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Admin
The form I've heard is "qu'est-ce fuck".
But I'm a Canadian anglophone who learned that from another Canadian anglophone, who in turn picked it up in French immersion. So it's probably totally wrong.
Admin
"cinq juillet", is it not?
Admin
To be frank, expecting Americans to know the details of how the Belgian system works, even though Belgians are familiar with the American system, is like complaining that you know everything about some celebrity's personal life and work, but he doesn't even know your name. How inconsiderate!
Admin
You're missing a step here because first you have to know there is a date being set. I mean really, who the f*ck sets the system date in a report. I know that wouldn't be my first thought, and probably not most other developers either.
Once you see the system date (or any date for that matter) being set, it's really easy to make the locale connection...
Admin
"Medium Endian" - bad visual pun. It's what's between "big-endian" and "little-endian".
Admin
Let them have this one Dave, they don't have much to be proud of anymore, you know.
Admin
I think he meant "Indian Medium". That's someone from the sub-continent who can contact the dead.
Admin
I just find it funny when someone is typing a rant that demonstrates a clear superiority complex and then makes a typo 'cause they couldn't keep things in perspective.
Admin
Hmm ... would they? I've been using "twenty-oh-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven ..." Never stopped to think it may be an unusual approach.
Confusion will arrive when we discuss twenty-twenty vision in 9 years time or so.
Admin
How did you say 1999, One-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-nine?
Admin
Here in the Imperium Romanum, we say "The third of the Nones of July".
Admin
Well I'll forgive myself for misunderstanding the pattern, having been given only one sample to work from. And it's not me that introduced the contraction:
1900 - Nineteen hundred 1911 - Nineteen (hundred and) eleven 2000 - Twenty hundred 2011 - Twenty (hundred and) eleven
That follows a pattern.
The UK way:
1900 - Nineteen hundred 1911 - Nineteen (hundred and)eleven 2000 - Two Thousand 2011 - Two thousand and eleven
Your way:
2000 - Two Thousand 2011 - Twenty (hundred and) eleven
Even less syllables:
2011 - Two (thousand and) eleven
Admin
Admin
Oh yes of course, using that new-fangled month named for that ugly old prune who got what was coming to him in the Senate that time.
Admin
Interesting that nobody has pointed out that the US Military uses dd-mm-yy. They also use a 24 hour clock.
And FWIW, If some were to walk up and say "5th of July" or "July 5th", I'd probabaly be able to understand them either way.
Admin
If you don't want to do business with the U.S., you don't have to. If Americans are causing a real problem, don't work with them. If it's not a real problem... what are complaining about then?
Admin
Typical European arrogance. Complaining about a lack of standards while still speaking over a dozen different languages.
Admin
Okay, as an exercise for the advanced student - express:
1901 2001
in UK, American, Dutch and Zebedee format.
Admin
Admin
So do you find the way the US (and pretty much the entire rest of the world, for that matter) does mailing addresses to be objectionable?
Also, in another case of bizarre out-of-order ordering, did Europeans design the INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE syntaxes for SQL, but Americans designed the SELECT syntax?
Admin
Ummm... the pattern he was referring to is the fewest syllables. People around here often say "Two-thousand" and "Twenty-eleven"***. I've never heard anyone say "Twenty-hundred" except you.
***Then again, it's a fairly diverse country. People from one region might be insulted that you are implicitly conflating them with people from another region.
Admin
Admin
hai, the Japanese are
Admin
I've read half way through the first page of comments, and I've seen several people say they expected this behavior.
I thought that with using a built-in date class, the class would consider the regional settings on the computer and make this work transparently.
So now if I try to localize my program using built-in date functions, I have to fucking worry about the order of the month and day? Unbelievable.
Admin
As an American, I admit I'm not all that familiar with parliamentary governments. But 13 months to form a government? I think after Britain's last election it took them about a week, and usually it's a matter of a couple of days. Israel may have the most parties in their parliament of any country -- I read once that Israel has NEVER had a majority government, not sure if that's true -- and they're constitutionally limited to 45 days to form a government.
Anybody else on here from countries with parliamentary systems? How long does it usually take to form a government? I'd guess when one party has a majority, it's a day or two, but when you have to form a coalition, presumably longer.
Admin
We think you are backwards. We think of the month first, then the day, then the year. To think of it in any other order is backwards to us. We also put our adjectives before the nouns.
Admin
But, you do know there's a date being set. You know there's a date being set, because they just told you: every time they run your scripts, the date changes. From that, any half-competent person should be able to figure out (by the reflexive property): something, somewhere, is changing the date.
