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The Next Three Days are the x86 Days

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the those-are-the-days dept.

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 ...

67 of 589 comments (clear)

  1. what about the lucky sevens? by metasecure · · Score: 5, Funny

    In Canada, where m/d/y is more common we already experienced this on February 8, March 8 and April 8, respectively.

    Life is good living three steps ahead of the taco.

    Personally I look forward to the lucky 7's, 7/7/7, a day where CmdrTaco and I can celebrate our slot machine winnings together.

    1. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by Murodese · · Score: 2, Insightful

      But would you rather a three-day celebratory holiday, or three one-dayers? :o

    2. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by metasecure · · Score: 2, Funny

      I don't think celebrating either will get me any action so...a moot point indeed =)

    3. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by Moby+Cock · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by cayenne8 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      " I've lived in Canada my entire life, and everyone I know uses dd/mm/yy."

      Ok...guess it is early...I was wondering what the hell planet these posts were from...

      I looked at the date on my calendar and on my computer desktop, and it said 08/02/06...cobwebs cleared and I remembered that in other places, they switch the day and month around.

      Just curious...how many places do it d/m/y vs. m/d/y. I'd never seen the d/m/y thing till a couple of years ago....

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    5. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by Red+Alastor · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Just curious...how many places do it d/m/y vs. m/d/y. I'd never seen the d/m/y thing till a couple of years ago....
      Every place that speaks French use d/m/y. It's because it's the way it's naturally spoken in French : 2 août 2006.
      --
      Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
    6. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by middlemen · · Score: 2, Informative


      just curious...how many places do it d/m/y vs. m/d/y. I'd never seen the d/m/y thing till a couple of years ago....
      Most places follow dd/mm/yy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DD-MM-YY>. Only places with USA influence follow the mm/dd/yy format. India for example uses dd/mm/yy. And yes, if you did not know this until a couple of years ago, i am shocked. In India, they taught us this when we were kids in school.

    7. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by yfkar · · Score: 5, Informative
      Dd/mm/yy seems to be far more common than mm/dd/yy.

      Here's a list of used date formats in various countries. Looks like Canada has them all. ;)

      m/d/y (month, day, year) is used by:

      * Canada (Although most official documents use the y-m-d format, the m/d/y format is also understood due to influences from the United States.)
      * Federated States of Micronesia
      * Palau
      * Philippines (formerly d/m/y. May still be found in certain contexts)
      * United States (Although Independence Day is often referred to as "the Fourth of July.")

    8. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by rastan_saga · · Score: 3, Informative

      Australia / New Zealand uses dd/mm/yy. Always got me, why America and other countries use mm/dd/yy. Why do you need to know the month first everytime you look at the date. Isn't the day of the month the most important thing you look at first, so it's written to the left first. Just seems logical, the day / month / then the year. It's in order :)

    9. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by carnifex0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Maybe we should all use the "Official" ISO date format - YYYY-MM-DD and avoid confusion. I have a system that I administer that uses the ISO dates, and every single one of my users hates it.

    10. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by amliebsch · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's what the military and most "with it" government organization use. I've also adopted myself because (a) it is completely unambiguous and (b) I'm an asshole.

      --
      If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
    11. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by 1u3hr · · Score: 4, Funny
      Just curious...how many places do it d/m/y vs. m/d/y. I'd never seen the d/m/y thing till a couple of years ago....

      Basically, everywhere except the USA. You don't get out much do you?

      If you do plan on travelling, also note that in the rest of the world we use degrees Celsius for temperature -- 30 degrees is hot, not cold, so pack appropriately. But most surprising of all, not everyone in the world speaks English!

    12. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by sholden · · Score: 4, Informative

      Every place that speaks English does too, except the USA (and a handful of Pacific nations who caught it from the US).

    13. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by grub · · Score: 3, Insightful


      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,
    14. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by teh+kurisu · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In UK English, "It's the second of August" is common. I'm guessing this form is less used in America because American English has more of a tendency to drop prepositions (ie. the 'of'). For example, "he went Tuesday" rather than "he went on Tuesday", or "the kids are out back" rather than "the kids are out the back".

    15. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by shinnie · · Score: 3, Funny

      No kidding. This guy must of lived to close to the US border and was using their format. Remember the first time I crossed the border to legally buy beer in the US. The clerk looked at my ID and asked how I could have been born in the 13th month. I told her Canada has 13 months in its year as we have an extra month of winter :)

    16. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by Tower · · Score: 5, Funny

      >I am a native English speaker and have said "It's the 2nd of August, 2006" all my life.

      Well, then... congratulations - For the first time in your life, you are correct!

