Talk:1340: Unique Date

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 16:34, 10 March 2014 by 199.27.128.84 (talk)
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My first thought was that he makes fun of people that consider dates like the 12.12.12 as important. As any other date they occur only once and are thus not more special. 108.162.254.66 04:37, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Good point, I have added something about that. 108.162.246.117 04:49, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Possibly related to the upcoming Pi Day. Also, next year's Pi Day will be 03-14-(20)15, which a few images going around on the Internet have made an annoyingly big deal about. 108.162.237.64 06:24, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

So - Maybe I suck at searching (I do), but I can't find any information about us being limited to 4 digits in our calendar system...?173.245.53.107 08:38, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Most of the computer software that handles dates would have problems with more (or less) then four digits. Why bother with variable year length when you can just take the first four characters of "2014-03-10" and it works for the next 8 thousand years? 103.22.200.103 09:42, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Also, most digital displays are limited to four digits for the year. 103.22.200.103 09:43, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
And I don't think we actually start address that sooner that in September 9999. It will be Y2K over again! .... not sure where will people of 9999 get Fortran and Cobol programmers, though. Maybe we should freeze some before we run out of them. :-) -- Hkmaly (talk) 10:20, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm with you. I suppose there may be places where leading zeros are used (somewhere in software where memory space has been set aside, I suppose) but I can't think of any common system where one has to use five digits when using a four digit number.
When we get to December 31, 9999 (assuming he Gregorian calendar is still in use (BIG assumption)) the next day will simply be January 1, 10000 because, as you said, the Gregorian calendar isn't limited to four-digit years. And, as I say, anyone who think there is some problem with writing years as four digit numbers is simply demonstrating that they are not someone to take seriously. 199.27.128.84 16:32, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

After visiting the website for the "Long Now Foundation", I find I'm left wondering - why, oh why, would they stop at using a five digit year? why not six? eight? ten? sixteen? thirty-two? Brettpeirce (talk) 12:06, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

I think the point in the comic title is that writing years always with 5 digits is as significant as the zero to the left it will take to do so for most of the next 8000 years. FlavianusEP (talk) 12:25, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

My first thought was that the comic was about date formats and yyyy-mm-dd being better than yy-mm-dd or dd.mm.yy. 173.245.53.138 12:40, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Dynamic?

Wanna bet that this comic always shows the current date?--Henke37 (talk) 10:23, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Haha, that's a great observation! I wish it were so, I'll check again tomorrow. If it's not, someone email Mr. Munroe to make it so, great idea.
It's 00:07 (11th of March) right now in China where I am currently located and it still shows 10th of March...just for the record 108.162.225.191 16:13, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

It's funny that Randall seems to have never heard of RFC 2550, which goes than the Long Now Foundation in expanding the representable date range. 173.245.53.161 15:05, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Technically, there will be another 2014-03-10; on October 3rd. - 108.162.219.65 16:01, 10 March 2014 (UTC)