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YYYY - Why!


gwalchmai
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My rant for the day.

Why do otherwise intelligent people still insist on requiring us to list our birth years in four digits? Whenever I'm asked for my birthday I say 1/1/56, and I haven't had the first person list me as being 165 years old. Is there anyone who might think I was born in 1856? If so, should they be employed in any job collecting data? 

Let's JUST END IT!

Thank you for your attention..

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1 minute ago, gwalchmai said:

My rant for the day.

Why do otherwise intelligent people still insist on requiring us to list our birth years in four digits? Whenever I'm asked for my birthday I say 1/1/56, and I haven't had the first person list me as being 165 years old. Is there anyone who might think I was born in 1856? If so, should they be employed in any job collecting data? 

Let's JUST END IT!

Thank you for your attention..

Residual from the Y2K crisis. 

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24 minutes ago, gwalchmai said:

Yes. 21 years ago...

Crisis was using only two characters - YY - for the year in computer programs. Solution was modifying the software for four characters AND converting the year fields to four characters - YYYY - AND making those left two characters “19”. Not gonna convert the software and data fields back to two character.

Your birthday in 1956 isn’t currently a problem, nor is my birthday. But if your data includes 1/1/21 as someone’s birthday is that person less than a year old or just over a century old? And “odds are” is irrelevant here. 

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2 hours ago, railfancwb said:

Crisis was using only two characters - YY - for the year in computer programs. Solution was modifying the software for four characters AND converting the year fields to four characters - YYYY - AND making those left two characters “19”. Not gonna convert the software and data fields back to two character.

Your birthday in 1956 isn’t currently a problem, nor is my birthday. But if your data includes 1/1/21 as someone’s birthday is that person less than a year old or just over a century old? And “odds are” is irrelevant here. 

Just wait. The Epochalypse is coming. UNIX/Linux uses Epoch Time and it is approaching a problem point as well. Almost all the Internet and most of the world runs on UNIX/Linux machines.

The Year 2038 problem (also called Y2038, Epochalypse) relates to representing time in many digital systems as the number of seconds passed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970 and storing it as a signed 32-bit integer. Such implementations cannot encode times after 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038. Similar to the Y2K problem, the Year 2038 problem is caused by insufficient capacity used to represent time. So after that point in time, any UNIX/Linux system not patched to address this issue stops functioning, period.

My join date on Glock Talk was always (and still is) 1 January, 1970, but no one ever got the reference, or even wondered how I joined the site 27 years before I created it. :greensupergrin:

 

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2 hours ago, railfancwb said:

Your birthday in 1956 isn’t currently a problem, nor is my birthday. But if your data includes 1/1/21 as someone’s birthday is that person less than a year old or just over a century old? And “odds are” is irrelevant here. 

A good designer includes common sense. Take for example an application for the VA. There are few veterans under 18, but there are some over 100. So if someone enters a birthyear before 21 you ask them to clarify, just as a human would. This stuff's not that hard. :)

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1 hour ago, Eric said:

Just wait. The Epochalypse is coming. UNIX/Linux uses Epoch Time and it is approaching a problem point as well. Almost all the Internet and most of the world runs on UNIX/Linux machines.

The Year 2038 problem (also called Y2038, Epochalypse) relates to representing time in many digital systems as the number of seconds passed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970 and storing it as a signed 32-bit integer. Such implementations cannot encode times after 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038. Similar to the Y2K problem, the Year 2038 problem is caused by insufficient capacity used to represent time. So after that point in time, any UNIX/Linux system not patched to address this issue stops functioning, period.

My join date on Glock Talk was always (and still is) 1 January, 1970, but no one ever got the reference, or even wondered how I joined the site 27 years before I created it. :greensupergrin:

 

2038...huh....lets see I was born it 1935  soooo     Sounds like it "probably" won't be MY problem

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8 minutes ago, Eric said:

Who here remembers when the US was going to be on the Metric system by 1980? :supergrin:

When I was a teacher I read some disturbing document on that. 
 

The Department of Education was tasked with incrementally teaching the metric system as the primary measure and Imperial as the secondary. This was to start in math class, then science. Starting with first grade, kids would learn both but metric as primary and taught imperial because it is already in use and would be for many years to come. This way metric would take over and imperial would slowly fade away. 
 

Problem was that someone in the Department of Education had a bug up his ass about metric. Instead of teaching metric they taught how to convert from one to the other. 
 

The way they did it was to ensure failure. Everything was to get the kids back to imperial. I remember story problems that started in metric and you had to convert to imperial and go from there instead of just teaching kids to do things in metric. 

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1 hour ago, Batesmotel said:

When I was a teacher I read some disturbing document on that. 
 

The Department of Education was tasked with incrementally teaching the metric system as the primary measure and Imperial as the secondary. This was to start in math class, then science. Starting with first grade, kids would learn both but metric as primary and taught imperial because it is already in use and would be for many years to come. This way metric would take over and imperial would slowly fade away. 
 

Problem was that someone in the Department of Education had a bug up his ass about metric. Instead of teaching metric they taught how to convert from one to the other. 
 

The way they did it was to ensure failure. Everything was to get the kids back to imperial. I remember story problems that started in metric and you had to convert to imperial and go from there instead of just teaching kids to do things in metric. 

