[TimG]

12:00 AM in New York, 06:00 in Paris

[Walddk]

Midnight Eastern Standard Time (EST), 6 in the morning Central European Time (CET). Paris is 6 hours ahead of New York.

The most significant problem arises when we have a vugraph broadcast starting on say February 11 at 8:00 pm New York time. That will be 02.00 in Paris, BUT on February 12.

Generally speaking, I am referring to our session starting times on our vugraph schedule web page at

http://www.bridgebas.../online/vg.html

There is no ideal solution to this "problem", but I think our members know what we mean. The thing is, however, that many are too lazy to look it up. That's why I get bombarded with questions as to when the next broadcast begins. It's easier to ask me I suppose.

Roland

[TimG]

Walddk, on Feb 10 2005, 11:12 AM, said:

http://www.bridgebas.../online/vg.html

I was looking at that page when I found: 12 AM NY, 6 Paris. Yes, Paris is six hours ahead of NY, so that might have meant noon in NY and 6 PM in Paris.

[Walddk]

TimG, on Feb 10 2005, 12:59 PM, said:

Walddk, on Feb 10 2005, 11:12 AM, said:

http://www.bridgebas.../online/vg.html

I was looking at that page when I found: 12 AM NY, 6 Paris. Yes, Paris is six hours ahead of NY, so that might have meant noon in NY and 6 PM in Paris.

No Tim, 12 noon in New York would be 12:00 PM. That is how it's witten. I know this for a fact although I am not from or don't live in an English speaking country where AM's and PM's flourish.

Furthermore, 06:00 in Paris can only be in the morning. 6 in the evening is 18.00 in European terminology.

Roland

[inquiry]

Walddk, on Feb 10 2005, 02:22 PM, said:

TimG, on Feb 10 2005, 12:59 PM, said:

Walddk, on Feb 10 2005, 11:12 AM, said:

http://www.bridgebas.../online/vg.html

I was looking at that page when I found: 12 AM NY, 6 Paris. Yes, Paris is six hours ahead of NY, so that might have meant noon in NY and 6 PM in Paris.

No Tim, 12 noon in New York would be 12:00 PM. That is how it's witten. I know this for a fact although I am not from or don't live in an English speaking country where AM's and PM's flourish.

Furthermore, 06:00 in Paris can only be in the morning. 6 in the evening is 18.00 in European terminology.

Roland

Well, I am not sure this is technically correct.

The question of if noon is 12 AM or 12 PM has plagued those of us using this archeic system for years. When I set my alarm or VCR, I set it 11:59AM if I want to record at noon, just to be sure. Every catch a plane that is scheduled to take off at 12 AM or 12 PM? I doubt it, for the same reason.

NIST (an agency of the Department of Commerce) says on its webpage that the terms 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. are wrong and should not be used.

They talk about "a.m" and "p.m." being the abbreviations for "ante meridiem" and "post meridiem" or "before noon" and "after noon," respectively. They state that Noon is neither before or after noon; it is simply noon. Therefore, neither the "a.m." nor "p.m." designation is correct.

However, if you accept microsoft as all things true.. when their clock gets one second added to it at 11:59:59 PM, the calander changes and the time displayed is 12:00:00 AM. (so for MS at least, 12:00:00 Ante meridian is actually 12 hours before noon, not after it...). Those of you think MS can never get anything right, probably figure their clock is all wrong (their clock agrees with Roland).

I have seen people use 12 AM to mean midnight and noon, and 12 PM for both as well.... arghhhhh can't we just say noon and midnight and be done with it... or better yet, go to 24 hour clock like the civilized world????

Ben

[TimG]

Walddk, on Feb 10 2005, 01:22 PM, said:

TimG, on Feb 10 2005, 12:59 PM, said:

Walddk, on Feb 10 2005, 11:12 AM, said:

http://www.bridgebas.../online/vg.html

I was looking at that page when I found: 12 AM NY, 6 Paris. Yes, Paris is six hours ahead of NY, so that might have meant noon in NY and 6 PM in Paris.

No Tim, 12 noon in New York would be 12:00 PM. That is how it's witten. I know this for a fact although I am not from or don't live in an English speaking country where AM's and PM's flourish.

Furthermore, 06:00 in Paris can only be in the morning. 6 in the evening is 18.00 in European terminology.

It makes perfect sense that 06:00 means 6 AM. I missed that. But, now I understand why you labeled 12:00 and not 06:00. Do they really do this in Europe, or is midnight 00:00 and noon 12:00?

You are not right about 12 AM being midnight. Midnight (or noon) is neither AM nor PM.

Tim

[Walddk]

inquiry, on Feb 10 2005, 02:11 PM, said:

I have seen people use 12 AM to mean midnight and noon, and 12 PM for both as well.... arghhhhh can't we just say noon and midnight and be done with it... or better yet, go to 24 hour clock like the civilized world????