      --
      "It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
    17. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by cayenne8 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I've wondered if this is because in other languages...they often put the description after the object. For example, in English you'd day 'red car'. In Spanish, it would be 'Coche rojo'...which is basically 'car red'.

      I wonder if this might be similar to how we speak the dates differently. 22nd is the day...and the month is synonymous to the descriptive part of the date?

      Sounds strange, but, was just trying to figure out why the difference. In Europe, the English speaking nations are close together with nations with other languages...that structure their languages as mentioned above, whereas in the US, well, we're pretty much to ourselves, and wouldn't have the influence of foreign languages...

      Of course...that situation is starting to change...si

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    18. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by araemo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "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."

      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. ;P

    19. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by IngramJames · · Score: 2, Funny

      Here's a list of used date formats in various countries. Looks like Canada has them all. ;)

      And it looks like those blaming the USA for the nefarious spread of m/d/y have been shown to be wrong.

      Quite obviously, it's the blasted Federated States of Micronesia again, exerting their subtle yet vast power.

      --
      'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
    20. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by ReplicantSD1 · · Score: 5, Funny

      All my life, in my surroundings, if someone asked you the date something was going to happen, you'd say "August 22nd"

      Wow, what a boring place. What did you guys do for the other 364 days?

    21. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by Chosen+Reject · · Score: 2



      Why does doing something backwards make logical sense? It should be done yy/mm/dd. That's how I do anything on that needs to be organized by date. I have lots of folders and files named that way, journal entries, newsletters, image folders, etc. Actually they are yyyy_mm_dd but the idea is the same.

      The same is true for time. We don't write 41:07, we write 7:41. So the same should be true of dates.

      --
      Stop Global Warming!
      Just say no to irreversible processes!
    22. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by 1u3hr · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    23. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by WedgeTalon · · Score: 3, Funny

      Only two days? C'mon, you just move the holiday to a Monday so it's a three day holiday. Then you'll want to leave on Friday to take full advantage of it. But everyone's leaving on Friday and everyone wants to beat the traffic, so leave on Thursday. And if you're leaving on Thursday, why not Wednesday night? And you can't come back on Monday, that's still a holiday. And you can't come back on Tuesday, cause everybody comes back on Tuesday, so you outsmart everybody and you come back on Wednesday. So now you're leaving on Wednesday and coming back on Wednesday and suddenly a one day holiday is now a week! (Apologies to Scott Adams)

    24. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by name*censored* · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Nah, its just because 'mericans like to be different.. or cbf spelling out words in full? See: colo(u)r, thr(o)u(gh), neighbo(u)r, program(me), etc

      --
      Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
    25. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by Zelbinian · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Indeed, much like only the US (and the places it thereby influences) pronounces the letter 'z' as 'zee' or uses feet and pounds. What a wacky bunch we are.

      --
      Putting the 33k in G33k.
    26. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by cvdwl · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.
    27. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by kimvette · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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
    28. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by idontgno · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Nope, in the US, if you asked what time it was, you would most likely get the answer "three-twenty".
      Occasionally you'll get it the way you mentioned (twenty after three), but, most of the time I hear it hour-minute.

      And that raises a couple of interesting points.

      • Brevity. "Three twenty" is less of a mouthful than "Twenty past three". "August 8th, 2006" is somewhat shorter than "The 8th of August, 2006" (no possessives or articles; their function is implied in the shorter pharaseology.) Are we Americans hasty?
      • The "decline" of the analog clock. Does anyone in the US say "A quarter till 4 PM?" A quarter of a what? The notion of an hour as a divisible entity (vice an integral entity, accompanied by an integral entity called the minute) is most intuitive if you can see the quarter-circle of the full-circle hour, as marked by the "big hand". I'm middle-aged; I was taught to read the classic analog clock, but now I have to think about it because the digital "hour:minute" format dominates. I wonder if my babies, as they grow up, will be taught in school to read analog clock faces at all? (I'll see to it that they learn, but I wonder if it won't fall out of public school curriculum.)
      • The format of shortcut dates in the US verus elsewhere. I think it matches the syntax of the abbreviated US spoken date. That's speculation, but I find it fascinating that some of our English correspondents in this topic tend to speak out dates in ISO (or traditional European) numerical date format order, even if it requires the use of syntactic glue words. ("the 8th of August, 2006." I guess you could drop the glue, but it would sound funny and a bit spastic to me. But maybe that's how we 'merkans look to y'all anyways.)
      • So, what of the notable US exception, the Fourth of July? I think it stopped being just a date a long time ago. If, God forfend, the government here in the US tries to make this holiday another "federally observed on the Monday of the week it falls on" holiday, it'll still be called "The Fourth of July" even if it's observed on the 30th of June.
      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    29. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by setirw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, because it is the 24th of November. November the 24th just sounds weird.

