Only American and Swahili use mm/dd for dates
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Oh, and Micronesia. At least according to Wikipedia. So why does pretty much every US based service that caters to a worldwide audience use mm/dd/yyyy as a date format Latest example this hour is VS team services "Access issues with Visual Studio Team Services – 5/25 – Investigating". 5/25 = 25 May. That's easy. But when I see 6/7 or 10/8 I have to manually check the site and see what culture they are based in. No one in the US (I'm guessing - apart from ex-pats) worry about this. Or are probably even aware of this issue. Everyone else in every other country is aware of this issue. Everyone in Canada manages to deal with it. And I don't know how their brains don't explode. Canada uses dd/mm/yyyy. Except when it uses mm/dd/yyyy because either it's a US based company, they are using a US based system, they are trying to be nice to their US based customers, because they just forgot to use dd/mm/yyyy or because they know it's me and so they deliberately use an ambiguous date format to do my head in. Date formats in Canada are totally and completely messed up. So: Why, in this day and age, do those in the US, when writing for an international audience, still use mm/dd/yyyy? (And I'll add another one: Why do companies in the US find it impossible to ship outside the US? It's very odd) OK, back to hitting refresh several times a second waiting for Team Services to come back online.
cheers Chris Maunder
Totally agree. It can be argued that dd/mm/yyyy is also ambiguous, but at least the parts of the date are sorted in a meaningful way. Expressing a date in the format mm/dd/yy is like a car salesman telling you that this SUV you're looking at will cost 999 $, 99 cents, and 24 thousand $. :wtf: The problem I see with any of the aother alternate formats is that either the position of days and months is still ambiguous, or the month is expressed as a name or shortcut thereof, which adds a language-dependend component. Neither is great for international use so I prefer yyyy-mm-dd. At least that one can be sorted. And it works for car salesmen too ;P
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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Because most Americans have no idea of geography outside the US borders. In many cases inside the US borders either. As if the world outside doesn't really exist, so whatever they use is perfect. Imperial measurements instead of metric for example. Beer that resembles diluted water. Cars that scream in pain when shown a bendy road. A plate that only looks a reasonable size when it contains a meal for four. Confuse 'em back and use ISO format! :-D
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
You forgot to mention miles per gallon. Not only does it use imperial measurements, it also deviates from the UK measure by the same name.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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Oh, and Micronesia. At least according to Wikipedia. So why does pretty much every US based service that caters to a worldwide audience use mm/dd/yyyy as a date format Latest example this hour is VS team services "Access issues with Visual Studio Team Services – 5/25 – Investigating". 5/25 = 25 May. That's easy. But when I see 6/7 or 10/8 I have to manually check the site and see what culture they are based in. No one in the US (I'm guessing - apart from ex-pats) worry about this. Or are probably even aware of this issue. Everyone else in every other country is aware of this issue. Everyone in Canada manages to deal with it. And I don't know how their brains don't explode. Canada uses dd/mm/yyyy. Except when it uses mm/dd/yyyy because either it's a US based company, they are using a US based system, they are trying to be nice to their US based customers, because they just forgot to use dd/mm/yyyy or because they know it's me and so they deliberately use an ambiguous date format to do my head in. Date formats in Canada are totally and completely messed up. So: Why, in this day and age, do those in the US, when writing for an international audience, still use mm/dd/yyyy? (And I'll add another one: Why do companies in the US find it impossible to ship outside the US? It's very odd) OK, back to hitting refresh several times a second waiting for Team Services to come back online.
cheers Chris Maunder
Some years ago one of the departments in our US based company created a new international telephone directory. This contained all the phone numbers of our offices, and agents, worldwide. So it needed to prefix the numbers with the country code. But just to be helpful they included the IDD prefix also, so every number listed had the US IDD prefix 011-xx-xxx-xxxxxx. And whenever one tried to explain that certain Americanisms did not work or make sense in other countries, the response was always, "Thank you for your concern, we will take it under advisement".
