular):
1989 - 1900 = 89 mod 7 = 5
Number of intervening leap years: 22
September = 5
20th = 20
( 5 + 22 + 5 + 20 ) mod 7 == 52 mod 7 == 3 == Wednesday
Not sure if it's much easier than Conway's algorithm, or if I'm just used to it now. Anyway, I didn't see it mentioned elsewhere in the comments, so I thought I'd point it out.
Cheers,
Michael
How in the heck am I going to compile Perl into my head? That's completely besides the fact that the human brain would probable go schizo trying to figure out the best way to implement the alogorithm, since there are probably too many ways to do it.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Changing the calendar is not something that people accept, there were riots when the Gregorian calendar was adopted due to people being upset that they were losing 10 days. You might say people are more rational these days, but I don't see any evidence of that.
He likes to ask for your birthday and by the time he's done saying "well, I can tell you that this was a" he has the weekday. .login that prompts for a couple of random given day of the week (and checks) and gives him his score (total time taken for 5 good answers iirc) He has the same kind of program for factoring 4 digit numbers, etc...
Of course, I didn't check his answer at the time, so I presume mistakes could easily go unnoticed, but he's really good at those kinds of things. To practice he has a program in his
(I've been privileged to be one of his student and he is truly the most amazing mind I've personally met)
dude quit bitching and read the article, it most certainly does mention the fact that it uses the gregorian calendar and has problems with earlier dates, and earlier dates in great britain.
karma whore. =(
Christmas is always the day before Doomsday.
Ain't that the truth,
-- "Words are lame and words are crap" - Bouncing Souls
Yeah, this is a good idea... until you actually think about it.
According to your system the year would have only 100 days (10 days/mo * 10 mo/yr). That unfortunately is not anywhere close to reality.
A day is defined by the time it takes the earth to rotate on its axis, and a year is defined by the time it takes our earth to orbit the sun.
The two are interrelated in that the time for one orbit ~= time for 365 revolutions. i.e. 1 year = 365 days. There's nothing you can do about it.
You could go to a 10 month year, with each month having 36.5 days. (or 1/2 would have 36 days and 1/2 would have 37) But is that really gaining us anything?
To have a 100 day year as you propose, you would have to change the definition of "day" or "year", neither of which is appealing: Would yo prefer a "day" with 3.65 daylight/nighttime cycles, or having it take 3.65 "years" to complete the four seasons?
(moderators: this isn't flamebait or a troll, it's just pointing out how easy it is to fool others into moderating one's post up undeservedly. You might even call it insightful =)
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
It should work as follows:
2 + (8*26)/10 + 73 + 73/4 + 19/4 - 2*19
= 2 + 208/10 + 73 + 18 + 4 - 38
= 2 + 20 + 73 + 18 + 4 - 38
= 79 % 7 = 2 -> Monday
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
The leap year rules might be adjusted to compensate every 4000 years, or the days might be allowed to accumulate, as you suggested. Or there might be an entirely different Calendar in use. But since we don't know, it wouldn't be a good idea to try to get one of those dates, because those are much less likely to be correct.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
The algorithm uses the Gregorian Calendar. Most countries did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until October 15, 1582, and therefore it is inaccurate for any date before that. The major exception is Great Britian which, due to the feud between the Catholic and Anglican Churches, did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until September 14, 1752.
This means that the "Doomsday"'s before 1583 are all wrong everywhere, and those before 1753 are wrong in Great Britian.
In addition, the Gregorian Calendar only considers Leap Year exceptions on a 400-year cycle, so in the year 4092 it will have drifted off by one full day. Therefore, this algorithm should not be used for any date past December 31, 4091.
In my opinion, the Doomsday algorithm isn't even the best algorithm for this job. I prefer Zeller's Algorithm, for a which a good description can be found at http://www.columbia.edu/ ~cs1005/HW03.html .
Zeller's Algorithm was first proposed by Chr. Zeller, in 1883 -- long before computers. It also allows one to find the day of week for a date using only integer division, and thus can be done easily by hand. It's much simpler than the Doomsday Algorithm appears to be.
I can't post it here correctly due to formatting limitations, but it can be found at the above lined page. It's slightly harder to memorize, but simpler to use (and program -- only took me a few minutes).
