Dear Carl, The issue of changing the time construct is evidently *academic* at this stage. However, one MUST address this from a technical point-of-view. It's with this spirit in mind that I'd like to comment on your points below, ok?
On Sun, 23 Mar 2003 23:26:38 Carl Sorenson wrote: ... >I support SI as it now stands and as it is practiced in metric countries. Units of >time are already standardized worldwide, and minutes and hours are accepted for use >with SI. True, however, it does not hide the fact that the use of our present time construct is horrible. This 60-60-24 babel is mediocre to say the least and is blatanly against the decimal nature of the SI system. > Lots of people have tried to introduce new units, and they always are ignored > because 1) no one else understands them, This is debatable. For example, what is to 'understand' about the percentime construct, among other alternatives? Once one knows there are 100 percentime hours in a day, and that time reckoning is *finally* purely decimal, what is difficult to understand? The rest would obviously only be a matter of becoming familiar with reckoning time in this new construct. > 2) the "improvement" is often marginal or simply non-existent, Again, highly debatable. If time was *truly* decimalized there would be tremendous advantages in its use. No more silly conversions between hours, minutes and seconds would be necessary. Runners, for instance, would have a much easier life keeping track of his progress during a race. Calculations would be extremely easy under a decimal scenario than with this 60-60-24 crap. > and therefore 3) almost no one thinks we need to change the system. The problem with changing the time construct is a one of convenience. However, I expect that once technology evolves to the point that changes of this magnitude become a matter of "flipping a button" even this change would be largely feasible and easy to implement. > In the U.S., lots of people think we need to adopt the metric system, the rest of > the world uses the metric system, and it still is tough to get the conversion > going... Granted. That's why I've been leaving this issue aside and considering it as "a work in progress" or belonging to R&D. So, it's safe to say that we all agree that this is unnecessary at the present time. Cordially, Marcus ____________________________________________________________ Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
