On 08/09/12, our engineers will be performing site maintenance,

from approximately 10:00 to 11:00 PDT.

[Lame_Wolf]

'bout time they started showing this.

[lucy24]

08/09/12

Uh... Is that American style (month first) or European style (day first)? Or computer style (year first)?

[matrix_jan]

@lucy24

Local style, unless they intend to use a time machine :)

I have 9/8/12

[Lame_Wolf]

Uh... Is that American style (month first) or European style (day first)? Or computer style (year first)?

A little common sense would have told you that it was the 8th day of the ninth month of the twelth year. Think about it.

[incrediBILL]

Is that American style (month first)

The fact that it says PDT should be the first clue ;)

At least it's not Mayan style because I'm not sure which way they order those glyphs but it cycles in 260 days, roughly the same time for the human gestation period. Oh baby! LOL

[lucy24]

Think about it.

Do I have to put <fe>markup</fe> around every blasted thing I say? Yes, it is obvious that only one of the four* possible readings yields a date that is still in the future. My point was that google seemed to be making an assumption about their readers.

"On 08/09/12 our engineers will..."
"Huh what? Why do I care what they did back on August 9?"

Matter of fact, when I first saw the topic header I thought the post was being satirical, as in "Oh. Nice of them to tell us... a month after the fact."


* Excluding the two mathematically possible but ridiculous interpretations, hence 2x2 rather than 3!

[Lame_Wolf]

Yes, it is obvious that only one of the four* possible readings yields a date that is still in the future. My point was that google seemed to be making an assumption about their readers.

Well, seein that I am in the UK, and it gave a "UK style" date, you would have thought that they would have given the time in GMT.

[Lame_Wolf]

"On 08/09/12 our engineers will..."

That is how it was sent to UK accounts. (ie, not altered my end for this thread.)

[Sally Stitts]

Just checked mine (California).

It correctly says 9/8/12 PDT, which is month/day/year, standard for the US.
.

[Lame_Wolf]

It correctly says 9/8/12 PDT, which is month/day/year, standard for the US.

And it correctly say 08/09/12 for UK users, which is the more logical way day/month/year, the standard for the UK.

A pity it was a half-baked idea for Google to do this because although they have altered the date for each countries normal settings, it failed when it used PSD.

[Sally Stitts]

"More logical way"

I think not.

To me, the most "logical" way is from biggest to smallest -
Year/Month/Day - just like Hours/Minutes/Seconds.

Maybe, that is why Year/Month/Day was canonized as the -
International Date Format, which removes all the ambiguity of the US, British, and other illogical formats.

THE standard is ISO 8601.
[en.wikipedia.org...]

I use it on all of my pages, followed by IDT.

[edited by: Sally_Stitts at 11:52 pm (utc) on Sep 6, 2012]

[Lame_Wolf]

I think not.

Lets agree to disagree.

[Sally Stitts]

Okey-Dokey.

I find a parallel between this and religion.
A person's religion is a function of one's parents, and where they were born. What is "correct", is what we were taught. There was no vision or deep-thinking on our part, as far as us acquiring a particular religion - we believe what we were given. The same as Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Buddhists in Tibet, etc.

A Bostonian will believe that Month/Day/Year is "correct".
A Londoner will believe that Day/Month/Year is "correct".

A change will occur only when someone knocks on your door (figuratively) and shows you another view (and I am not referring to Mormons or Seventh Day Adventists).
.

[edited by: Sally_Stitts at 12:08 am (utc) on Sep 7, 2012]

[Lame_Wolf]

I wonder what format they [Google] send to people living in countries that do not use the Gregorian calendar.

[Lame_Wolf]

I find a parallel between this and religion.
A person's religion is a function of one's parents, and where they were born.

Yes, but not at a parental level. Afterall, what will we atheists use? ;)

[lucy24]

I wonder what format they [Google] send to people living in countries that do not use the Gregorian calendar.

They may not use it in everyday life, but their computers do. Or, at least, their computers can translate.

Still: Google could have saved a lot of potential confusion by investing a few more bytes and saying "On 8 September 2012..." You'd have people objecting that they've got the date backward, but there wouldn't be any ambiguity about what date they mean.

Come to think of it: Did their text use the literal string "09/08" or "08/09"-- or did they send out one of those 16-digit numbers accompanied by a directive to the computer to put it into the user's OS-preferred format?

I just checked my system prefs. Along with the finicky stuff about exact date format, I've got a choice of eleven calendars. Gregorian, Buddhist, Islamic and so on. In fact there are two Islamic calendars and two Ethiopic ones. (There must have been some whopping disagreement there, because they differ by over 5000 years. The Islamic ones only differ by two days. Not days of the week, just calendar days.) And I can specify the first day of the week. I guess that's assuming my calendar of choice has a week.

[Lame_Wolf]

Still: Google could have saved a lot of potential confusion by investing a few more bytes and saying "On 8 September 2012

I totally agree.

[netmeg]

Actually what caught my eye was that the maintenance window was only an hour, and they didn't actually SAY anything - i.e. they didn't say that the AdSense interface would be unavailable, or stats delayed - all they said was that there was maintenance.

[JCKline]

@netmeg, good point. When they used to do it every Sunday, there was no access.