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Oh, and Micronesia. At least according to Wikipedia. So why does pretty much every US based service that caters to a worldwide audience use mm/dd/yyyy as a date format Latest example this hour is VS team services "Access issues with Visual Studio Team Services – 5/25 – Investigating". 5/25 = 25 May. That's easy. But when I see 6/7 or 10/8 I have to manually check the site and see what culture they are based in. No one in the US (I'm guessing - apart from ex-pats) worry about this. Or are probably even aware of this issue. Everyone else in every other country is aware of this issue. Everyone in Canada manages to deal with it. And I don't know how their brains don't explode. Canada uses dd/mm/yyyy. Except when it uses mm/dd/yyyy because either it's a US based company, they are using a US based system, they are trying to be nice to their US based customers, because they just forgot to use dd/mm/yyyy or because they know it's me and so they deliberately use an ambiguous date format to do my head in. Date formats in Canada are totally and completely messed up. So: Why, in this day and age, do those in the US, when writing for an international audience, still use mm/dd/yyyy? (And I'll add another one: Why do companies in the US find it impossible to ship outside the US? It's very odd) OK, back to hitting refresh several times a second waiting for Team Services to come back online.
cheers Chris Maunder
I'd like to response with another question. Imagine that you have international project with 20 countries involved, but 90% of your income is generated by USA customers. Which format you will choose? USA or Canadian? Another use case, imagine, that initially all your customers where from USA and only in two years after launching your product, you got those customers in other countries. What as usually customers ask: change format of dates or some other feature. From my experience issue with dates formatting was in backlog, but as usually it is not in high priority.
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Bluddy French supporters! You are aware, I assume, that the reason that Europe began driving on the right is because the British (sensibly, and because they were the first to make such a decision) decided to drive on the left, aren't you? Mon Dieu! l'anglais les voitures d'entraînement sur la gauche! Nous devons conduire à droite! So Americans are just frog-leg lovers! Thought so. Me, I prefer my (strong) right hand to stay on the steering wheel, whilst I'm changing gear, etc.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
Just how often do you need your left to change gear, and how often do you need your right to show the guy overtaking you what you think of him? See? ;) Also, I rather use my strong right hand to pull the handbrake when I do a U-turn at full speed :cool: On a more serious note, many cars nowadays have automatic transmission, and most have power assisted steering. Boring :zzz:
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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I'd like to response with another question. Imagine that you have international project with 20 countries involved, but 90% of your income is generated by USA customers. Which format you will choose? USA or Canadian? Another use case, imagine, that initially all your customers where from USA and only in two years after launching your product, you got those customers in other countries. What as usually customers ask: change format of dates or some other feature. From my experience issue with dates formatting was in backlog, but as usually it is not in high priority.
witnes wrote:
Which format you will choose? USA or Canadian?
Neither. That's what Locale is for. If only 10% of your revenue comes from people outside the US it's time you spend more effort making foreign customers comfortable. That said, I'm not american - leave it in US format for all I care ;P
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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Quote:
Don't forget the bad coffee.
Actually, I like the coffee.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Oh, and Micronesia. At least according to Wikipedia. So why does pretty much every US based service that caters to a worldwide audience use mm/dd/yyyy as a date format Latest example this hour is VS team services "Access issues with Visual Studio Team Services – 5/25 – Investigating". 5/25 = 25 May. That's easy. But when I see 6/7 or 10/8 I have to manually check the site and see what culture they are based in. No one in the US (I'm guessing - apart from ex-pats) worry about this. Or are probably even aware of this issue. Everyone else in every other country is aware of this issue. Everyone in Canada manages to deal with it. And I don't know how their brains don't explode. Canada uses dd/mm/yyyy. Except when it uses mm/dd/yyyy because either it's a US based company, they are using a US based system, they are trying to be nice to their US based customers, because they just forgot to use dd/mm/yyyy or because they know it's me and so they deliberately use an ambiguous date format to do my head in. Date formats in Canada are totally and completely messed up. So: Why, in this day and age, do those in the US, when writing for an international audience, still use mm/dd/yyyy? (And I'll add another one: Why do companies in the US find it impossible to ship outside the US? It's very odd) OK, back to hitting refresh several times a second waiting for Team Services to come back online.
cheers Chris Maunder
Having worked in the US, Canada and Europe I have similar experiences with the date format used by Americans and Canadians (sometimes, when it suits) I ended up adopting my own format which is unambiguous, easy, needs no spaces or punctuation, easily parsed and, to me at least, makes sense - ddmmmyy where mmm is the first three letters of the month 11Nov16, 09Sep14 etc and without explanation or reference it should be immediately understood by everyone (except maybe them Canadian Frenchies who would pretend not to understand it as a matter of principle)
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OriginalGriff wrote:
Because most Americans have no idea of geography outside the US borders.
