h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some guys at Swatch spent a lot of time working all this stuff out, while the rest of us were busy living our lives, calculating time easily and if necessary converting everything back to GMT (or Zulu time if you're in the British Forces)
This @ time wins my award for the uselessly futile invention

But it's a great marketing trick, isn't it?
I bet they've even got patents pending on that (and which clockmaker wouldn't like to have a patent on time )

Yeah, exactly. We have GMT so what´s the point of just putting some new dateline in switzerland? But I wouldn´t be surprised if a lot of people have bought it anyway. Usually when you talk to Americans for example, they want you to do calculations in Eastern Standard Time even if you tell them the rest of the world runs with GMT. The decimalising was a good idea though, even if it should have been done more thourough. Everything with months days and years should have been changed. To the Maya calender for example.

What do you mean the rest of the world doesn't calculate time using Eastern Standard Time?!
Then again, I suppose you're right, 1/2 the time they use Eastern Daylight Saving Time!

To really get to decimals we could just build watches which show the unix time format (milliseconds since January 1, 1970)

I don't see the point of making time metric. We already have perfectly servicable hours and minutes doing quite a good job of breaking the day into managable bits. Why in the name of whichever deity gets invoked when people do something interesting yet entirely useless would anybody do this?

The reason someone would do this is to get their name (i.e. Swatch) out there for some quick, corporate product placement! Free advertising, anyone?
'Excuse me, what time is it?'
'Why it's 03:23Swatch'

Just to clarify, Unix Standard Time (I don't know if that's the official name, but in any case, the number that's used to time stamp files and such) is the number of _seconds_ since January 1, 1970, GMT, not milliseconds. I think that by default it's a 32 bit number, so it rolls over in 203x (I don't remember the exact year).

There is a unit used in the Linux kernel used for short timing intervals, called jiffies, I think. They are 1/100th of a second.

Now I give up. You're telling me that a Jiffy has an official length of time? This is the end of the world for all women.

seconds seconds seconds. Trying to remember next time.

Unix will rollover on Jan. 19, 2039 at 3:14:07 am.

As soon as we adopt Unix Standard Time, someone will start using Windows Standard Time (1980) and Macintosh Standard Time (2 Jan 1904, but maybe 1956 depending on the model).

The official name of Unix Standard Time? Well, I don't know how official it is, but it's called 'The Epoch'.

The official name of Unix Standard Time? Well, I don't know how official it is, but it's called 'The Epoch'.

How come Eunichs get their own timeframe?

There will be no problem at all about the time rolling over in 2039, as by then the linux kernel will be using 64bit numbers for times and dates, and most unixes (exept bsd) will be running linux (as lots of unix manufacturers are).

Macintosh standard time is always returned as seconds since 1904. The 1956 is used internally by the system only. Incidentally, Macintosh time doesn't roll over until shortly before the 300th century.