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 ...
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
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.