I thought the world was flat and you fell off the edge in a giant waterfall if you sailed past the horizon. And north was just frozen wasteland, and south was just desert wasteland. :~ Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Contributors Wanted for Higher Order Programming Project! Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
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I'd like to response with another question. Imagine that you have international project with 20 countries involved, but 90% of your income is generated by USA customers. Which format you will choose? USA or Canadian? Another use case, imagine, that initially all your customers where from USA and only in two years after launching your product, you got those customers in other countries. What as usually customers ask: change format of dates or some other feature. From my experience issue with dates formatting was in backlog, but as usually it is not in high priority.
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What's the point of either version? They both sort badly. I pretty much always use yyyy.mm.dd for all my laundry dating coding and business items. Only when forced due to specifications on a form (which always say what they want in each field and/or how they want it formatted) do I do otherwise. So - not to worry - Bigendian or little Endian - the egg breaks when you drop it from high enough.* * Not a relevant catch-phrase but something like that was needed.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
W∴ Balboos wrote:
What's the point of either version? They both sort badly.
The same can be said about e.g. (physical) mail addresses. They would sort much better if they started with the planet identification (or, if you want to go further out, the galaxy and solar system identification), then the continent, the country, the town, street, house number, floor, last name, first name. Same with DNS addresses - domains, email addresses etc. Before the current internet address structure squeezed out all its competitor, there were addresssing schemes listing elements from major to minor units. At the binary level, i.e. 32 bit IPv4 or 128 bit IPv6 addresses, the biggest unit comes first, but not in the DNS format. I guess the justification for putting the biggest unit at the end is that it makes it more natural to chop it off. You don't have to identify the galaxy when sending a postcard to your grandma. In most cases, even the country name is not required. If we had turned the order around, interpretation would in many cases be ambiguous: Is "Norway" a Eurpean country, or a US village? We write arabic numerals with the biggest unit to the left. So does the arabs, even though they read from right to left. The number is the same, but in the reading order, we see the highest digit first, they see the lowest digit first. Which is the most natural? In many German-related languages, numbers are pronounced smallest unit first, and you can see it in some old English as well: "... Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie ...", as the children's rhyme goes. Larger numbers are read in a mixed manner ("three hundred, four and twenty"). Natural language is a mess. But fun to study.
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You forgot to mention miles per gallon. Not only does it use imperial measurements, it also deviates from the UK measure by the same name.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
Stefan_Lang wrote:
You forgot to mention miles per gallon.
I was always fascinated by this approach, which I see as very 'American Style': I've got some resources (i.e. gallons of fuel) that I am going to exhaust - how much fun will it give me? The European approach is the other way around: I've got a task that must be performed: Driving 100 km. How much fuel is that going to cost me? ... not 100 km pr liter, but liter per 100 km. I do think that this says something about American philosophy as compared to European.
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or, in American, the eleventh of September?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Oh, and Micronesia. At least according to Wikipedia. So why does pretty much every US based service that caters to a worldwide audience use mm/dd/yyyy as a date format Latest example this hour is VS team services "Access issues with Visual Studio Team Services – 5/25 – Investigating". 5/25 = 25 May. That's easy. But when I see 6/7 or 10/8 I have to manually check the site and see what culture they are based in. No one in the US (I'm guessing - apart from ex-pats) worry about this. Or are probably even aware of this issue. Everyone else in every other country is aware of this issue. Everyone in Canada manages to deal with it. And I don't know how their brains don't explode. Canada uses dd/mm/yyyy. Except when it uses mm/dd/yyyy because either it's a US based company, they are using a US based system, they are trying to be nice to their US based customers, because they just forgot to use dd/mm/yyyy or because they know it's me and so they deliberately use an ambiguous date format to do my head in. Date formats in Canada are totally and completely messed up. So: Why, in this day and age, do those in the US, when writing for an international audience, still use mm/dd/yyyy? (And I'll add another one: Why do companies in the US find it impossible to ship outside the US? It's very odd) OK, back to hitting refresh several times a second waiting for Team Services to come back online.
cheers Chris Maunder
American way of date has its historic roots, but nobody forces 'em to pull such sht in IT! Moreover - why to use digits at all?! Even their idiotic date format can be human readable if it was "May/4/2016"! But they are too dumb and conservative to use progress. They invented computers... just to sell hotdogs faster! :)
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W∴ Balboos wrote:
What's the point of either version? They both sort badly.
