What a mess: Date, milliseconds, GregorianCalendar

[Paul Lutus]

Babu Kalakrishnan wrote:

/...

It wasn't the "default constructor" statement I was referring to - but
your message very early in the thread (on 19th August 7:57 PM) in which
you wrote :

<QUOTE>

That is not a problem, as most of Date has been deprecated, and it appears
people are being advised to avoid Date for now projects.

Well, this is now way too hypothetical to even to try to convert into
something useful.

BTW your having included my SIG line in the midst of your quote of me caused
the remainder of the quote to be truncated in this reply. I have
hand-included it:

My (rather limited) understanding of the English language tells
me that the
indirect sentence "people are being advised"

It is more indirect than your quote of it. I originally said "it appears
people are being advised," and a copy of the original appears above in this
message. That's pretty hypothetical.

implies that
there is someone out
there (about whom you are aware of atleast through hearsay)
who is handing out
such an advice. My reference was about that someone.
Does that make your
statement "No one offered this advice"
a possible lie ?

My "no one offered this advice" remark referred only to the contents of this
thread, not the outside world. But, as I said, this is heaping
hypotheticals on hypotheticals. There really is no point to this. It's too
far away from anything useful now. I think you agree.

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

You know what? I advocate that it isn't the Date class that's broken.
It's the damnable world's assorted calendars and
written-on-my-underpants-tag daylight savings time schemes.

Let's undeprecate Date and have the UN sort out universal take it or
leave it time (UTIOLIT).

Tentatively, I suggest that UTIOLIT also does not recognize time
zones. Instead you just deal with the fact that daytime in China is
from 6pm to 8am or some noise like that.

I have been advocating this for 2 decades now. Time zones are dumb, serve
no purpose that I can see, and cause lots of conversion grief. If we're
gonna be "one-world", we might as well have "one-clock".

Also:
- flat tax

To keep the libbies from throwing a hissy fit {duck}, I'd say that I'd
accept a graduated tax curve like we have now, but remove all the loopholes.
The tax rate of x% would mean that. Deductions rob peter to pay paul. The
best alternative to all this is /maybe/ a federal sales tax under the
proviso that it starts precisely when the income tax vanishes completely.

- Subway will put veggies on top meat like a normal God-fearing
sandwhich
lol.


- car engines run on clean burning hydrogen, cold fusion, or good
intentions

Fine by me. The last one though is the scarcest of all the resources.

- Israel becomes a world historic park and nobody from any country is
allowed to live there permanantly, but can visit (sans weapons)

I'm not sure just /what/ the heck to do with Israel. New Hampshire in a
north american continent of hatred and suicide bombings? One side is gonna
have to obliterate the other. {shrug}

- Schwarzeneger to be made president 2004 on condition that he wear
leather and sunglasses during all speeches.

There's actually something to this. LOL. Remember that we now have the USS
Ronald Reagan. From name alone, positioning that thing 200 miles off of any
border will make anyone nervous.

*Fleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*

I'll cover you. go go go go go....... Now what? Arg! Now I gotta
fleeeeeeeee.......

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

....[rip]...

into the abyss.....

 

[Paul Lutus]

...[rip]...

into the abyss.....

Very productive post. There was a time when people who couldn't follow a
thread kept it to themselves.

 

[Chris Uppal]

Very productive post. There was a time when people who couldn't follow a
thread kept it to themselves.

That would be back when knights fought dragons for the favours of fair maidens,
I presume ?

Or were you referring to the Fall of Man ?

-- chris

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

P.Hill wrote:
Paul Lutus wrote:

...[rip]...

into the abyss.....

Very productive post. There was a time when people who couldn't
follow a thread kept it to themselves.

lol. I followed it alright. Hence the post. What a shock {sarcasm} that I
had to explain it to you.

 

[Paul Lutus]

Paul Lutus <[email protected]> coughed up the following:
P.Hill wrote:
Paul Lutus wrote:

...[rip]...

into the abyss.....

Very productive post. There was a time when people who couldn't
follow a thread kept it to themselves.

lol. I followed it alright.

You mean, like your self-evident grasp of English spelling and grammar?

Hence the post. What a shock {sarcasm} that
I had to explain it to you.

Some abyss. Compared to your scintillating posts and sense of internal
consistency, an abyss is a welcome alternative. Obviously speaking
hypothetically.