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
Not terribily suprising. The chances of getting 12 correct with 12 guesses is 80!-68!, or 1 in 1,962,360,214,549,183,088,640,000. Even if a trillion guesses are played, the chances of winning are still almost 2000 trillion to 1.
Seems pretty clever. I wonder how long it will be before somebody claims a patent violation.
Can you do that all in your head?
I can do three of the Doomsday at once, no trouble...
It may have more steps, but you can remember them all at once, in bite-sized portions.
Well, it depends on what sort of chicks you're after. Some prefer a bit of intelligence and some don't. If you're looking for a quick fuck with an airhead then by all means pretend to be dumb :)
I don't think they mentioned this in the article..
:)
I read this in the morning, and practised it in my head on the way to work. While thinking of random dates to try, "June 6 1945" came to my mind. by "The Hand", 0 + (1900s Doomsday) + 3 + 9 + 2 = (you guessed it) the 1900s Doomsday!
Having found this, I now remember everything perfectly
Also, some of you may not have picked up on the fact that this article was penned cleverly: instead of brashly stating facts and expecting memories, he deliberately leaves out some critical deductions, but hints very strongly at them. It is ten times easier to remember something you worked out yourself, than something you saw somewhere.
I did, and it ends in an intriguing claim (and demonstration) from Conway that if one stands pennies on their side on a table, and bumps the table, all the pennies will land heads-up. And that if spun, pennies will land 2/3 of the time tails up. (Appropriate physics reasons are given for the surprising behavior.)
I tried this with a sample of 10-20 pennies from my jar and was not able to duplicate the findings. (In the 2 trials I had patience for, I got heads up 2/3 of the time with both table-thumping and coin-spinning.) I'd have done more trials but I was at work, albeit on a dinner break. ;) Has anyone else heard of this or checked it out?
--LP
Oddly enough, this is not original see ther E2 node for : /dev/bong
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
There was an interesting description of an idiot savant who could do just this in "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" by Oliver Sacks (wrote Awakenings).
I agree that I'm not sure how remarkable it is that this algorithm can merely be computed in ones head. However for people who have never had the algorithm described to them, (maybe the savant had allready read about this algorithm, who can be sure), it shows great ingenuity to come up with an algorithm like this for themselves.
It's not the act of executing the algorithm that would make them genius material. It's whether they read the solution and were good at menial math, or whether they were inventive and (re)created an algorithm themselves.
The poem has been around since 1976, and the algorhythm is even older...
Yes, this assumes base 10. A more general, and easily provable (although I'm not going to include a proof here) rule is that in base b, b-1 divides the number iff b-1 divides the sum of the digits. If another number n divides b-1 then, n divides the sum of the digits as well. Similiary, b+1 divides the number iff if divides the alternating sum of the digits (in other words, in base 10 - 132 = 2-3+1 = 0, which is divisible by 11, so 132 is divisible by 11). Similary, numbers that divide b+1 have a similar property.
This code circumvents the obfuscation put in place by the Romans way back when by allowing the masses to find the weekday equivalents of any day in history! This must be stopped! Why, if this information leaks to the masses, we'll have rebellion and revolution, and it's only a matter of time before calendar makers' proprietary secrets are laid bare, depriving them of their hard-earned money! Rest assured that we will be filing a lawsuit against the author of this code, and any who distribute it. Such criminal "crowbars" cannot be allowed to proliferate to the masses!
Have a nice day,
Calendar Makers Association of America.
Next think you know, they'll be figuring out a way to crazy casino games like Kino...
There's an easy way to win at Keno - don't play. If you're looking to win at gambling, first remember that hotels are big and fancy for a reason, and second, play blackjack - that's as close as you're going to get to having "good" odds.
The Good Reverend
I'm different, just like everybody else.
Regarding my above post, numbers divisible by three add up to three, six, nine, or another number divisible by three, not just three. Sorry for the quick post =)
The Good Reverend
I'm different, just like everybody else.
Ah...I wasn't aware. Very interesting. All the Keno games I've seen in Vegas use balls for their main game, I'm not sure about the side games, though I'm sure most do, even if it's behind the scenes. What I find facinating is that no one in Las Vegas has ever matched 12 of 12 or better (keno is a pick as many as you want from 80, and 20 are picked, for those unfamilar with the game). The odds do suck, but how many billions of keno games have been played in the last 50 years?
