What the Food



  • Seen in a M&S store in Hong Kong - Christmas Mince Pies with a use-by date of 24/12/2007.

    I wonder if they'll be all-right if I wait just a couple more days... 

    I'm afraid I don't have a photo to substantiate this.



  • Christmas food may or may not be consumed before, during or after the christmas days. All food will eventaully expire (except twinkies). Where's the wtf?



  • If you're going to make a batch of Christmas Mince Pies, don't you think you'd time it so that they expired after Christmas day? In our house, the only time of year we consume these kinds of mince pies (the little spicey ones) is at Christmas, on or after Christmas day. I guess you could consume it before Christmas day, but I don't think most people would.



  • The real WTF - European dates.



  • @mrprogguy said:

    The real WTF - European dates.

     

    Why?

    At least they are in some sort of order... may be ascending is not that good..

    and descending would be better..   2007.12.24   at least for sorting..

     

    but whats the Point in the US date format ?
     



  • @Quicksilver said:

    and descending would be better..   2007.12.24   at least for sorting.. 



    We Hungarians use that form. It's also an ISO standard.



  • 2007.12.24 is better for computers (sorting and such), well technically a UNIX epoch timestamp would be best, but what ya gonna go?

    But the European format of 24/12/2007 is best for people. Think about it; the day changes the most, then month, then year. By having the date (which is different most frequently) right at the beginning, you can look at the date and straight away know what day it is. I could guess that it was December 2007 without looking; it's been the same for 24 days already!



  • @mrprogguy said:

    The real WTF - European dates.


    Well, the difference between it and ISO is just a question of Endianness (I prefer ISO).
    US dates, however...



  • @Lingerance said:

    Christmas food may or may not be consumed before, during or after the christmas days. All food will eventaully expire (except twinkies). Where's the wtf?

     Actually twinkies do expire.  its a common myth that they don't   Keep one in your house for about a month or two and it will be rancid



  • @galgorah said:

    @Lingerance said:

    Christmas food may or may not be consumed before, during or after the christmas days. All food will eventaully expire (except twinkies). Where's the wtf?

     Actually twinkies do expire.  its a common myth that they don't   Keep one in your house for about a month or two and it will be rancid

    But whats NOT a myth is that twinkies won't expire until after the xmas of the current year. Try it on the 26th put a twinky somewheres... It will be good until the 26th of next yr. At that moment it will go rancid and implode onto itself. 



  • @capnPedro said:

    2007.12.24 is better for computers (sorting and such), well technically a UNIX epoch timestamp would be best, but what ya gonna go?

    But the European format of 24/12/2007 is best for people. Think about it; the day changes the most, then month, then year. By having the date (which is different most frequently) right at the beginning, you can look at the date and straight away know what day it is. I could guess that it was December 2007 without looking; it's been the same for 24 days already!

    While I'm not a fan of the US-style for dates, the above reasoning for the European format is pretty weak. It takes the same effort to look at a US-styled date and "straight away know what day it is" (assuming one knows beforehand that it is US-styled). 



  • @Balthazaar said:

    It takes the same effort to look at a US-styled date and "straight away know what day it is" (assuming one knows beforehand that it is US-styled). 

    Strictly speaking, I agree with your phrasing.

    Practically speaking, the set of ambiguous dates is fairly large, and often one has just the date, and no intel on whether it is US or EU format. And sometimes you have a date with two digits for each period.



  • Use the polish format. 24 XII 2007.

    I'd like to catch the opportunity to complain that my roommate prepared tuna noodles on Saturday and on Tuesday they were kinda expired :(



  • I like the ISO ... assuming that's the one where it would be 24-dec-2007 as opposed to 24-12-2007. 

