Metric system and dates

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2003-02-20 02:02am

Someone on this board wrote 9/11 as 11/9. Is this cause someone would be from a metric system-using country or is it something else?

Clarification: Is the date switch something that comes along with having the metric system? (km, meters, etc).

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2003-02-20 02:06am

I know most of Europe writes dates as day/month/year, rather than month/day/year. Confuses the heck out of our professors on occasion. Of course, it doesn't help when some of the students do it purely out of mischief. I personally find m/d/y more useful for my own records, since I can organize them more easily by looking at the first date. From a purely logical POV, though, d/m/y does make more sense.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-02-20 02:20am

I like to make my dates like 19 Feb 03. I had a teacher use that style once in high school and it just became a habit after a while.

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2003-02-20 02:33am

Shinova wrote:Someone on this board wrote 9/11 as 11/9. Is this cause someone would be from a metric system-using country or is it something else?

Clarification: Is the date switch something that comes along with having the metric system? (km, meters, etc).

It was me. Writing a dates as day/month/year, I beleive is a somewhat more logical way to put things. Relate that to metric nations and take from that what you will

Ren · Post by **Ren** » 2003-02-20 02:40am

I had a teacher who made us write dates like that back in Junior High, he said it was the style used in the military(US). If that's the case it's not necessarly related to metric.

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2003-02-20 02:49am

Ren wrote:I had a teacher who made us write dates like that back in Junior High, he said it was the style used in the military(US). If that's the case it's not necessarly related to metric.

Its not related to metric, what I said in that post was

"yes, 11/9, you see I am from one of those logical nations that write dates correctly and use metric. "

Note where I use the 'and' to differentiate from one thing and another.

Ren · Post by **Ren** » 2003-02-20 02:53am

I stand corrected.

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2003-02-20 03:11am

Ren wrote:I stand corrected.

no worrys, it wasnt a critisism

Post by **Gandalf** » 2003-02-20 04:38am

In Australia we use D/M/Y, the American style is very bizarre sounding when you first learn of it.

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2003-02-20 04:45am

Gandalf wrote:In Australia we use D/M/Y, the American style is very bizarre sounding when you first learn of it.

Isnt it? Almost as bizzare as Aussies and their constant criminal tendencys

{sigh, my day is complete, I have done my duty, and insulted the Australains}

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2003-02-20 05:30am

Stuart Mackey wrote:
Gandalf wrote:In Australia we use D/M/Y, the American style is very bizarre sounding when you first learn of it.
Isnt it? Almost as bizzare as Aussies and their constant criminal tendencys

{sigh, my day is complete, I have done my duty, and insulted the Australains}

Good lad. Now just wait for a bunch of drunken, slobbering Aussie special force troops to charge into your house naked.

( No offense, really.

)

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2003-02-20 05:34am

Captain tycho wrote:
Stuart Mackey wrote:
Gandalf wrote:In Australia we use D/M/Y, the American style is very bizarre sounding when you first learn of it.
Isnt it? Almost as bizzare as Aussies and their constant criminal tendencys

{sigh, my day is complete, I have done my duty, and insulted the Australains}
Good lad. Now just wait for a bunch of drunken, slobbering Aussie special force troops to charge into your house naked.
( No offense, really. )

Quite all right, we In New Zealand are well used to such drunken behaviour, and point them to their objective, the sheep out in the far paddock..Good luck lads! and dont forget the gumboots and velcro gloves!

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2003-02-20 05:39am

I'm an American, but I write dates out as d/m/y, such as 20 February 2003.

Sarah's clock is also set to the 24 hour system.

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2003-02-20 05:51am

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:I'm an American, but I write dates out as d/m/y, such as 20 February 2003.

Sarah's clock is also set to the 24 hour system.