The same can be said about e.g. (physical) mail addresses. They would sort much better if they started with the planet identification (or, if you want to go further out, the galaxy and solar system identification), then the continent, the country, the town, street, house number, floor, last name, first name. Same with DNS addresses - domains, email addresses etc. Before the current internet address structure squeezed out all its competitor, there were addresssing schemes listing elements from major to minor units. At the binary level, i.e. 32 bit IPv4 or 128 bit IPv6 addresses, the biggest unit comes first, but not in the DNS format. I guess the justification for putting the biggest unit at the end is that it makes it more natural to chop it off. You don't have to identify the galaxy when sending a postcard to your grandma. In most cases, even the country name is not required. If we had turned the order around, interpretation would in many cases be ambiguous: Is "Norway" a Eurpean country, or a US village? We write arabic numerals with the biggest unit to the left. So does the arabs, even though they read from right to left. The number is the same, but in the reading order, we see the highest digit first, they see the lowest digit first. Which is the most natural? In many German-related languages, numbers are pronounced smallest unit first, and you can see it in some old English as well: "... Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie ...", as the children's rhyme goes. Larger numbers are read in a mixed manner ("three hundred, four and twenty"). Natural language is a mess. But fun to study.
You do know that computers don't give a damn about data format so long as they know how to interpret it. Why the DNS order is like it is? Truncation would make a good reason: it's as easy to truncate the front as the back (same, to, with masking, so far as that goes). If there's to be any controversy as to why either choice, I'd look at the every famous Motorola vs. Intel format for storage of numerical values: Big Endian vs. Little Endian. Both work - so long as you know what's coming. Now for the date formatting which I noted, above, one could argue that the US method is better if you leave off the year (not uncommon) for then it can be sorted naturally. The Euro-system is part of the same Obsessive-Compulsive disaster that brought on the metric system. I draw your attention to the following that you may realize the error of your ways: The Lounge - CodeProject[^] and even in my youth, oh so many years ago, The Lounge - CodeProject[^]
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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Mike Mullikin wrote:
All we ever hear is how horrible we are. How we do everything wrong
Until a natural catastrophe occurs and then suddenly the US is there handing out food. Or when someone invades their country and they cry to US for military intervention. Or when their economy goes down the toilet and then reach the the US foreign aid. Or when.... ... you get the idea.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
Kevin Marois wrote:
Until a natural catastrophe occurs and then suddenly the US is there handing out food.
The thing is, you have been doing that since the Marshall Plan: Establishing a market for American products, getting rid of surplus production. (Not only abroad - "The higher power of Lucy" children's book can give you some good laughs about the military surplus food!)
Or when someone invades their country and they cry to US for military intervention.
And sometimes they certainly do NOT cry for US intervention. Well, maybe a few unsuccessful politicians want to use the US Army as a tool to overthrow their competition, but maybe not even that. Iraq comes to mind.
Or when their economy goes down the toilet and then reach the the US foreign aid.
Like, when their economy was completely independent of the manipulation done by US investors - that's when it had its breakdown. At that time American capital came in and saved their economy, and proved the success by making enormous profits in the country. Great!
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Bluddy French supporters! You are aware, I assume, that the reason that Europe began driving on the right is because the British (sensibly, and because they were the first to make such a decision) decided to drive on the left, aren't you? Mon Dieu! l'anglais les voitures d'entraînement sur la gauche! Nous devons conduire à droite! So Americans are just frog-leg lovers! Thought so. Me, I prefer my (strong) right hand to stay on the steering wheel, whilst I'm changing gear, etc.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
Forced into another obligatory reply: It's well know what you EU'ers are doing with your right and why you need it hand hidden by the door.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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Stefan_Lang wrote:
You forgot to mention miles per gallon.