      --
      This message printed on 100% post-consumer recycled electrons.
    30. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by Cecil · · Score: 2, Funny

      Actually I believe The English Language was released under an Apache-style licence.

      --
      Random and weird software I've written.
    31. Re:what about the lucky sevens? by La+Fortezza · · Score: 2, Insightful

      As a fellow USian, I hate American software/devices that won't let me use a 24-hour clock.

      I bet the Thai hate everyone though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_hour_clock.

  2. It's funny. Laugh. by linvir · · Score: 5, Funny
    Behold:
    It's funny. Laugh.
    Stay your flamethrower, thou saucy fellow. Nay, let us instead rejoice in the most accurate story in the history of this fine website.
  3. Februrary, March and April by TobascoKid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "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 :-)"

    That all depends on your locale settings - other people had thier x86 days several months back

    --
    At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
  4. Saturday by The+G · · Score: 4, Funny

    Instead of getting dates of their own, Saturday and subsequent days will be known as "Pentium", "Pentium II", "Pentium IV", "Pentium 5", "Pentium 6", and of course "Xeon".

    1. Re:Saturday by ToxikFetus · · Score: 4, Funny

      Of course, Itanium already had its day on April 14, 1912.

    2. Re:Saturday by CellBlock · · Score: 2, Funny

      Why would be stuck on Pentium IV for six years?

      Because Intel keeps adding 1 to 4 and getting 4.9999056489, so it isn't quite 5 yet.

    3. Re:Saturday by Short+Circuit · · Score: 2, Funny

      I refuse to celebrate the Pentium days!

      I'll be happily enjoying K-5, K-6, Athlon and Athlon XP days, thank you. Though K-5 day will have to fall on Sunday; you're not supposed to do any work then.

      --
      tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
  5. Re:Except.. by Pharmboy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Like the USA? I thought Slashdot was unappologetically US centric.

    (insert "We don't use dates like that, you insensitive clod" comment here)

    --
    Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
  6. ISO 8601 Please! by Optic · · Score: 2, Informative

    Abolish weird date formats!

    1. Re:ISO 8601 Please! by Timesprout · · Score: 5, Funny

      Whats ISO 8601? Here in Europe we use ISO 0186 for date formats.

      --
      Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
      What truth?
      There is no dupe
  7. A slight oversight it would seem by A+Dafa+Disciple · · Score: 4, Funny
    "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"

    Ummm... you mean this century right?

    I'm still surprised this made the front page. I mean, I'm a geek, but even I think this is lame.

    --

    Falun Dafa is good!
  8. What about yesterday? by bcat24 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The 80186 was also an Intel processor, wasn't it?

    1. Re:What about yesterday? by gatkinso · · Score: 3, Informative

      It still is, and is still popular with the embedded crowd.

      --
      I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
  9. Re:Psht! by octaene · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime

    Concur.

  10. The Best Day Already Was... by Snowcap557 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I still remember 12:34 pm on May 6, 1978 as the best such thing of all time. It was 1234 on 5/6/78!

  11. Re:SORRY! by Spad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sorry, but here in Europe, where the current calendar system was invented, we put the day first, so today is 2/8/6!

  12. What about the 586? by eno2001 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:What about the 586? by theonetruekeebler · · Score: 2, Funny
      The i586 DOES exist

      The problem is that there's no date for 5/8/5.99996546

      --
      This is not my sandwich.
  13. Oh dear by martinmarv · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's sad that these are the only kind of dates we have to look forward to :o(

  14. Re:Except.. by linvir · · Score: 3, Funny

    Nuh-uh! They ran a story about this back in 6 too, but back then we were still pretty bummed about jesus' death, so we didn't really celebrate it much.

  15. d/m/y? by Digital+Vomit · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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 :-)"

    Has Y2K taught you nothing? Using a single digit to store the year? You are among programmers! Hang your head in shame!

    --
    Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
  16. Next Palindrome Day... by GuruBuckaroo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    January 2nd, 2010 (01/02/2010) for Americans, February first for the rest of you. Last one was October 2, 2001 (10/02/2001) here - I threw a party (any excuse, really).

    --
    Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
  17. March 10th by NekoXP · · Score: 2, Funny


    So okay, this is news?

    Every year March 10th comes around and we don't get a bunch of news posts from Nintendo fans because it's MAR10 day yet again.

    It can't be that slow on a Tuesday in August. What is the world coming to?

  18. Donald Becker quote by DragonHawk · · Score: 4, Funny
    In a discussion involving both 3Com's 3C509 and 3C905 network cards, Donald Becker came up with this gem:

    "3Com only purchased rights to the numbers '3' '5' and '9'. Intel
    owns '4', '8', '6', and '2'. '0' and '1' are still in the public
    domain.    "

    --

    dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
    I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
  19. Re:its not the only time by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 2, Funny

    Well, there will be math coprocessor day next year, at least.

