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 Discussion on answer by tchrist: Why …

Imported from a comment discussion on ell.stackexchange.com/qu...
flurbius
Jan 15, 2018 02:32
Most of the rest of the code is a service that triggers the update every second or so and I never got around to doing any settings or other options which is why I never submitted it to the play store, I did see someone else wrote one as well and I had a look but I dont think it was accurate - Im guessing the author was trying to reinvent the wheel and keep track of the time in the app.
flurbius
Jan 15, 2018 02:31
I did actually but it would make more sense to rewrite it as the only 'business' logic in it is one line of code that converts the system time into the metric form.
flurbius
Jan 15, 2018 02:16
I actually have an android widget on my phone - that I wrote about 7 years ago - it divides the day into 10 hours = 1,000 minutes = 100,000 seconds each second being equivalent of 0.846 of a standard second, as for the days it just says how many days since Jan 1.
I am almost certain that I have the only copy but I have lost the source code for it (it was rather trivial though) If I do rewrite it I will have it report the same time no matter where on the planet it is, which I have been thinking lately as being way more useful in our ever shrinking world.
flurbius
Jan 15, 2018 02:04
yes I think we are stuck with a year and a day, the rest are more or less arbitrary
flurbius
Jan 15, 2018 02:03
yes I have found a few references on wikipedia, to metric time, I would love to see it given a fair go, say have both systems available for a while and let peoples preferences decide, Im guessing most of us over about 35 wouldnt make the transition very easily but within a generation it will have taken hold.
Used to it is the reason why the US has a mishmash of measurement units, thus not really a good enough reason.
flurbius
Jan 15, 2018 01:57
@tchrist that was a superb answer, well done and thank you. I find these sort of issues fascinating, but unfortunately rarely do I have the chance to read a well structured and thorough treatment, is there any place on the web or in mainstream or professional media that you know of that would help me find such discourse?
Especially one pertaining to metric or decimal based time.
Another of my pet eccentricities is the desire to do away with time zones, does anyone know if this has ever been proposed and also does anyone have a truly compelling case for time zones?
 

 Discussion on question by downrep_nat…

Imported from a comment discussion on worldbuilding.stackexcha...
flurbius
Jul 16, 2016 19:15
Fear nearly always precedes an attack - think about Al Qaeda and their effort to instill fear in the US. Fear is the last thing you want these aliens to feel for us - a better tactic might be how can we get them to ignore us, or overlook us, failing that I would suggest we need to become indispensable to them, become so useful that they would protect us and even invite us along on the interstellar rampage.