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The Next Three Days are the x86 Days
Pinky wrote in to note that "Today, tomorrow and the next day are the only days we'll get dates like this:
2/8/6
3/8/6
4/8/6
like the x86 computers :-)" And yes folks, in the August news cycle vortex, even this strikes my fancy. In recent years we've seen numerical giants like 3/1/4, 6/6/6 and 1/2/3, but now really, what do any of us have to look forward to? Is our future dull and meaningless without cool numbers in dates? Oh the humanity of it all ...
I've lived in Canada my entire life, and everyone I know uses dd/mm/yy.
In fact, I recall being taught to do it that way in grade 2.
Sorry, but here in Europe, where the current calendar system was invented, we put the day first, so today is 2/8/6!
The i586 DOES exist. Same as the i686. I don't care what Intel marketing pushed down people's throats, I still call them 586 and 686 systems. So does the Linux kernel...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
YYYY-MM-DD is the best. I keep logs, pics, whatever named like that so a date sort by name is simple.
Trolling is a art,
You don't say whose military or government. The US DoD, at least, is large enough that there are multiple "standards". I've seen MM/DD/YY (08/02/06) and YYYY-MMM-DD (2006-AUG-02) most often, I think. The ISO date form is YYYY-MM-DD (2006-08-02) or YYYYMMDD (20060802).
Personally, I find the mixed number/letter forms like "2006 AUG 2" and "2 Aug 2006" work best when dealing with other humans who speak the same language. It's unambiguous -- there's only one sane way to interpret it -- and the letter/number distinction stands out more than dashes. For computers and other kinds of filing, though, the ISO form definately wins. It makes sorting so much easier.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"The month then day format is much nicer though. Every try to sort a list of files that are similar but have a different date. Good luck sorting them nicely by that date."
;P
Actually, neither m-d-y nor d-m-y are good for that. y-m-d is the simplest way to sort by date when you are naming files, that way they're all sorted by year first, then month, then day. d-m-y makes logical sense, but in america most people say/see august 2nd, 2006... so we get confused when we see 2-8-06.
If you knew how much hassle I've had with American software that always defaults to MDY dates, and somtimes can't be changed, you might excuse my getting a dig in. If Americans spent a few minutes to consider that their way isn't the only way of doing things, a lot of problems could be avoided, and I'm not just talking about software.
I've been brainwashed in california to use ddMMMyy (eg. 02Aug06) for all my dates. They do that in the international Pharmacuetical/BioTech industry to cut down on this exact confusion.
Which begs the question: is 02Aug06 the 2nd of August 2006 or the 6th of August 2002. Are my pills just expiring or 4 years out of date? Any possible format that leaves ambiguity WILL be misunderstood. Two digit years are an abomination!
And, to reply to a previous poster, do you alphabetize your dictionary by last letter of the word? yyyy-mm-dd is, by systems of ordering that have been around for millenia, the most logical.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
In software one should sort using this date format:
YYYYMMDD-HHMM
Also: HH should be military/24-hour time, NOT HHMM(a|p)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50