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Binary Watch

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the first-story-to-use-the-word-ostfriesen dept.

sovereignclass writes: "IDG in Sweden ran a little story about a firm in Norway that has built a binary wrist watch. It look way cool and I am definitely in line for getting one myself. With a price-tag of 250 norwegian kronor it's not a tough buy either. Yes, it shows time in decimal too... In Sweden we often poke fun at the Norwegians (like the Germans do to the Ostfriesen) and this almost sounds too good to be true."

5 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. This looks like a joke... by seldolivaw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The product shots are CG renders! I doubt this product really exists...

  2. Nice, but what I realy want is a fuzzy watch. by HuskyDog · · Score: 5, Interesting
    On KDE there is a thing called "fuzzy clock" which tells you the time in words to an accuracy of 5 minutes (mine currently says "Ten past one").

    Does anyone know of a watch that does this?

  3. Great Virus Game!!! by squaretorus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is cool. Sending virii to each others watches! It'd work like this:

    I set up my virus to give the message 'all your squares are belong to torus' and walk about with my watch blasting that out in IR. Any other watch I pass gets infected with the virus!

    Then everytime a watch links to a base unit it puts all its messages (along with where they are geographically) into a website.

    I can call up 'all your squares are belong to torus' and see how far its spread.

    I walk past someone on a street in London who flies off to Tokyo and goes dancing allnight - soon most of Japan is infected with 'all your squares are belong to torus'. How cool a game is that! I'd play!

    The best locations to get your virus to would be Antrctica and the ISS I'd have thought. Oh, and Manchester.

  4. Re:Nitpick Redux by Speare · · Score: 3, Interesting

    HH:MM:SS time is actually called "sexagesimal."

    Yes, it is called sexagesimal, but that's a misnomer. It's three decimal components with distinct modulo periods.

    For mathematicians, sexagesimal numbering would use sixty different digit symbols, for every component. The Babylonians used sexagesimal numbering for a range of things, not just counting minutes, but that's where we got the hour/minute/second convention.

    Someone below also mentioned that the watch is "binary coded sexagesimal". That's closer to the mark, as the minutes and seconds digits are shown in distinct groupings of six binary digits (wasting four permutations for 60, 61, 62, 63). It does not count for the hours position, though, as that is shown with only five binary digits.

    A twelve-hour system would be "binary coded duodecimal," but the watch appears to use a twenty-four hour system which would be called "binary coded tetravigesimal."

    --
    [ .sig file not found ]
  5. Spartacus Backwards Clock by leighklotz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When I was growing up my parents had a Spartacus Backwards Clock, a popular item from the 1950's, I guess. Unfortunately for me, though, I am now completely broken about clockwise and counter-clockwise. I have gotten to where I can now figure it out, but it is definitely a cognitive task, not an immediate perception as it is with normal people.

    A friend reports a similar confusion with orange and purple, but it was purposefully engendered by her many cooperating (all older) siblings...