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Thomas G. Marshall wrote:

Paul Lutus <[email protected]> coughed up the following:
P.Hill wrote:
Paul Lutus wrote:

...[rip]...

into the abyss.....

Very productive post. There was a time when people who couldn't
follow a thread kept it to themselves.

lol. I followed it alright.

You mean, like your self-evident grasp of English spelling and
grammar?

What part of that statement bothers you? If it's the word "alright", it's
non-standard /only/ as an adjective.

 

[Paul Lutus]

Paul Lutus <[email protected]> coughed up the following:
Thomas G. Marshall wrote:

Paul Lutus <[email protected]> coughed up the following:
P.Hill wrote:
Paul Lutus wrote:

...[rip]...

into the abyss.....

Very productive post. There was a time when people who couldn't
follow a thread kept it to themselves.

lol. I followed it alright.

You mean, like your self-evident grasp of English spelling and
grammar?

What part of that statement bothers you? If it's the word "alright", it's
non-standard /only/ as an adjective.

There was a time, not very long ago, when it wasn't a word. None of this
will matter after a bit -- enough people will use "alright", a
lexicographer will notice, and Bob's your uncle. Assuming this hasn't
already happened.

You didn't notice "lol" as a possible candidate. It's an acronym, therefore
it should be in caps. But who cares? It would be somewhat ironic and
misleading if you possessed grammatical skills completely out of line with
your overall abilities.

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Thomas G. Marshall wrote:

Paul Lutus <[email protected]> coughed up the following:
Thomas G. Marshall wrote:

Paul Lutus <[email protected]> coughed up the following:
P.Hill wrote:
Paul Lutus wrote:

...[rip]...

into the abyss.....

Very productive post. There was a time when people who couldn't
follow a thread kept it to themselves.

lol. I followed it alright.

You mean, like your self-evident grasp of English spelling and
grammar?

What part of that statement bothers you? If it's the word
"alright", it's non-standard /only/ as an adjective.

There was a time, not very long ago, when it wasn't a word. None of
this will matter after a bit -- enough people will use "alright", a
lexicographer will notice, and Bob's your uncle. Assuming this hasn't
already happened.

So I guess YOU fucked up, and YOU don't know English grammar, even though
YOU were the one trying to pretend that you could insult me with my
(correct) usage of it.

Smooth. Next time try acknowledging your mistakes instead of trying to
cover them up with hand waving. People /might/ respect you then.

You didn't notice "lol" as a possible candidate. It's an acronym,
therefore it should be in caps. But who cares?

You were the one bringing up English grammar. Not me. I never claimed to
be using grammar correctly. Not once. But you thought you could blast me
with it, because you had nothing else to say. And you don't own up to it?

Wow. And not only can you not accept that you are wrong, but you try to
cover by saying that lol should be in caps? You're making a fool out of
yourself (again).

It would be somewhat
ironic and misleading if you possessed grammatical skills completely
out of line with your overall abilities.

Such a pathetic attempt to cover your own mistakes.

I tell you what paul, I'll give you want you seem to be begging for: a
killfile (again). I would have kept you in it the first time around, but I
got a new system, and a blanked out killfile. Congrats. Say what you like
now...

<PLONK>

 

[Guest]

Paul Hill,

Your algorithm to calculate the number of days between two
date-time-stamps is flawed.

If calculating the number of seconds between two times, should we ignore
the fractional number of seconds in the start and/or end times? For
example, how many seconds are between 0:12:02.125 and 0:12:10.548 ? Is it
8, 8.423, or 9? Similar questions can be made at any level of unit.

Let's tackle leap seconds. There is a complicated formula that specifies
when we will have 60, 61, or 62 seconds in a minute (we have not
experienced a 62 second minute since adopting the Gregorian Calendar, but
it is possible). Since minutes have variable number of seconds, we cannot
do a simple divide and get the correct answer in all cases.

I believe I scratched the surface as to why a simple subtract followed by
division does not always work.

BTW, You could create a DateSpan class which would do all these
calculations for you (again, be sure to keep track of the TimeZone issues).

HTH,
La'ie Techie

 

[Liz]

"Erwin Moller"

Hi group,

(Sorry for complaining

then don't

 

[Guest]

- car engines run on clean burning hydrogen, cold fusion, or good
intentions

You can't be serious about hydrogen. Pure hydrogen is too volatile to
store. Unless our fuel stations pump pure H2O and cars separate the
hydrogen from the oxygen. Any other trace elements would build up on the
pipes. In this system, only oxygen with mall traces of hydrogen would be
released into the atmosphere.