Good man, you have opened the door to a wider universe, feel the logic flow through you. Dont be so proud of this fundimentalist terror you have created, it is insignificant next to the power of logic. feel the logic flowing through you now... may logic be with you.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2003-02-20 08:44am

Stuart Mackey wrote:
Captain tycho wrote:
Stuart Mackey wrote: Isnt it? Almost as bizzare as Aussies and their constant criminal tendencys

{sigh, my day is complete, I have done my duty, and insulted the Australains}
Good lad. Now just wait for a bunch of drunken, slobbering Aussie special force troops to charge into your house naked.
( No offense, really. )
Quite all right, we In New Zealand are well used to such drunken behaviour, and point them to their objective, the sheep out in the far paddock..Good luck lads! and dont forget the gumboots and velcro gloves!

*Puts on sheep costume and heads out to the far paddock*

salm · Post by **salm** » 2003-02-20 08:59am

Frank Hipper wrote:
Stuart Mackey wrote:
Captain tycho wrote: Good lad. Now just wait for a bunch of drunken, slobbering Aussie special force troops to charge into your house naked.
( No offense, really. )
Quite all right, we In New Zealand are well used to such drunken behaviour, and point them to their objective, the sheep out in the far paddock..Good luck lads! and dont forget the gumboots and velcro gloves!
*Puts on sheep costume and heads out to the far paddock*

ROTFLMAO!!!

j1j2j3 · Post by **j1j2j3** » 2003-02-20 09:02am

In Korea we write Y/M/D Like 2002/09/11

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2003-02-20 01:18pm

YMD is good because it lets you sort dates easily with a computer. And it's the order of relevance. DMY is also nice, not as practical, but you can read it backwards and still in order of relevance.

MDY is weird. If you order it from left to right, you get all the dates that happened in September ordered by day, be it year 2001, 2002, 2003.

If you do it back, you get all years grouped together, and then you get all days 1 of any month, then the days 2 of any month, and so on.

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2003-02-20 01:32pm

i think month day year goes with how we say it in words - january 6th 2001. or whatever. 1/6/01.

Post by **Colonel Olrik** » 2003-02-20 03:27pm

Enforcer Talen wrote:i think month day year goes with how we say it in words - january 6th 2001. or whatever. 1/6/01.

Well, here we say 6th of January, 2001

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2003-02-20 08:04pm

Slartibartfast wrote:YMD is good because it lets you sort dates easily with a computer. And it's the order of relevance. DMY is also nice, not as practical, but you can read it backwards and still in order of relevance.

MDY is weird. If you order it from left to right, you get all the dates that happened in September ordered by day, be it year 2001, 2002, 2003.

If you do it back, you get all years grouped together, and then you get all days 1 of any month, then the days 2 of any month, and so on.

We use M/D/Y at my office because paperwork is filed as we get it, but must be filed by month (we keep track of all campus events). Since the folders get cleaned out once a year, M/D makes more sense than D/M. We can put all the September files in one place, then organize by day within the file. If we did it day/month, it would be more confusing, as I found out when we forget to tell the International Student Association that we prefer M/D/Y. The secretary's Macedonian, and used D/M/Y. Unfortunately, it was for an event on September 10, and we filed it for October 9. The office was thrown into confusion for a good two hours when they tried to do something that needed verification of registration.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2003-02-21 12:18am

That's why I always use YYYY-MM-DD when doing a SQL query.

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2003-02-21 01:27am

I started using D/M/Y just to be different from the rest of the students. Considering that my teachers haven't said anything, I don't believe they even look at the date on my work. And how do you set your computer's clock to 24 hrs?

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2003-02-21 01:31am

I think it's part of the regional settings under Windows. In DOS it has something to do with the version of the OS or the page code.

EDIT: BTW, the computer clock uses 24 hour format anyway. It's just the way it shows it to you that changes, and that is dependent on the application (or Windows)

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2003-02-21 02:37am

Darth Yoshi wrote:I started using D/M/Y just to be different from the rest of the students. Considering that my teachers haven't said anything, I don't believe they even look at the date on my work. And how do you set your computer's clock to 24 hrs?

Under winXP:

Control Panel->Regional And Language Options
Choice the region setting closest to what you want.
Then:
Customise->Time->Time Format
Change to "H:mm:ss"

That will have it display 24 hour time. To ahve it add the leading zero (IE 03 hours) Add another 'H' to the start of the string.

I think d/m/y is a much better format.

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Metric system and dates

Metric system and dates

Re: Metric system and dates