Sometime Today, Q u a s i assembled some asciibets to say:
For brevity, you could really omit the entire year, just put in an index starting from a reference point (say Jan 1 2000 00:00 corresponds to date zero)
I disagree with this. For whatever historic reasons, we have decided upon a zero date. If every new group comes and decides to set the zero date to one relevant to them then future historians
I agree with you, but at the time, I think it was meant for Mayuresh's personal use, and that he'd be the person speaking out the date, as well as transcribing things from tape later on. It was never meant to be publicly used.
will have a hell of a time to put everything in perspective. Does anyone know details about Julian date? I hear that system is quite
Julian date would be the method created by Julius Caesar, later modified by Pope Gregory into the Gregorian system. Or maybe I'm wrong here. There was this huge discussion about all this back in Jan 2000. I think people can figure out why.
4==08 3==04 2==02 1==01 0==00
ummmm... 11 and 12 both can be represented by 7? why do we require the 0==00? more importantly what are you trying to do here?
Also 6 and 9. Actually, there is no twelve, because we start from zero (midnight), and go to +/-11.
Yes, I am trying to convert a two digit number to a single digit, which basically cannot be done in the same number system. A duodecimal system would be better, but Mayuresh wanted only digits like in Star Trek.
ummm.. a 0-99 minutes hour will be quite decimal '-). but is it necessary? Then it would be as well to have a 0-9 hour day. I
It makes calculations easier, but we already have a global system (Systieme Internationale) that defines the second as the normal time unit. A second is the earth's period of rotation divided by 86400. Maybe it would be better to define the normal time as the time taken for light (constant velocity) to cross the length of a Hydrogen nucleus (== a proton again a constant). I think Feynman can give a better explanation though.
BTW anyone knows why the distribution of the day into 24 hours? and hour into 60 minutes and minute into 60 seconds? The year in one revolution of the earth around the sun (365.25approx. days) and the day into one rotation of the earth is defined quite naturally.
I think we need to blame the Sumerians for that, but I'm not very sure.
What is the optimum representation? dont know. but with my current "programming" 20010828:0317 seems quite verbose but OK. (at least till a
Which is what I had suggested first, but as you said, it was too verbose for him.
BTW, just for the record. In Star Trek, stardates are completely randomly chosen in episodes. There comes into existence the little complication of space-time continuum. Since ships need to travel faster than light (ok, they don't actually do that, they warp space instead), the stardate would be different at the same time in different quadrants of the galaxy.
Philip