La'ie Techie

 

[Paul Lutus]

Paul Lutus <[email protected]> coughed up the following:
Thomas G. Marshall wrote:

Paul Lutus <[email protected]> coughed up the following:
Thomas G. Marshall wrote:

Paul Lutus <[email protected]> coughed up the following:
P.Hill wrote:
Paul Lutus wrote:

...[rip]...

into the abyss.....

Very productive post. There was a time when people who couldn't
follow a thread kept it to themselves.

lol. I followed it alright.

You mean, like your self-evident grasp of English spelling and
grammar?

What part of that statement bothers you? If it's the word
"alright", it's non-standard /only/ as an adjective.

There was a time, not very long ago, when it wasn't a word. None of
this will matter after a bit -- enough people will use "alright", a
lexicographer will notice, and Bob's your uncle. Assuming this hasn't
already happened.

So I guess YOU fucked up, and YOU don't know English grammar,

NO, that would be your own mistake.

even though
YOU were the one trying to pretend that you could insult me with my
(correct) usage of it.

It is not correct, and I can't believe even you can take that
interpretation. Dictionaries reflect how people use words, they do not
suggest correct usage. That is not their role.

 

[Paul Lutus]

You can't be serious about hydrogen. Pure hydrogen is too volatile to
store.

Tell NASA. They store it all the time. I am not saying it is easy, but it is
practical.

The real propblem with hydrogen is it's not actually a source of energy in
the sense the petrochemicals are, instead it is a transfer medium. The
hydrogen must be split away from water, and the energy to do the splitting
is not quite recovered when the hydrogen is later burned.

Unless our fuel stations pump pure H2O and cars separate the
hydrogen from the oxygen.

Okay, it seems you don't understand the technology. A closed system that
split water into hydrogen and oxygen, then burned the hydrogen, would have
to acquire energy from outside the system to make up for the losses in the
conversions.

 

[Paul Lutus]

Paul Hill,

Your algorithm to calculate the number of days between two
date-time-stamps is flawed.

Not if the point is to determine the number of integral days. And that was
the stated goal.

If calculating the number of seconds between two times, should we ignore
the fractional number of seconds in the start and/or end times? For
example, how many seconds are between 0:12:02.125 and 0:12:10.548 ? Is it
8, 8.423, or 9? Similar questions can be made at any level of unit.

And each of these questions has a trivial answer.

Let's tackle leap seconds.

A trivial adjustment, but not necessary for this task.

 

[Erwin Moller]

"Erwin Moller"


then don't

??
Liz?
What do you want to accomplish by this posting?
Humor maybe? I hope so.

Did you see the whole discussion?
Even if you read it superficially, you'll notice that we have a lot of
different opinions.
It is complicated stuff.
When I write in a posting "Sorry for complaining" it is ment as an
introduction for (possible stupid sounding) questions like: "Is it just me
or do dates, milliseconds, GregorianCalendar completely confusing?"

What is your angle?
Did you write the code for Sun or something and are insulted by the fact
some don't get it?
I do not understand the point of your posting.

Regards,
Erwin Moller

 

[Chris Uppal]

Let's tackle leap seconds. There is a complicated formula that specifies
when we will have 60, 61, or 62 seconds in a minute

Is there ? My understanding is that leap seconds are introduced ad-hoc.
Perhaps there's a mixture of scheduled (by a formula) leap seconds, and ad-hoc
ones, but there is a need for the second category since the length of the "day"
drifts in an unpredictable way (chaotic ?) if measured with sufficient
accuracy.

-- chris

 

[P.Hill]

La'ie Techie wrote:




Is there ? My understanding is that leap seconds are introduced ad-hoc.

Yes, that is true. There is no formula.

-Paul

 

[Michael Borgwardt]

The real propblem with hydrogen is it's not actually a source of energy in
the sense the petrochemicals are, instead it is a transfer medium. The
hydrogen must be split away from water, and the energy to do the splitting
is not quite recovered when the hydrogen is later burned.

Really the same thing, except that in the case of petrochemicals, the
storing of energy in an easily-burnable substance has already been done by
Mother Nature over the course of millions of years...