Slashdot Mirror
Binary Watch
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."
I was hoping for blinkenlights, not numbers!
The product shots are CG renders! I doubt this product really exists...
This would be fun, I hear they mgiht be sale in the US on 0110101101110000101110101, 01101101301EST.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
It says:
This page is under construction
In a few days we will present a complete new type of watch.
This watch will communicate with other similar watches and send virus to each other.
Wow, nothing like truth in marketing, I guess.
What's your damage, Heather?
and get a matching binary "ties suck tie", and the "you are dumb" binary t-shirt!
Sell all three together as a set.... Then head to work for the day..... That will keep you from getting a date for at least the next year!
On a side note, the idea is cool for the watch and I like it, I just wish they looked a little cooler... They kinda look cheap.
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
it already takes me a long time to figure out an analog watch... now this...
"Excuse me sir, do you have the time?"
"Yes, it's... uhhh... 12.. no, 14! I mean, er, do you have a pencil?"
"Uh, never mind. Thanks anyway, you fucking dork."
Now if they had a hex watch, THAT would be cool... :->
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Does anyone know of a watch that does this?
1/1000th of a day is a Swatch .beat that they use in their 'Internet Time'. You can buy all sorts of Swatches that will display the time in .beats (@500 == 12:00 noon in their system).
My clock is fuzzier than yours... right now the time is "End of week".
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
You can find a real shot here.
Plain 'ol LCD stuff. Still pretty cool for the price though.
The displays on the models shown are all showing:
10111
111011
110010
But every watch marketer knows that you should be showing:
01010
001010
000000
which is 10:10 AM. Apparently it's recommended for digital watches as well, so I don't see why they shouldn't use it for binary watches.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
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.
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."
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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...