    I HATE ORACLE so I'll bring this up now.  We have a table that tracks when certain parts were configured in a certain way, so each part has a continuous stream like so:

    part_no.    start_date      end_date        engine_no

    1              1-jan-1900      1-may-1999    1

    1               2-may-1999   31-jan-2004    2

    1               1-feb-2004     31-dec-9999   3

    31-dec-9999 denotes that that's where that part is currently, and 1-jan-1900 denotes the first engine on which that part was.  Looks alright, right?   Well the WTF is that in SQL developer (ORACLE'S OWN DEVELOPMENT TOOL), all those dates are shown with a two digit year.  So I was trying to figure out why a part was on an engine from '04 to '99, until I ungraded to a better development tool that would give me a 4 digit year.

    Disclaimer:  I did not design this table. 



  • @capnPedro said:

    But the European format of 24/12/2007 is best for people. Think about it; the day changes the most, then month, then year. By having the date (which is different most frequently) right at the beginning, you can look at the date and straight away know what day it is. I could guess that it was December 2007 without looking; it's been the same for 24 days already!



    So using your logic, a single day changes more than 10's of days so we should write the day as 42. Thus we should write the full date as 42/21/7002.

    Since we're used to writing the most significant part of numbers first and we express dates with numbers, the only logical choise is 2007-12-24.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ThomasEgo said:



    So using your logic, <snip> 

    Uh-huh.

    I see.

    Couldn't you have at least brought a car to the analogy?



  • @PJH said:

    @ThomasEgo said:



    So using your logic, <snip> 

    Uh-huh.

    I see.

    Couldn't you have at least brought a car to the analogy?

    Put your dates the right way around or I will drop a car on your head. 



  • @asuffield said:

    @PJH said:

    @ThomasEgo said:



    So using your logic, <snip> 

    Uh-huh.

    I see.

    Couldn't you have at least brought a car to the analogy?

    Put your dates the right way around or I will drop a car on your head. 

    *snort*

    setup — laff



  • @drysdall said:

    If you're going to make a batch of Christmas Mince Pies, don't you think you'd time it so that they expired after Christmas day? In our house, the only time of year we consume these kinds of mince pies (the little spicey ones) is at Christmas, on or after Christmas day. I guess you could consume it before Christmas day, but I don't think most people would.

    Well...they come out of a factory that's producing pretty much every single day in the run-up to Christmas, and that in the UK at least means they need to be appearing in the stores around September, even though they'll expire WELL before Christmas Day. The shelf life will be fixed, say 28 days or whatever, so it's inevitable that there will be some boxes expiring on the 24th. And I think plenty of people (including myself) would happily eat them before Christmas Day anyway.

    Also, I've taken to writing all dates with the 3-letter month abbreviation, for example 4 Jan 08. Except when in file names, then I use ISO, eg 2008-01-04. The US and Europe disagreeing on ##/##/## formats makes them all unusable IMHO.

    But I think the difference in order parallels spoken usage anyway. In the UK we'll often say "The 16th of January" whereas in the US I believe "January the 16th" is more common.



  • I write dated folders as 2007 12 dec 7.

    Sortability + readability because I can't remember which number is which month. 



  • how exactly is 2007/12/24 easier to sort for a computer than 12/24/2007.   I'm assuming you aren't storing dates in your system as strings!



  • @tster said:

    how exactly is 2007/12/24 easier to sort for a computer than 12/24/2007.   I'm assuming you aren't storing dates in your system as strings!
    If you're naming files with dates, then you're storing the dates as strings. (Yes the files have timestamps, but they may be unrelated to the date in the filename)


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Quicksilver said:

    At least they are in some sort of order... may be ascending is not that good..

    and descending would be better..   2007.12.24   at least for sorting..

    but whats the Point in the US date format ?

    US dates aren't there for sorting.  They are the way the are, because that's how most people [in the US, at least] speak the date.  We would say, "December twenty-fourth, two thousand seven."  Since that's the way we speak, that's the way we write the date.  The US military tends to use the European ordering of elements, but writes the month with a three letter abbreviation to avoid ambiguity (24Dec2007).  Again, that's not for the convenience of computers, but the people who use the data. 


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