3 simple steps you can take to fend off the non-computer-based Y2K problems you haven't tripped over yet: 1) Immediately begin using the four-digit year. 2) Immediately begin using the logical format 2000 FEB 01 or 2000-02-01. 3) Use 'ought', pronounced ahtt, as in 'hot' or 'Ott', for years before 2010, e.g., ought-three for '03 = 2003. Rationale: 1) Our dependence on the 9 in '98 is deep. Slowly over the next couple of years, immense levels of confusion will evolve over dates such as 02-03-01 or 03-01-02. Not having the year anchored is devastating. 2) European, and US military, usage has been DD-MM-YY. US civilian usage has been MM-DD-YY. Both forms are internally inconsistent. Each is readily confused with the other, as illustrated by examples as in 1). Logical usage, widespread within astronomy and data processing, is YYYY-MM-DD, wherein the rightmost digit changes most rapidly and the others successively more slowly. The format least likely to be misunderstood is YYYY-MM-DD. 2000 FEB 01 has the advantage of alphabetic relief from numerical monotony, but is language-dependent. 3) Jay Leno says, "What are you going to say to your friend when you trade in your '98 for new wheels, 'Hey, come on over and see my new three!'?". 4) The ambiguity, to the 20th Century-trained mind, of statements such as "2000 will bring friendly smiles." is bad enough. We don't need worse. Cheers. Walter Nissen wnissen@tfn.net -81.8637, 41.3735, 256m elevation --- Did you know?: Many of the most prominent and productive observers rarely look at a "ground track" display? The information presented is largely irrelelvant to a visual observer. Instead, the VSO needs to know when and where to look, how bright the object will be, and may also need to know something about the visual characteristics of the object. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jan 14 2000 - 10:03:42 PST