I was always fascinated by this approach, which I see as very 'American Style': I've got some resources (i.e. gallons of fuel) that I am going to exhaust - how much fun will it give me? The European approach is the other way around: I've got a task that must be performed: Driving 100 km. How much fuel is that going to cost me? ... not 100 km pr liter, but liter per 100 km. I do think that this says something about American philosophy as compared to European.
It might be related to the fact that fuel is so much cheaper in the US than in europe. Here in europe, when you buy a car, you estimate the cost of the fuel it needs because it is a significant part of the full cost of owning a car. In the US, the fuel cost is comparatively insignificant compared to the price of the car itself. With that in mind, l/100km is a number that much is easier to gauge and compare: 20% more fuel consumption means 20% more fuel cost. Easy. Example: You can set back 100€ per month to be able to buy a new 12000€ car every 10 years, but if you are driving 20000km per year, and the car needs 10l/100km, that costs another ~3000€ per year, or 250€ per month! (350€/month total) So it might make more sense to set back 150€ per year for a 18000€ car that only needs 6l/100km, or 150€ per month (300€/month total). In the US, fuel costs a fraction of what it costs here - the calculation above would never work out.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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You do know that computers don't give a damn about data format so long as they know how to interpret it. Why the DNS order is like it is? Truncation would make a good reason: it's as easy to truncate the front as the back (same, to, with masking, so far as that goes). If there's to be any controversy as to why either choice, I'd look at the every famous Motorola vs. Intel format for storage of numerical values: Big Endian vs. Little Endian. Both work - so long as you know what's coming. Now for the date formatting which I noted, above, one could argue that the US method is better if you leave off the year (not uncommon) for then it can be sorted naturally. The Euro-system is part of the same Obsessive-Compulsive disaster that brought on the metric system. I draw your attention to the following that you may realize the error of your ways: The Lounge - CodeProject[^] and even in my youth, oh so many years ago, The Lounge - CodeProject[^]
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
W∴ Balboos wrote:
You do know that computers don't give a damn about data format so long as they know how to interpret it.
In that sense, there is no difference between humans and computers. If you give a computer the date 9/11/2001 and tell it "Interpret this as a date in American format", or you do the same to a human, it comes out right. If you tell the computer the date 9/11/2001 and tell it "Interpret tis as a date in European format", you get a different result from the computer, and so you would from a human given the same instruction. What regards DNS names: No, they cannot be truncated. You have to include everthing up to the TLD. Obviously, you could have a local address book for looking up the higher levels of the address, so that you wouldn't have to worry about the TLD and its immediate subordinates for your regular contacts - but there is no reason why you should use any part of the DNS name as the lookup key in that dictionary; you could use any identifier. Once you get to the DNS level, the TLD cannot be truncated.
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W∴ Balboos wrote:
You do know that computers don't give a damn about data format so long as they know how to interpret it.
In that sense, there is no difference between humans and computers. If you give a computer the date 9/11/2001 and tell it "Interpret this as a date in American format", or you do the same to a human, it comes out right. If you tell the computer the date 9/11/2001 and tell it "Interpret tis as a date in European format", you get a different result from the computer, and so you would from a human given the same instruction. What regards DNS names: No, they cannot be truncated. You have to include everthing up to the TLD. Obviously, you could have a local address book for looking up the higher levels of the address, so that you wouldn't have to worry about the TLD and its immediate subordinates for your regular contacts - but there is no reason why you should use any part of the DNS name as the lookup key in that dictionary; you could use any identifier. Once you get to the DNS level, the TLD cannot be truncated.
You really don't get it: YYYYMMDD can be sorted trivially, whether sorted as an integer or a character string (so long as the year contains 4 figures w.r.t. char sorting). The computer can read any of the dates and the overhead for that is the same. But, if sorting the dates, they have to be parsed/interpreted before sorting (or within a custom sorting function - same thing) - and the work is a lot harder . . . unless the formatting of the date is such that it's naturally in order without any parsing/interpretation. As for truncation of DNS - it's something you mentioned. The DNS masks would seem to be a hint as to how things are more likely done - although I'm no expert in that field. Handling native sizes, however, is what will happen in the system, anyway - so (originally, in those days) a 32 bit value is going to be a 32 bit value as it's passed through the 32 bit system/CPU. Unwanted values would be masked, not truncated. But I'll let you claim expertise in that matter.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