I was in seventh grade when the 1980 deadline came and went. My teachers always treated the metric system as a nuisance as far back as first grade.  
 

Americans are hardheaded people. I don’t know that anyone needs to tell them to dig their heels in, if they don’t like something. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that people further up the food chain had worked to salt the changeover though. 

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5 minutes ago, gwalchmai said:

What are the metric equivalents to:

  • a mess, as in fish or greens
  • a right smart, as in a right smart of flour or butter
  • a spell, as in sitting a spell on the porch

I’ve heard of metric buttloads. Is there an Imperial buttload equivalent. 

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5 hours ago, Eric said:

Just wait. The Epochalypse is coming. UNIX/Linux uses Epoch Time and it is approaching a problem point as well. Almost all the Internet and most of the world runs on UNIX/Linux machines.

The Year 2038 problem (also called Y2038, Epochalypse) relates to representing time in many digital systems as the number of seconds passed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970 and storing it as a signed 32-bit integer. Such implementations cannot encode times after 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038. Similar to the Y2K problem, the Year 2038 problem is caused by insufficient capacity used to represent time. So after that point in time, any UNIX/Linux system not patched to address this issue stops functioning, period.

My join date on Glock Talk was always (and still is) 1 January, 1970, but no one ever got the reference, or even wondered how I joined the site 27 years before I created it. :greensupergrin:

 

Didn’t H G Wells write a book about time travel? Did he interview you?

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3 hours ago, Eric said:

Who here remembers when the US was going to be on the Metric system by 1980? :supergrin:

It was God's truth, until the people for the change thought they would have to replace all their English dimentioned tools........  They weren't too bright.

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30 minutes ago, janice6 said:

It was God's truth, until the people for the change thought they would have to replace all their English dimentioned tools........  They weren't too bright.

So now, 40+ years later, we have two sets of wrenches and two sets of taps and dies. And two types of bolts and nuts. More relevant is the construction of machine tools. Are the shafts which position and move things imperial or metric. 

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As a mechanic, the really fun part was working on a generation of cars that had both metric AND standard nuts and bolts on the same vehicle, sometimes even on the same part you were working on. That sucked.

 

This mix-and-match fastener crap on American cars is one of the ways the metric gods chose  to punish us for our obstinance. That and the disappearing 10mm sockets and wrenches. The ******* things have got to be going somewhere. Does anyone really think it is a coincidence that it is the TEN millimeter tools this happens to?

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1 hour ago, gwalchmai said:

What are the metric equivalents to:

  • a mess, as in fish or greens - a Mickey
  • a right smart, as in a right smart of flour or butter - an Eh?
  • a spell, as in sitting a spell on the porch - a touque

Now don't be a hoser, and eat your Timmy's.

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20 minutes ago, Eric said:

As a mechanic, the really fun part was working on a generation of cars that had both metric AND standard nuts and bolts on the same vehicle, sometimes even on the same part you were working on. That sucked.

 

This mix-and-match fastener crap on American cars is one of the ways the metric gods chose  to punish us for our obstinance. That and the disappearing 10mm sockets and wrenches. The ******* things have got to be going somewhere. Does anyone really think it is a coincidence that it is the TEN millimeter tools this happens to?

We had a car come into my dads shop with an exhaust leak at the header pipe to manifold. Put the car on the rack and proceeded to take down the header pipe to replace the dougnut and one of the studs broke. Drilled and an easy out got the broken stud out, so I took the nut from one of the others to the parts counter to get a stud. Found one that the nut fit, but the damned thing would not thread into the manifold. The stud was metric on the nut side and SAE on the manifold end.

What a dumb ass thing to do!

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Just now, jmohme said:

We had a car come into my dads shop with an exhaust leak at the header pipe to manifold. Put the car on the rack and proceeded to take down the header pipe to replace the dougnut and one of the studs broke. Drilled and an easy out got the broken stud out, so I took the nut from one of the others to the parts counter to get a stud. Found one that the nut fit, but the damned thing would not thread into the manifold. The stud was metric on the nut side and SAE on the manifold end.

What a dumb ass thing to do!

Doesn't surprise me.

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On 8/18/2021 at 11:55 AM, Eric said:

Just wait. The Epochalypse is coming. UNIX/Linux uses Epoch Time and it is approaching a problem point as well. Almost all the Internet and most of the world runs on UNIX/Linux machines.

The Year 2038 problem (also called Y2038, Epochalypse) relates to representing time in many digital systems as the number of seconds passed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970 and storing it as a signed 32-bit integer. Such implementations cannot encode times after 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038. Similar to the Y2K problem, the Year 2038 problem is caused by insufficient capacity used to represent time. So after that point in time, any UNIX/Linux system not patched to address this issue stops functioning, period.

My join date on Glock Talk was always (and still is) 1 January, 1970, but no one ever got the reference, or even wondered how I joined the site 27 years before I created it. :greensupergrin:

 

Why isn’t your join date here 1 January 1970? Just wondering, since you brought it up.  

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1 minute ago, railfancwb said:

Why isn’t your join date here 1 January 1970? Just wondering, since you brought it up.  

Never got around to changing it. I have to edit the database directly to make a change like that.

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