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Posted by jpd on July 7, 2008, 12:26 pm
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On Mon, 7 Jul 2008 09:00:43 -0700 (PDT),
> wrote:
>> In article
>
>> I usually write dates as:
>>
>> DD MMM YYYY
>>
>> where the day and year are numeric, and the month is in alpha; [...]
Which is entirely acceptable under ISO8601 and reasonable if your
audience can be expected to understand your names for the months.
> This works well for English speakers, speakers of certain Romanized
> languages from which "July" can be inferred, and poorly for everyone
> else, which is several billion people. :)
>
> We must not forget the significance of the "I" in "ISO".
You're assuming it is even desirable to strive for such ultimate
universality. You'll likely find that with corner cases far enough away
from the English speaking world the entire concept of an alphabet and
the western/`arabic' numerals is unknown. Then what do you do?
My original comment was mostly directed at introducing a YYYY-DD-MM
format, which AFAIK nobody except perhaps the one person upthread uses.
I see no sense in doing so except deliberately creating confusion with
the ISO8601 ``all-numeric'' YYYY-MM-DD format, which is otherwise
perfectly unambigious and distinct from the other two widely used
notations, at least for people who know about the Christian(!) date
system and can read western numbers.
--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.
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Posted by Le Chaud Lapin on July 7, 2008, 1:19 pm
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> On Mon, 7 Jul 2008 09:00:43 -0700 (PDT),
>
> > wrote:
> >> In article
>
> >> I usually write dates as:
>
> >> DD MMM YYYY
>
> >> where the day and year are numeric, and the month is in alpha; [...]
>
> Which is entirely acceptable under ISO8601 and reasonable if your
> audience can be expected to understand your names for the months.
>
> > This works well for English speakers, speakers of certain Romanized
> > languages from which "July" can be inferred, and poorly for everyone
> > else, which is several billion people. :)
>
> > We must not forget the significance of the "I" in "ISO".
>
> You're assuming it is even desirable to strive for such ultimate
> universality. You'll likely find that with corner cases far enough away
> from the English speaking world the entire concept of an alphabet and
> the western/`arabic' numerals is unknown. Then what do you do?
I think the question is one of context.
For some people, there is no problem with the "July" format because
their context is only for people for whom "July" makes sense. For
others, the context is universal to start with. Especially in
computation, the context is large. I noticed this once in lunch room
where seven languages (Mandarin, Urdu, French, German, English,
Spanish, Russian) were going at once.
On a related topic this past Saturday I was at a party where almost
all present were Brazilians. Whatever language was spoken, English/
Portuguese/Spanish, the method of delivery was altered to a form that
is more understandable (avoiding German adjectification, avoiding
slang, rearranging prepositions, etc.). In other words, everyone
there was aware of context. My portuguese is not good at all, and for
about 15 minutes, I struggled with a conversation until the guy
talking realized that I was not Brazilian. He continued in Portguese,
but switched to a mode that made it easier for me to keep up. One
might argue that his mode is more universal, and was desirable within
that context.
So I guess what I am saying is that it depends on the context of the
person asking the question.
There are probably people living in the country who who never saw the
need for area codes, and still don't.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
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Posted by seaweedsl on July 7, 2008, 1:20 pm
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>
> You're assuming it is even desirable to strive for such ultimate
> universality. You'll likely find that with corner cases far enough away
> from the English speaking world the entire concept of an alphabet and
> the western/`arabic' numerals is unknown. Then what do you do?
>
Yep. Agreed.
Returning to topic, I think the best way to publicly punish Zyxel for
their sins is to informatively and nicely (to avoid above insults and
digressions) state your findings, so that people believe and support
you. More support =3D more buzz.
That way the word gets around the web about them and their marketing
guys lose points (jobs) for cheating. Well, not for just cheating,
but for going so far as to get caught red-handed at it.
I do know what you mean about holding your own with the companies. I
get like that at times. It's not fun, but if nobody ever called them
on stuff, we'd really be screwed.
Steve
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Posted by Jeff Liebermann on July 7, 2008, 2:22 pm
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>That way the word gets around the web about them and their marketing
>guys lose points (jobs) for cheating. Well, not for just cheating,
>but for going so far as to get caught red-handed at it.
Won't happen. Interestingly my favorite vendors tend to also be the
worst offenders. For example, the Buffalo web pile is a mess of
marketing baloney (i.e. MIMO-like performance), and unsubstantiated
performance claims (2x thru 12x). Linksys is a close second with the
added entertainment value of having them try to sell trash using the
same model numbers as previous successful products. Just how many
products need to have WRT54G in the name before the customers are
totally confused? Zyxel is one of my favorite router vendors with the
G-2000 Plus v2 having one of the few internal WPA/WPA2 RADIUS (PEAP)
servers. I'm not sure why better products equate to marketing hype,
but I'm prepared to tolerate the hype to get a superior product.
--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
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Posted by Le Chaud Lapin on July 8, 2008, 12:20 pm
If you were Registered and logged in, you could reply and use other advanced thread options > Returning to topic, I think the best way to publicly punish Zyxel for
> their sins is to informatively and nicely (to avoid above insults and
> digressions) state your findings, so that people believe and support
> you. More support =3D more buzz.
>
> That way the word gets around the web about them and their marketing
> guys lose points (jobs) for cheating. =A0Well, not for just cheating,
> but for going so far as to get caught red-handed at it.
>
> I do know what you mean about holding your own with the companies. =A0I
> get like that at times. =A0It's not fun, but if nobody ever called them
> on stuff, we'd really be screwed.
Update:
I called the (large) Internet vendor that sold me AG-225H to determine
whether the vendor actually thought that the product was Vista
compatible, and the vendor said essentially that
"..our information comes from a third-party reviewer of many products,
including the AG-225H, and if there is a mistake, it will be corrected
shortly..."
Shortly was very short. I accidentally hit the refresh button on my
browser about 7 minutes later, and saw that "Microsoft Windows Vista"
had already removed from main product page for the AG-225H on the
vendor's web site. It now only reads "Windows 2000/XP..." as it
should. The person I spoke to was the director of E-commerce, so the
responsiveness and attentiveness to customer concern was impressive.
Zyxel, however, has yet to qualify their "Microsoft Vista Support Out
Of The Box" statement to say that the Access Point feature will not
work on Vista, and it's been almost a week:
http://tinyurl.com/6zr6zn
-Le Chaud Lapin-
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