Ben

Excellent idea Ben. So your civilized world refers to Europe I take it. 7:13, 9:59, 12:11, 16:01, 20:48, 23:31, 24:06, 1:17, etc.

Then there is no ambiguity! But can North Americans get used to this is the question.

Roland

[Walddk]

TimG, on Feb 10 2005, 02:25 PM, said:

Do they really do this in Europe, or is midnight 00:00 and noon 12:00?

Tim

Yes Tim. Midnight in Europe is 00:00 or 24:00, noon is 12:00. Again, no ambiguity.

Roland

[MickyB]

According to the bus timetable, I narrowly missed the 2500 bus home the other night, and the 2640 only runs on Saturdays.

But yes, having am and pm is silly. The 24 hour clock is an improvement, but I'm waiting for metric time to take over!

[TimG]

Yes, I think Americans could get used to 00:00 to 23:59. We call it military time.

[cherdano]

Walddk, on Feb 10 2005, 07:38 PM, said:

TimG, on Feb 10 2005, 02:25 PM, said:

Do they really do this in Europe, or is midnight 00:00 and noon 12:00?

Tim

Yes Tim. Midnight in Europe is 00:00 or 24:00, noon is 12:00. Again, no ambiguity.

Roland

But I definitely have never seen 24:06 etc. used in German. Maybe it's still not the same across Europe?

[fred]

TimG, on Feb 10 2005, 09:59 PM, said:

Yes, I think Americans could get used to 00:00 to 23:59. We call it military time.

I think most Americans would prefer to stick with their traditional time conventions and get used to 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM having regular meanings on our vugraph schedule web page.

If using 12:00 AM for midnight and 12:00 PM for noon is really causing problems for people, I suppose we could just say "midnight" and "noon" for the few sessions each year that take place at these times.

We must be doing a lot of things right if this people find this issue is worth raising

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Gerben47]

Quote

We must be doing a lot of things right if this people find this issue is worth raising

You are!

So far I understand all of this, AM is between 0:00 and 12:00, and PM is between 12:00 and 24:00. What confuses me the most is that 12:40 PM is earlier in the day than 11:40 PM! No wonder people make mistakes with this!

To comfort Roland, I have never seen 24:06 either. Although when I did not sleep at all during the night I sometimes refer to noon as 36:00

If you want metric time you'd have to change the whole clock because there are now 86400 seconds in a day, and metric time would prefer 100000 seconds in a day. Now that would mean a new second is 0.864 old seconds, one minute is 100 seconds and one hour is 10000 seconds. People would also invent a name for 1000 seconds as this is a good precision for making an appointment with someone. Perhaps a quarter as it is almost a quarter of a traditional hour.
"See you at 56 quarters" would then mean 5:60:00. Oh well, one can dream.

I guess this proposal has no chance, it will be discarded for being too sensible.

[MickyB]

Lol yes...although I could imagine that your "quarter" could be confused with a quarter of a metric hour...how about calling it a tenth?!

Of course, the real challenge is changing the Earth's orbit and/or rotation to allow for a metric calendar.

[Walddk]

Gerben47, on Feb 10 2005, 06:03 PM, said:

What confuses me the most is that 12:40 PM is earlier in the day than 11:40 PM! No wonder people make mistakes with this!

It's even worse than that Gerben. 12:59 pm is also earlier than 1:00 pm!

Some time ago I invented "Freddish". I will leave to you to figure out what that stands for. All I can say is that there is plenty of room for error when one has to convert 11:45 am Brisbane time to New York, London, Paris and Sydney times.

I don't know who invented GMT, UTC, EST, PST, CET, MST, CEST, AEST, IST etc., but it sure is confusing.

Long live The World Clock - Time Zones!

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/

Roland

[Gerardo]

GMT (Greenwich Meridian Time) and UTC (Universal Coordinate(d?) time) are equivalent.

Greenwich is a suburb of London where there is an Observatory, it was chosen as meridian 0º by convention (I guess in older times, where England/UK was (more) powerful (than today). Was done mostly for uniform way of express locations, particularly useful at sea).

Being Greenwich merdian 0º, it makes sense to be the referral way to compare too (Guess all* the world uses GMT(or maybe UTC, since 1972, I think)+/-nnnn to tell what timezone are you using).

OTOH, EST, PST, CET, MST, CEST, AEST, IST are just abbreviations for some UTC+/-nnnn, probably not unique.

After this digression, the vugraph page will change to take the time from your web browser, and present it at your local time, as myhands and the news about maintenance (Your local time + your timezone) do (but without putting it in the URL)

* But United States and maybe Canada