A plea for illumination

The reference itself, Post Meridiem, means "After Noon". So 12PM referring to noon is illogical, as it would mean "12 hours after noon". Technically, 12PM really can only refer to midnight.

Actually, GMT is officially deprecated and replaced by UTC. GMT is unstable, since it's based on the fluctuating astronomical movements, whereas UTC is atomic clock time, and uses leap seconds to keep in sync with the astronomical time. (Hence the existence of the rare time 23:59:60).
The leap seconds a tracked and defined by the world's most awesomely named organization: The International Earth Rotation Service.

Note all these arguments have been made before:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=275409

So a different request:

Please can you NOT start parties at 12 am or pm, but start them at 12.01, which also solves the date problem.

Pep (The US Army *never* starts its invasions on the hour)

So would that be 12.01am or pm and how does that solve reversed day month?

Preference for long or short blonde hair?

Yes I know, but since GMT is (1) close enough and (2) more widely known, it would be ok for the purpose of removing ambiguity from the time that people are meant to party at the OP's place.


Dragging in UTC might be too confusing for some.
"UTC" What's that?
-- "Coordingated Universal Time"
"Shouldn't that be CUT so?"
-- "Nope! See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time
"..Coordinated Universal Time is abbreviated UTC. The International Telecommunication Union wanted Coordinated Universal Time to have a single abbreviation for all languages. English speakers and French speakers each wanted the initials of their respective language's terms to be used internationally: "CUT" for "coordinated universal time" and "TUC" for "temps universel coordonné". This resulted in the final compromise of using "UTC" ..."

Duh! CUT + TUC = UTC
Bloody French! It's their fault. Foreigners

that's why i said zulu time

I work in the GPS industry... Wanna add my mess in the mix? (^_^)

http://leapsecond.com/java/gpsclock.htm

...And, I've aways had the NIST-Time application running in every computer I have. It saves me from thinking... Yeah, just that, thinking. (^_^)

http://www.nist.gov/

(Happy to be in PST because it's equal to SLT, even during PDT. But I wish *DT would just go away.) (^_^)y

@ Immy - does this make you a Time Lord?

12.01 is obviously one minute after midday since it has no qualifier; it must relate to the 24 hour clock. A leap of faith might have to be made relating to the possibility that it might be the first of December or the twelfth of January, or a date to be specified if my understanding of the Canadian format is correct, or who knows what if other cultures' calendars are used.

Reversed date/month is not usually a problem as it is consistently used within countries assuming the nationality of the poster is known, my original point being that the use of 12 am or pm was not consistent, even among the IT literate citizens of the USA.

Pep (I prefer brunettes, any length actually)

In my work dates and times alway use what I call military time:

28-07-2008 14:37:05 - Is today 28 July 2008 at 2:37:05 PM

I have problems because almost all of my projects spell organization as organisation except the US based projects of course.

"CX"

This would be fine if SLT were also changed to reflect UTC, as I believe most people use SLT as the reference offset because it's conveniently displayed in the viewer, and nobody has to do conversions from their local time to figure out what time the bloody party actually starts.

Trust you.

No it's not

I prefer YYYYMMDDHHMMSS - that way things get filed correctly in date order

Pep (z is incorrect of course - organise has a Latin root not a Greek one)

Hi Cherry - I wouldn't have thought you would recognise me . . .

Pep (Midlands Mafia)

This is why I prefer the 24 hour clock.

One of my projects uses that coding as well.

"CX" (glorified file clerk)

Not necessarily.

reversed date/month is absolutely a bigger problem, which side of the Atlantic are you? "this side of the Atlantic" provides no qualifier whatsoever. Convention quite happily accepts that 12pm is midday. Doesn't matter how logical or not, it's conventionally midday. Even blondes cope with that

No worries, we'll get a hair texture pack too...

Changing SL time to GMT/UTC was my suggestion (although not explicitly put).
It would make sense given that the number of Californian users (nevermind USA) users is exceeded by the number of users from timezones around the RL globe.
SLT for an international virtual world is 'quaint', but confusing.

Add: If we are going to end up with an open grid, why should SLT be the time system for the Universe.
ZOMG! At the end of the day, would the SLT be the only remaining bit of SL to survive????


But Guru. What is SLT and why do we have it?
--- Ah Grasshopper! Once upon a time ......

Necessarily actually. And there is only one "this side of the Atlantic". The other side is "the other side of the Atlantic". And don't you get that it isn't ME that doesn't understand the convention (I just think it is arbitrary) but my American cousins who advertise times that are incorrect more than I would expect from their usual simple incompetence.

Pep (You seem to know a lot about Blondes - are you one?)

The AM/PM distinction isn't arbitrary. A reference to noon as being 12am is simply improper usage: noon is 12pm, midnight is 12am. That's well settled usage.

Having said that, using a 24 hour clock with the suffix "SLT", or use of the shorthands "noon" or "midnight", again with the same suffix "SLT", would probably make it easier for some.

And there's no need for SL to use GMT/UTC. SL is based in California, let SL use California time. I honestly do not care very much, because I am quite accustomed to time zone conversions due to my RL work, but I don't see any reason for SL to switch to GMT.

LMAO - I love you Z

(no worries, Bec - not in that way).

A majority is always going to have to add/substract two numbers together to know what time an event is in their time zone so what you use as a reference really doesn't make any difference, PST/PDT is as good a choice as GMT.

Everyone is hopefully capable of adding or substracting two small numbers together, and those that lack that elementary skill you can just add a second timezone to the clock in Vista and use that to cheat.

QFT. It's outdated. I read a study somewhere that figured out that we actually spend MORE money on Daylight Savings time, because all the big office buildings have to be cooled for an hour later into the sunlight. Or something like that.

At any rate, it's lame.

Heh... More like a slave to the clock. (=_=)

Well of course we have to do conversions - unless you live in Pacific Time. If a party is going to be at the Hangout at 4:00 pm SLT, I have to do a conversion to know what time that is my time or I might not get logged in in time for the party.




That is the date format I use when time-stamping files or events. For day to day life, I can handle a 12-hr or 24-hr notation. To me, 12:00 am is midnight and 12:00 pm is noon, but I usually specifically say 'noon' or midnight' just to be clear.