The Good Reverend
I'm different, just like everybody else.
What a marvelous example of how mathematics is a form of (free and protected) speech.
Has someone tried to claim a patent on this? It's a neat little math trick, but the poster seems a little paranoid. Should we not tell the world that the digits in numbers divisible by three add up to three, in case someone tries to patent that too? It doesn't seem like this is a big problem. or even a free speech issue.
The Good Reverend
I'm different, just like everybody else.
The Zeller algorithm listed doesn't work if you interpret the direction "where all of the arithmetic is done with INTEGERS" literally. Try for example July 2nd 1973. If I treat every calculation (including the divisions) as an integer operation, the algorithm suggests a Saturday, whereas the date is a Monday. Or am I missing something ?
Oh, so this is how those pretend to be geniuses/idiot savants do it. Next think you know, they'll be figuring out a way to crazy casino games like Kino.....waitaminute.
I found some more info here. Apparently it was 620,000$ CDN that he won. They been the odds of "1 in 6 billion" 3 times in a row. Here are some excerpts
- Corriveau used an "antique 286" computer to analyse 7,000 combinations from the keno game, [which uses an electronic pseudo-random number generator].
- The Casino managers shut the game down and called the police.
- The Surete du Quebec [provincial police] fraud squad investigated; Corriveau and his family even took polygraph tests.
Might want to look on yahoo or somewhere to find the details of the actual judgement. Though I am pretty sure he was let off completely.
So do you suggest that we spin the Earth on it's axis slower to get 100 days per orbit of the sun or are we going to decrease our orbital path so we can have the same length day but a shorter (and hotter!) year? Until you decide I guess we'll stick with the 365.25 day orbit.
You have to know what day doomsday is before the algorithm even works! Didn't you even read the article you mook?
I remember when he showed my B90 class this at nwu last year. He did a series of very interesting lectures - evidently based on a series he did at princeton - about a HUGE variety of topics. Godel, Number Theory, discrepancies in time measurement...
One of the most interesting things he showed us was how to find Pi from a game of pool - no tricks! I forget the exact method, but I think you took two balls of equal mass, hit them together, and looked for how many times the second would hit the wall before stopping. And then you changed the mass ratio to 10-1, then 100-1, and so on.
The newer version of the package comes with another module, Date::DayOfWeek, that actually has a function to calculate the day of the week for any day in the Gregorian calendar. http://search.cpan.org/search?mode=module&query=Do omsday
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
Here's a comparison with the legal status of the DeCSS algorithm: the DeCSS algorithm is the subject of a lawsuit because it circumvents an encryption scheme and may therefore be illegal under the DMCA. The Doomsday algorithm is not the subject of any lawsuit, has nothing to do with encryption, and the DMCA has no bearing on it. Conclusion: the Doomsday algorithm does not affect the DeCSS case in the slightest.
I agree. And even if I remember all rules there's a good change I get not so accurate answer doing it in my head... I'd probably get equally valid answer simply guessing and it's much faster algorithm! Success rate 1 of 7. How about changing to 10-based system and discarding months altogether instead of inventing YAWA (yet another weekday algorithm). Simply calculate days from the start of year. That would be great solution to mm/dd/yyyy vs. dd.mm.yyyy problem also. One could simply write like 2001#157@500 (internet time). One can always dream...
_________________________
_________________________
Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
D00d, Just use cal!
Linux: An OS for the Masses: Rosanne Barr and Tom Arnold
This message was encrypted with rot-26 cryptography.
but the margin is too small to contain it...
You have all the margin you want at Everything, the Internet's most popular collaboratively filtered database and writing community. (See also what I've written.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
OK, I can admit that the trick for getting the doomsday for a year in a century might take some training to memorize, but for the base (centuries) you only need to memorize 4 days - it's a nice, short period. As for the leap years, that's stuff you usually pick up in kindergarten ... come on here, read the whole article, not just the first screen of it ... you know what that grey bar on the right side of the text means?
That said about this particular case, in the general you have a point.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
- Young Sidis astounded guest with his remarkable ability to calculate the the day of any given day in a matter of seconds, using an algorithm he had invented himself.
