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123456789 Happens Today

Posted by samzenpus on from the it's-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it dept.

mcgrew writes "The Chicago Tribune is pointing out that shortly after noon today, the time and date will be 12:34:56 7/8/9. The Trib points out that this happens only once or twice per century, although it actually happens twice on the day it happens in. Serious Cubs fans know the first night game at Wrigley Field was played on 8/8/88 — which just happens to be four sideways infinity symbols. I imagine you can make any day 'special' like this if you try hard enough."

18 comments

  1. Already happened in February by tepples · · Score: 2, Informative

    Converter says that UNIX time 1234567890 happened on 2009-02-13.

    1. Re:Already happened in February by process · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well.

      As the summary states (RTFS?), this is not about epoch time. Also, that event was well covered earlier this yer when it occurred.

      --
      computers let you make more mistakes faster, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
    2. Re:Already happened in February by tepples · · Score: 1

      Also, that event was well covered earlier this yer

      Thanks for digging that one up.

  2. That's 12:34 8.7.9 by process · · Score: 1

    for us in Europe (rest of the world?) you insensitive clod.

    But we'll be there in a month!

    Although I'm biased, I've always thought it makes more sense to order dates with the more precise digit first. (DD/MM/YY).

    For chronologically sorting dates represented as integers I guess YYYYMMDD would be handy.

    --
    computers let you make more mistakes faster, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
    1. Re:That's 12:34 8.7.9 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To allow simple lexical sorting, YYYYMMDDhhmmss is the cleanest form. (unless you need it to work past Y10k, in which case you widen the YYYY portion to YYYYY or more)

    2. Re:That's 12:34 8.7.9 by topnob · · Score: 1

      Yeah that's what I thought! :D

    3. Re:That's 12:34 8.7.9 by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

      Phew, for a second there I thought I had over slept through to August.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    4. Re:That's 12:34 8.7.9 by SharpFang · · Score: 1

      Yep, and all variations like YYYY.MM.DD hh:mm:ss or YYYY/MM/DD or the like are okay - alpha-sort will set them in the right order. Except of spring DST changes. ARGH, I can stand time being non-linear or non-continuous, but damn, what kind of retard it took to make it non-monotonic?!

      --
      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    5. Re:That's 12:34 8.7.9 by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

      what kind of retard it took to make it non-monotonic

      Someone who wasn't colorblind?

      Oh I'm sorry, you said "monotonic" not "monochromatic". Carry on.

    6. Re:That's 12:34 8.7.9 by frukostflingor · · Score: 1

      Anything except YYYY-MM-DD makes little to no sense, so if you wanna use MM/YY/DD or what not, they are all equally good, really. Just about everything is sorted biggest first... there are 24 hours in a day, not 42... biggest digit first. Time is not 59:59:23 just before midnight, etc.

  3. No Standards? by scottFuz · · Score: 1

    No...of course the Chicago Tribune wouldn't even acknowledge the ISO date standard.

    What does "7/8/9" refer to exactly? Anything you want really. Heaven forbid you have to decode months latter. You could very well mis-categorize an accounting journal entry very easily by getting the date wrong!

    People...there is enough confusion in the world...One of the first things I do in setting up a computer is to force the display to show 24h date format and obliterate the mm/dd/yy format. D*$n you Bill Gates for proliferating this abomination.

    1. Re:No Standards? by thedonger · · Score: 1

      In America we order MM/dd/yyyy. Why, I don't know, but we do. So have your magical time celebration on August 7. Maybe we'll celebrate then, too. Notice the summary also states it happens twice today...That's the whole "America and their lousy AM/PM crap" thing. Like our date format it also leaves some ambiguity.

      --
      Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
    2. Re:No Standards? by frukostflingor · · Score: 1

      07-08-09 was almost two years ago... bit late too complain about it, tbh. The slash format is a catastrophy in all it forms, so everyone celebrate your own date and enjoy. :)

    3. Re:No Standards? by thedonger · · Score: 1

      Damn. Numerology is a bitch. I see patterns everywhere...

      --
      Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
    4. Re:No Standards? by htalvitie · · Score: 0

      I've noticed U.S. bloggers, web pages etc. lately moving to the form "07.08.09" instead of "07/08/09", when actually referring to the latter.

      Is there a trend to use the dot now instead of the slash - a typographical fad, maybe?

      "Oh yes, let's make things even more confusing!"

  4. The movie looks great by Ryanator2209 · · Score: 1

    The movie looks great...

  5. anonymous coward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We will get 123456789 in europe on the 7 of august (7/8)....

  6. Wrong date order... by Tetsujin · · Score: 1

    The date is 2009-Aug-9... so 12:34:56 7-8-9 actually happened two years ago today.

    --
    Bow-ties are cool.