    --
    It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
  20. Re:SORRY! by karot · · Score: 3, Informative

    I look at it differently again, so perhaps we have to agree to disagree...

    2006/8/2 is I agree then "best" way to represent a date - The majority of human-use number systems put the least-significant information to the right hand side. This has the bonus that sorting on a computer (mechanical or electrical) is simplified. Systems that include this are HH:MM:SS and good 'ol decimal numbering Hundreds-Tens-Units.

    An alternative in the LSB/MSB world is 2/8/2006 - Computers can be (and are) architected to deal with this type of reversal. Humans can deal with the LSB being at the left hand end of the information. This is still "useful" as processing left-to-right and right-to-left are not really that different. I consider this to be "next best" as it retains a certain amount of logic.

    The final option is to ignore whether your data has an order or significance, and just jumble it up. How is MM/DD/YYYY differnt to YYYY/DD/MM ? Would you consider YYYY/DD/MM valid or useful? I am afraid that I personally would not, and but the same token consider MM/DD/YYYY to be not-useful. Perhaps we should just switch to MM/YYYY/DD for fun? :)

    I would be seriously interested to know where/why the different system in the USA originated, and by what measure you determine the USA system to be next-best and the European system to be "Fucked up"

    --
    Enjoy Y2K? Roll-on Year 2037!
  21. ISO date vs DoD date by DragonHawk · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "That's what the military and most "with it" government organization use. I've also adopted myself because (a) it is completely unambiguous and (b) I'm an asshole."


    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.
  22. I'm a Mac user... by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm a Mac user, how long do I have to wait for 6/80/40?

    --
    Comment of the year
  23. Re:The trouble with 'AUG' or 'SEP' by Thundarr+Trollgrim · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The trouble with 'AUG' or 'SEP' is that these make no sense in many languages, whereas the numbers translate well. YYYY-MM-DD makes the most sense. Most significant digits first, just as in the rest of our entire number system.

  24. Re:SORRY! by roystgnr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    2006/8/2 is the only logical and correct format.

    Close, but it doesn't sort alphabetically, and the / character has a double meaning on Unix systems and in URLs. 2006-08-02 is better, with the added bonus that it's part of the ISO standard.

    Of course, it's harder to get interesting date numbers when you've got 8 digits to work with, two of them can't take many values and two or three more only change values very infrequently. 2011-11-02 20:11:11.02 is coming up, I guess.

  25. yyyy/mm/dd and sorting on computers by Quevar · · Score: 2

    As a "crazy American" who has lived overseas, I get completely confused by this and never can remember how I am supposed to write it when I sign documents.

    As for sorting in a list, I think dd/mm/yy would be really confusing, you'd end up with the following list:
    10/11/03
    11/11/01
    12/11/06
    13/11/97

    Since I'm cunfused about how to write it anyway, on the computer, I write the date as yyyy/mm/dd, which will actually sort to a chronological list. It's confusing to others who see it, but it's my documents, so at worst it will confuse people who shouldn't be looking at them anyway.

    Interesting side note about sorting on computers. Some OSes will actually ignore the leading 0 and treat the number as a whole number, while some don't. Compare the two following lists:
    8.jpg
    9.jpg
    10.jpg
    11.jpg
                          or
    10.jpg
    11.jpg
    8.jpg
    9.jpg
    The second list is comparing only the first number while the first looks at the whole number and then compares it.

  26. Re:Except.. by camperdave · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I suspect it is from the old manual/paper based days of business. You'd keep separate years in separate filing cabinets, so the year becomes irrelevant. Thus using month/day makes it a lot easier to sort.

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  27. What about time for pi ? by Asprin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    3/14/15 9:26:53

    Mmmmmm.... pi...

    See, there's still stuff to look forward to!

    --
    "Lawyers are for sucks."
    - Doug McKenzie
  28. Replacing code dates with international dates by GodWasAnAlien · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Again, don't confuse international dates (ISO 8661) with European dates.

    Sometimes when I am updating some code documents with dates, I will replace the US Y99 dates with international dates,

    So:

    01/02/03 - code creation

    becomes:
    2003-01-02 - code creation
    2006-08-02 - fixed a bug

    International dates are significantly in order, as times are.

  29. Re:Sortable Dates by ros0709 · · Score: 2, Informative

    The US did once use the dd/mm/yy form. This is still evident in "4th of July".

  30. Long live the UNIX timestamp by toofast · · Score: 4, Funny

    Today is 1154536012. None of this mm/dd/yy bullcrap.