While Sidis undoubtly was a real prodigy, many others that are attributed with this "remarkable ability" aren't. That they are nevertheless labeled so is probably mostly due to biographers (like Wallace) overestimating the difficulty of this particular task. Not that this is really important or anything, but it always annoys me when people gravely overestimate someone's intellectual capacity merely because of simple tricks."If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
The knuckle thing for figuring out if a month has 30 or 31 days is best. If you're not aware of this, find someone who is, have them teach it to you, and you'll have a much happier life.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
HER: Sure....what day of the week does never fall on?
Busted... now everyone at work is wondering why I burst out laughing.
sig's not here
BH
BH
Fools! They laughed at me at the Sorbonne...!
One of the highlights of my mathematics education so far has been when John Conway was visiting Northwestern University last year for a series of lectures after winning the Nemmers Prize. My math prof got him to come in and lecture for us one day. The first thing he did was his day of the week finding algorithm, and I was the student whose birthdate he asked. And sure enough, maybe 2 or 3 seconds later, he proclaimed I was born on a Wednesday.
Can anyone calculate the DOW for stardate 40759.5?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Here is the link to the copy in the Google Cache
enjoy!
(oops - forgot the password)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
int dow(int m,int d,int y)
{y-=m<3;return(y+y/4-y/100+y/400+"-bed=pen+mad. "[m]+d)%7;}
Even though it only works for "a restricted range." This comes from here, which has some other information too.
-skip
Beware! Running it will bring about the end of the world!
* Well, that and the big headline at the top of the page...
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Well, if ya really want to do stupid things with your money, you could eat it. Make sure to shred it well with your teeth, otherwise it gets clumped up in your epifloggital sac.
Gambling... all gambling... is for losers. Even if you win, you lose.
Baugh. I played the lottery once. Lost a dollar. Never played again. Got the point.
Heh.. smart man, I always felt like a tax collector for the stupid when I was working in the gambling industry.. the ONLY reason anyone should ever gamble is for Entertainment, and it sure does not entertain me for one.. You should look at gambling like a video game (you put in your money, you get to see some pretty things, your money is gone).
I have seen people loose their lives to my paycheck when I was in the industry, and no, that didn't upset me in the slightest. I was always up front with anyone that asked that you will NEVER beat the house gambling (it's not possible, the house is a group of professionals, you aren't).. Never once did that deter someone from gambling and thinking they would win that I know of, but seriously YOU WON'T WIN... it's just not possible, the odds are typically astronomical..
I thought someone said there was going to be free beer!
I'd just as soon try to memorize the Charge of the Light Brigade as that bizarre poem. It ain't exactly "Thirty days hath September."
But I think I could manage to make four paper strips and fold them around a pencil, or build this cardboard contraption, or even try tattooing this stuff on various body parts like the guy in Memento.
I might try this interactive calendar to find the Doomsday to start the algorithm process, but then I wouldn't need to remember the algorithm, would I? I would be most likely to consult my desk copy of Farmer's Almanac, then the only thing I would have to remember is where I put it.
Resisting the urge to shout "How are you, gentlemen?" every time I pass the "gentlemen's room" at work.
Maybe, but only if one of the steps included in my head is telling myself "Remember where you put the printout to that page, dumbass."
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Gambling... all gambling... is for losers. Even if you win, you lose.
Baugh. I played the lottery once. Lost a dollar. Never played again. Got the point.
information is immaterial
Do you even remember what dirt smells like anymore?
information is immaterial
Ummm, didn't you see that Slashdot is "news for nerds?" It didn't say "Open Source nerds," it sed "nerds." Geez. Don't be a nerd, ya geek!
information is immaterial
This does not assume base 10.
But masters, remember that I am an ass: though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.
Ta for the info! I used this algorithm in a program years back, but I forgot the name and have never been able to find it since :)
Slight problem. We do actually have 365.25 days per year. Days are an unchangable unit. A better deal is changing the measurement of the second (another one of my bored thought exercises). I pondered doing a "percent of the day" digital watch.
A day is equal to 24 x 60 x 60 seconds = 86400 seconds. If we went to a percent of the day it would be 10 hours x 10 minutes x 10 seconds = 1000 "seconds" which would be make the new second 86400 / 1000 = 86.4 longer. So another 2 divisions of the day would need to occur to near the pulse-beat per second accuracy if this were to be an adopted concept.
