I’ve always felt the idea of decimal time was backwards, and that base 60 as a base is far superior. 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30. Of course it doesn’t make much difference to a computer, but to people it makes it more likely that we can deal in a simple ratio (third of an hour = 20 minutes). Of course, it would be a far bigger lift to switch number systems.
Yeah 60 indeed has nice numeric properties. So does 24h but IMO it’s far less useful in practice. Apparently the roots are in Egypt. wikipedia.org/wiki/Decan
Jesus. It doesn’t even list Vinge’s version… we just count everything in seconds. The ksec (kilosecond) is the unit used to indicate things that will happen in the near future (see you in 3 ksecs). The msec (megasecond) is used much like we use for weeks, and the gsec is used much like we now use decades. Only geologists really use tsecs.
Maybe it would be a good time to fix that too and move to decimal time while we’re at it.
I’ve always felt the idea of decimal time was backwards, and that base 60 as a base is far superior. 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30. Of course it doesn’t make much difference to a computer, but to people it makes it more likely that we can deal in a simple ratio (third of an hour = 20 minutes). Of course, it would be a far bigger lift to switch number systems.
Yeah 60 indeed has nice numeric properties. So does 24h but IMO it’s far less useful in practice. Apparently the roots are in Egypt. wikipedia.org/wiki/Decan
Each day is composed of 10 hours, each of those of 10 minutes, each of those 100 seconds. There are 100 days in a year.
The difficult part will be modifying Earth’s orbit.
HA…what’s the startdate today again?
What’s decimal time? 100 hour day, 100 seconds in a minute, etc?
There are different proposals, 10 “hour” day is the traditional one. See wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time
Jesus. It doesn’t even list Vinge’s version… we just count everything in seconds. The ksec (kilosecond) is the unit used to indicate things that will happen in the near future (see you in 3 ksecs). The msec (megasecond) is used much like we use for weeks, and the gsec is used much like we now use decades. Only geologists really use tsecs.
And there’s no need to reinvent the wheel, we can just use UNIX time!
Pretty much. Though in Deepness in the Sky, code archeologists believe that zero seconds dates to the landing on the moon, rather than 1970.