Thus, the real wtf (other than VBA) is that they couldn't even reproduce it. If all you know is that someone in France keeps reproducing this issue, but you can't, even if you don't know what script is causing the issue or why, perhaps the first thing you should try is running all the scripts they ran, to see if any of them caused the issue... on a French OS? Or at least with French regional settings?
I certainly agree that the specific way the date turned out to have been set was a major WTF, and not on the part of the programmer, but they still should have been able to reproduce it once the problem had been mentioned a couple times.
Admin
Nobody believed the French. The entire country, all Frenchmen in general, and the folks who worked at the European Branch Office in Paris.
FTFY
Admin
No, since the fall of the USSR, you Europeans really do have, per capita, more laws and regulations than most of the rest of the world combined, US included. You really do have the government's finger up your asshole from cradle to grave.
The whole date thing is indicative: the US government has wanted to switch over to metric, and would gladly adopted the ISO standard, but they do not have the power to force the country to do that. Individual states can do it, but the feds can't, even with the ridiculously broad interpretations of the commerce clause and general welfare clause.
Admin
I used to be a consultant to the US Air Force, and we regularly used dd-mmm-yy, e.g. 05-Jul-2011. This is more difficult to sort and to parse, but it does have the distinct advantage of being unambiguous in the face of competing formats. That is, if you see 05-07-2011 does that mean 5th of July or May 7th? But 05-Jul-2011 is pretty obvious.
Admin
Yeah, I could understand if Date were a class and it had year, month and day properties. If it were under System, it would make plenty of sense.
Though, if you really want to internationalize, not just "make it work in Europe, too" you might want to handle the Chinese, the civil Islamic and the Hebrew calendars.
Admin
I think "entire world" means "including places outside of Texas".
I used to live in Ohio. I went to visit a friend in Texas. She introduced me to another Texan, noting that I was from "up north". He replied, "Like from around Dallas?"
Admin
That might be a NATO standard. It's definitely used in all the US services.
And you can actually get a 24-hour, analog clock. They're really hard to tell time with, which is probably why the Army loves them.
Admin
Nice try, except that that date format was around hundreds of years before the EU.
Admin
Yeah, these new kids are all using flash drives, and before you know it, nobody knows how to read paper tape any more. What are they going to do when the flash drive fails and there's nothing available but paper tape? Then what, huh?
Admin
Wrong. My Chinese colleagues (sitting in Shanghai) write mm/dd/yyyy. And I am European, so it's not because they are trying to be compatible with me.
Admin
Probably something like a Chicken Tikka Masala, maybe a Jalfrezi. Spicier than a Korma, but not in Vindaloo territory.
Admin
"letting users run as Administrator"
I liked the similar comment from the Microsoft MVP in that linked-to article "should prevent unauthorized users".
A TWTF is so much software that still wants users to run as administrator. The Microsoft taskbar date display comes directly to mind.
Admin
Admin
Within China, addresses are big-endian (e.g., province city district street number).
Admin
Duh! Just run the reports on Jan 1, Feb 2, March 3, etc.
Admin
We may put our adjectives before the nouns, but we put longer descriptive phrases/clauses after the nouns. And sometimes we even put the adjectives after the nouns.
Admin
Of course, you're not in charge of software used in Europe. At least, I hope you're not...
Admin
Chinese is big-endian, so mm/dd (or mm.dd or mm月dd日) makes sense. When I was there, years usually preceded, either yyyy.mm.dd or yyyy年mm月dd日.
But I also noticed that most Chinese preferred US English, so a preference for mm/dd/yyyy has a rational explanation.
Admin
The Real WTF is the fact the developers didn't switch to French OS / Language / Keyboards when regressing, when it initially came back clean.
Reminds me of a web problem that only happened in China. After installing VirtualBox, a Win XP Chinese version and running the test we noticed that IE installs with different security settings in different parts of the world.
Admin
For all you who claim the US is 'out of step with the rest of the world', do you put the day first or the year first? That might make a difference.
Of course, people who use weakly typed languages, and who trust string conversions to pass numeric values, just beg to be hit by these kinds of bugs. And note these are problems with scalars, so a language with strongly typed objects, but weekly typed scalars, is no hope here (or for any other common situation where you try to add 'count of apples' to 'count of oranges.')
Admin
No, I say 5 July 2011. No need for ordinals. (Yes, I am an US-ian)
Admin
"Yes, I am an US-ian"
Since you are unable to use the correct demonym for a citizen of the US, who really cares that you have your own special way(within the context of your countrymen) to say the date.
Admin
But you say "the 4th of July" (or at least the New York Times does), and we do actually say things like "the 5th of July Two Thousand and Eleven" here in the civilised world ;o)
Admin
TRWTF is running the report generation software with admin rights.