An example would be 8:22:34 PM would become 73354 seconds into the day or 84.9004629% of the day. Since you'd only need 4 digits following the decimal point to maintain the previous accuracy level, it'd be easy to do, but you'd need a bigger numerical display for the time. Don't even get me started on why somebody named a time unit "seconds" which also means the unit following one of some set.
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
Associated Press, June 4, 2001
Greece - A new math theorem is out, that allows the computation of angles in a triangle.
This theorem was created by a 'Pythagoras'.
It is entitled the 'Pythagorean theorem'.
The algorithm, patent free, is available below.
a^2+b^2=c^2
A much simpler algorithm is
The SAS survival handbook lists hundreds of ways to stay alive in artic wastes armed with only a rusty can opener. Me I go down to the supermarket.
Technology is good, folk should try it sometime.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Plus think of all the people that would cease to exist because they were born in November or December. That's not riotous, that's tragic.
One skill commonly found among autistic savants is the ability to calculate the day of the week for a particular date in only seconds. Autism (brought to life by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man) is a developmental disorder usually apprearing early in life. The fact that this complex (to the average person) algorithm is needed to perform this task only highlights the amazing abilities of these special people. There is still so much we don't understand about the mind. Please see the Austism Society's website: www.autism-society.org
echo $wittysigline;
I think back to a movie about a Savant(Rainman)...Seems that they want us all to be autistic and wonder aimlessly figuring calculations in our head...Meantime i get my palm out of my pocket protector, pull my half keyboard and go about it the old fashioned way....
I am accepting donations for more bow-ties and a new pair of coke bottle glasses.
Razzious Domini
Razzious Domini
I could be a GREAT KARMA WHORE if I could just shed the few morals I have left.
at best, it's funny.
the reasons a metric calendar makes no sense are very, very easy to see.
1. the earth completely rotates around it's axis every 24 hours.
2. the moon rotates around the earth about every 30 days
3. the earth rotates around the sun about every (24 hour) days.
whatever, this idea is like deciding to speak exclusively in pig latin. ie, it is more complicated and messy than the existing solution, and makes no sense.
at least do it in a power of 2 radix. radices of 10 don't make sense anymore either... just a little less arbitrary as the gregorian method.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
Truely geeky girls, gotta love em! So rare and special. Despite being kinda cute, she's got that slightly sarcastic sassiness one would hope for.
[news for me, stuff that doesn't matter]
Wouldn't it be easier to just asign a date a number based upon it's distance from a starting date, say a Sunday sometime early in the century, and then just mod7 that date?
Maybe the problem is that our calendar is simply too complicated. Why on earth are we using the Gregorian calendar, anyway? It would be far simpler to use a dating convention that has, let's say, 10 months per year, 10 days per month, 10 hours per day, and 10 minutes per hour. Better yet, we do not even have to name the units. Year = e0. Month = e-1. Day = e-2. Hour = e-3. Minute = e-4. Dates and times could then be represented easily by a single decimal. For example, 5.072 would 5th year, 0th month, 7th day, 2nd hour.
If you pick up books on memory tricks and mnemonics, they describe schemes very similar to this. Many people who do this actually prefer methods that involve a little bit more memorization: they are faster and you are less likely to make a mistake.
So, I can figure out what day of the week any date in history falls on in my head...so long as I happen to know whether the last day of Feburary is the 28th or 29th that year, and what day of the week the last day of Feburary happens to land on.
Say, that will be great fun at parties.
What were you expecting?
"Easy to remember" means remembering your own name. "Easy to remember" means basic rules of addition. This is more like "painstakingly difficult to remember under any circumstances."
I'll stick to using my calendar, thank you very much!
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Sig
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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke
Glad everybody thought this was so neat, but the real reason for posting was to invite comparison with the legal status of the DeCSS algorithm. I wish they'd put that in as a related link. But, you could do your own search, instead: DeCSS stories on slashdot
When will we recognize that legal maneuvering cannot and should not replace true technological protection (such as real encryption) or enforce it. Laws that say "keep your eyes closed while your computer manipulates that information" are ineffectual and contrary to the spirit of the law.