Dirk, I'm very glad to hear that we're not boring everyone. ;-)
I don't know the legal status of NET time, I'll let Morris address that if he likes. I doubt that a copyright would work, it seems unlikely that dividing the day into 360 parts has never been thought of before. I haven't read anything about any copyright on Internet Time, there are no notices that I've seen or heard of. As you say, it would be surprising if Nicholas Negroponte were promoting a proprietary system, and there is precedent for it's free use; Sega, Ericsson, CNN/cnn.com and others have used it for profit in the past and I've never heard that they licensed it or obtained permission. There are also, of course, many free converters around, although I was unable to find one for TiddlyWiki. ;-) Technically, BMT is separate from Internet Time, BMT simply being the time in Biel, Switzerland. Internet Time is the system of 1,000 "beats", which should be combined with the date in Biel. Both of these systems share a huge advantage with GMT/UTC in that it's the same time everywhere. That sounds trivial, but it's not- the "Zoneinfo" database used by most Unix systems (and many others) defines a "time zone" as being any area where the clocks have been in agreement with each others since 1970, and on that basis it currently lists over 400 time zones around the world, and the time in many of those changes during the year, at ever-changing dates. If the time zones were stable with respect to GMT/UTC, it would be possible to devise systems that would allow, say, a computer user creating an e-mail, web page or Tiddler to enter a date/time in their local time system that would also display as the correct date/time in each individual viewers LOCAL time system when it is viewed, so users would not have to deal with constant conversion- but as the system is, that is not practical. That future local date cannot be calculated on the basis of the users current UTC "offset" (as in UTC-5), because a computer user in a UTC-5 time zone today may be at UTC-4 or UTC-6 tomorrow in the same place, and politicians everywhere feel free to change the transition dates. The use of Daylight Savings Time in the US and "Summer Time" in the EU also results in other real problems- for instance, a local "timestamp" in New York City a of 1:30 am on November 2nd, 2008, can actually refer to either of two times an hour apart. That date and time combination actually occurred twice, which is just... nonsense. Calculating, say, elapsed time from that timestamp is not possible without more information. Any system that uses local timestamps (as does Microsoft Windows) in any of these areas is going to be (and is) incorrect in some cases, as the "change dates" are constantly shifting, calculations of elapsed time that span the changes often don't have enough information or just fail to take them into account, and programs generally (and reasonably) have no way to handle times that occur "twice". That's not a trivial problem. One of the disadvantages of all three systems, though, is that they cannot safely be combined with local dates. All three refer to the time in either Greenwich or Biel, and at any given moment there are two different dates in use worldwide, so a time without a date can be interpreted incorrectly, 24 hours "off" depending on location. Another, as Morris points out, is that the date change may happen at an inconvenient time locally- factory timeclocks and billing systems would have to split single workdays into multiple calendar days. I generally prefer Internet Time because it's a clean break from the past, it doesn't use any of the old terminology (GMT/UTC of course uses "hours", "minutes" and "seconds", and NET redefines "minutes" and "seconds" to very different periods, which is VERY confusing), it makes elapsed time and intervals trivial to calculate (no 24x60x60, or modulo 24/modulo 60 calculations, no pretending that "100" is the same as "60" or vice-versa... but as I've said, I don't think there's any chance of it replacing "local" time for generations to come. In some ways that's a pity, since the deficiencies of the "old" system will hold progress back, but it's reality. There is no reason, though, that it can't be used to coordinate events on the Internet. We desperately need SOME sane system. Right now, the vast majority of Internet communications (like this post) are asynchronous, but as bandwidth increases, more and more will be synchronous "events", meetings, concerts, etc. and the current system system is such a huge mess that you need conversion tables at hand in order to discuss "what time" things will happen world-wide, with more than a very few participants. Wait until we have to deal with the Martian time-slip. The Martian day is close enough to an Earth day to cause all sorts of confusion in timekeeping... ;-) T. On May 29, 12:44 am, Dirk Zemisch <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello Morris and Tim, Hi All, > > Morris Gray <[email protected]> schrieb am 28.05.2009 20:02 Uhr: > > > On May 28, 8:30 pm, rtimwest <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Nothing happens in the natural world 24 times in a solar day, > > The sun transits 15° of longitude 24 times during this rather natural > > occurrence; which, as you rightly say, is a solar day . > > It is very exciting for me to follow your discussion. And as I was the > one who held it here in the list, I have to say 'Thank You' to you and > all who helped with the NET and the beat time. It opens a lot of > interesting facts to me. > > But I have one little question to you: Why a timesystem, what is done > for everydays use should be copyrighted? Honestly I was shocked reading > the following at the NET site [1]: > > "Everything here is copyright 1999 - 2004 degree NET ltd. All rights are > reserved. [...] The '360 degrees of time' concept is the intellectual > property, patent pending, of degree NET ltd. If you wish to incorporate > New Earth Time within a product for sale or distribution, or otherwise > commercialise it, you must have our permission before doing so." > > I really have no idea how this could work. Could anyone it explain to > me, please. Thanks in advance. > > About BMT I could not find any legal einformation, but as it is linked > to Swatch as a producer of watches I'm not really awaiting a free > solution. On the other hand it was designed by Nicholas Negroponte, who > now maily works @ the OLPC project. > > Away from all the legal stuff NET to me seems to be the better concept. > But it is subjective and who likes BMT may use it. :-) I think they both > are neat geek toys and the actual time system will not be changed to any > of them. > > But it's a lot of fun, really. :-) > > Kind reagards > Dirk > -- > > signature.asc > < 1KViewDownload --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
