[TETENAL]

YouTube - George Bush found February the 30th!

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck 

So, what date is 10/31/2006 then ? Or 13/13/13 ?
Unless you can just switch the whole world from one day to the next (like daylaight savings time), you'd be in a world of farking confusion.

I think he did mean all in one blow. As for the examples, the first would obviously be (what now is) 19 October 2006, and the second one would be impossible in both the current and Tetenal’s proposed systems, for two reasons: there are not 13 months in a year, and in Tetenal’s system, years should always be written as four digits, not two.

[Mastrap]

Originally Posted by PER3 

(my) OT

Charming post. Couldn't find Kevin there, however. Back to fleshing out our dates.

Oh, we had fun together. You should have been here for the 16th chapel incident. Now, that was hilarity.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

As for the examples, the first would obviously be (what now is) 19 October 2006,

No, someone could have used the old system and really mean Oct 31, 2006.

-t

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck 

No, someone could have used the old system and really mean Oct 31, 2006.

-t

I was assuming everyone had already switched, of course

Besides, such cases do happen already, not only as concerns confusions between DD/MM and MM/DD, but also when people use different calendars without stating which calendar they’re using.

A flatmate of mine, when I lived in Beijing, said that his birthday was 2 October. Well, what a coincidence: so is mine! It wasn’t until several months later, after we’d sort of been planning on having a birthday party together, that we all found out that when he said 2 October (=十月二号, lit. “ten month two day”), he wasn’t actually talking about 2 October, but the second day in the tenth month of the lunar calendar, which was sometime in the end of November.

[idf]

Wow what a load of bitching!

Yes, we use different date formats (amongst other language differences across the pond), but it'd be boring if we were all the same.

I'm just disappointed that Apple have managed to get the date localisation correct for Germany, but have failed to get is right for the UK.

No doubt this is an oversight, but considering that the desktop mail app still refers to British Summer Time (BST) as the none existent British Daylight Time or BDT (and has done for the past two years), I don't expect it to be fixed any time soon.

[Oisín]

Wow what a load of bitching!

Welcome to MacNN!

[Gee4orce]

We should have a decimal date system dammit ! 100 weeks (no months), each with 10 days, of 10 hours each (100 minutes to the hour !)

Ok - it would mean moving the earth into a different orbit, and altering it's spin, but if it avoided pointless arguments on the internet like this then it would be worth it!

[talisker]

Ah yes, the usual suspects:

Americans who believe that theirs is the biggest and best country in the world, without realising that they only account for around 5% of the world's population, and less than 25% of the English-speaking world.

Non-Americans who get intolerably wound up by this and find it impossible to simply shrug their shoulders and laugh at these poor naive creatures.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by starman 

Writing numbers != writing dates. You can't compare the two. How silly.

Inane comment of the thread. Writing dates == writing numbers. Maybe writing time isn't writing numbers now either?

[starman]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

Inane comment of the thread. Writing dates == writing numbers. Maybe writing time isn't writing numbers now either?

Placeholders in numbers aren't the same as dates. Three pages of this thread should pretty much prove that.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by starman 

Placeholders in numbers aren't the same as dates. Three pages of this thread should pretty much prove that.

Funny that, three pages of this thread seem to prove you wrong.

[starman]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

Funny that, three pages of this thread seem to prove you wrong.

Like I said, 300 million people say I'm not.

[analogika]

As mentioned, that's a puny 5% of the world's population, and less than 25% of the ENGLISH-speaking world.

Let's just drop it. You've got pretty bludgeoned.

[starman]

Originally Posted by analogika 

As mentioned, that's a puny 5% of the world's population, and less than 25% of the ENGLISH-speaking world.

Let's just drop it. You've got pretty bludgeoned.

Did I? Oh noes I got pwned by a date thread on teh internets.

[analogika]

Was it worth it?

[rickey939]

Awesome, this thread is staying the course.

[starman]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Was it worth it?

Was what worth it? Three pages pretty much showing that neither side is right or wrong.

[ghporter]

1) Doesn't .Mail simply use the computer's International settings for dates, and if not why not? (I.e., shouldn't it be a global setting that affects all software, at least all Apple software?).

2) "More natural" was a big argument in favor of the pint instead of the half-liter in English pubs. Writing is a contrivance of humans, not a "natural" feature of the environment.

3) "Arguing on the Internet." "Special Olympics." Connect the dots.

Geeze folks! If this is the biggest thing we have to discuss maybe we should all put our heads together and find a solution for world hunger or something...

[Oisín]

1) Doesn't .Mail simply use the computer's International settings for dates, and if not why not? (I.e., shouldn't it be a global setting that affects all software, at least all Apple software?).

This is webmail, though.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

This is webmail, though.

Ahhhh. It was hard to put all of it together because of the, shall we say, unstructured evolution of the discussion. Webmail is different, but they certainly could offer a means to customize the display on the page for each user...

[analogika]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Ahhhh. It was hard to put all of it together because of the, shall we say, unstructured evolution of the discussion. Webmail is different, but they certainly could offer a means to customize the display on the page for each user...

Well, the, erm, thread TITLE was fairly clear.

It did all run downhill from there, though...

[andreas_g4]

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Well, the, erm, thread TITLE was fairly clear.

It did all run downhill from there, though...

I wasn't sure what PLANET the discussion was on after about page 1... Keeping the title straight after three pages was not what I'd call "easy" for me.

Anyway, I have to agree that an internationally available webmail site should at least make the effort to conform to local conventions for a lot of users, but it's still just a local convention, not like it's an alien language or in hieroglyphics or something. I have to deal with European date conventions when I visit European sites, and since Apple is based in good old Cupertino, California, so I guess this is just an issue of finding something to complain about.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by starman 

Like I said, 300 million people say I'm not.

It's at least down to 299,999,999, because you don't speak for me.

Originally Posted by starman 

Was what worth it? Three pages pretty much showing that neither side is right or wrong.

What pages are you looking at? You are wrong.

[starman]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

What pages are you looking at? You are wrong.

Really? Am I? Hmm...nope, don't see that.

[- - e r i k - -]

Wow. The world really DOES revolve around you, doesn't it?

Damn, Copernicus had me fooled for a while.

[cSurfr]

The Military writes the date as 25 May 06, or 2006 05 25.

And of course the U.S Military is always righ. . .

. . .forget it.

[Amorya]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Really? British people would generally say "today is the twenty-sixth of October" rather than "today is October twenty-sixth"? I never noticed that before.

Yeah, the former is more common.

Also, if we're putting month first in speech (which does happen sometimes), it's "October the twenty-sixth".

Originally Posted by talisker 

Ah yes, the usual suspects:

Americans who believe that theirs is the biggest and best country in the world, without realising that they only account for around 5% of the world's population, and less than 25% of the English-speaking world.

Non-Americans who get intolerably wound up by this and find it impossible to simply shrug their shoulders and laugh at these poor naive creatures.

I don't think any of the non-Americans are demanding the US change their own system. At least I hope not. It's just not too much to ask for a product that is sold in UK retail stores to be culturally localised.

But hey, I don't really care - not a .mac subscriber after all! Of course, Apple should care... stuff like this makes me even less likely to subscribe in the future

[alphasubzero949]

Originally Posted by rickey939 

Awesome, this thread is staying the course.

1,000 points of light? Oh wait...or is it 1.000?

Silly formats.