You thought the billion question was bad...
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It gets worse with dates! I hate web sites that use short date notation like 10/3/2000 because it will confuse a lot of people. For Americans, that means October 3. But for folks in other parts of the world (notably the UK) it's March 10. The CodeProject way of doing it, "3 Oct 2000" is pretty nice, since it's unambiguous and easy to read for everyone
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It gets worse with dates! I hate web sites that use short date notation like 10/3/2000 because it will confuse a lot of people. For Americans, that means October 3. But for folks in other parts of the world (notably the UK) it's March 10. The CodeProject way of doing it, "3 Oct 2000" is pretty nice, since it's unambiguous and easy to read for everyone
Just Thought I'd agree with you there Michael, However what I find worse is software which requires Date Input, I find I always have to check it to work out whats happening. It's not that I find the US system Silly, But the fact that there are two opposing systems gives to confusion. Next year things might get worse when two values are asked for! eg 10/01 is it the 10th of January, October of 2001, or the first of October ? Regardz Colin Davie
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Just Thought I'd agree with you there Michael, However what I find worse is software which requires Date Input, I find I always have to check it to work out whats happening. It's not that I find the US system Silly, But the fact that there are two opposing systems gives to confusion. Next year things might get worse when two values are asked for! eg 10/01 is it the 10th of January, October of 2001, or the first of October ? Regardz Colin Davie
"...not that I find the US system Silly..." I must say that I DO find the US system silly. In my mind there are two correct ways of doing dates. Year Month Day, or Day Month Year. Why change the order? I have US people tell me, "But that's the way I say it" (ie. January 10th) but then it isn't that hard to say 10th of January either is it? But then I guess the US failed in it's change to metric as well (I mean getting to the point where you have changed signs to say both miles and kilometers and starting to teach metric in schools and then having some backwards ignoramus' revert back... sigh. I mean if Canada and Australia managed it (I'm sure their must have been other countries??)) But once again I have US people say to me, "But the system makes sence to me". And yes, true, but this is like people programming in assembly, and not wanting to go to something which allows them to advance further... Sigh! And they wonder why their kids have trouble doing maths. Geez, I must be in an angry mood today =) Have fun, Paul Westcott
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"...not that I find the US system Silly..." I must say that I DO find the US system silly. In my mind there are two correct ways of doing dates. Year Month Day, or Day Month Year. Why change the order? I have US people tell me, "But that's the way I say it" (ie. January 10th) but then it isn't that hard to say 10th of January either is it? But then I guess the US failed in it's change to metric as well (I mean getting to the point where you have changed signs to say both miles and kilometers and starting to teach metric in schools and then having some backwards ignoramus' revert back... sigh. I mean if Canada and Australia managed it (I'm sure their must have been other countries??)) But once again I have US people say to me, "But the system makes sence to me". And yes, true, but this is like people programming in assembly, and not wanting to go to something which allows them to advance further... Sigh! And they wonder why their kids have trouble doing maths. Geez, I must be in an angry mood today =) Have fun, Paul Westcott
Paul, If I remember correctly Australia , NZ and maybe some other countries in the late 60's early 70's decided to change, However the main reason for there change was that the US had made noises that the US would change. Then the US didn't change !! - I did hear a rumour that the reason was military, as the US wished to have a "unique measurement system" . Which it does have now :-) - I guess I'm lucky to be old enough to have learn't both systems and do the easy conversions in my head. -- And calm down " Its Friday once again " Regardz Colin Davie
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"...not that I find the US system Silly..." I must say that I DO find the US system silly. In my mind there are two correct ways of doing dates. Year Month Day, or Day Month Year. Why change the order? I have US people tell me, "But that's the way I say it" (ie. January 10th) but then it isn't that hard to say 10th of January either is it? But then I guess the US failed in it's change to metric as well (I mean getting to the point where you have changed signs to say both miles and kilometers and starting to teach metric in schools and then having some backwards ignoramus' revert back... sigh. I mean if Canada and Australia managed it (I'm sure their must have been other countries??)) But once again I have US people say to me, "But the system makes sence to me". And yes, true, but this is like people programming in assembly, and not wanting to go to something which allows them to advance further... Sigh! And they wonder why their kids have trouble doing maths. Geez, I must be in an angry mood today =) Have fun, Paul Westcott
Heh, we're flaming entire countries now? ;) And Paul, you underestimate how hard it is to change the way 250+ million (that's 250,000,000 in the wake of previous threads) think. Yes it would be awfully nice if the whole world did things the same way. But it just ain't gonna happen (cf. Esperanto)
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It gets worse with dates! I hate web sites that use short date notation like 10/3/2000 because it will confuse a lot of people. For Americans, that means October 3. But for folks in other parts of the world (notably the UK) it's March 10. The CodeProject way of doing it, "3 Oct 2000" is pretty nice, since it's unambiguous and easy to read for everyone
I normally write "3-Oct-2000", but even that has some problems. The month forces you into English, and if you adapt that to other languages, you need more letters (French requires 4 letters to differeniate "Juine" from "Juile"