When will it arrive?

[BurfordTJustice]

Most of us learned that in 5th grade or before. 12 AM is midnight. 12 PM is noon. There would be less confusion in the world with a 24 hour clock. We all know that 00:00 is 24:00

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

24:00 should be 00:00 tomorrow.

[sam E]

[snip]

Yes, and how about 3600?

[micky]

My microwave can handle that. I can put in 1:30 or 90 and it works the same. I haven't tried 3600 yet, but it probably works too.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

It would be strange to have 12:00:00 AM followed (in 1 second) by

12:00:01 PM. People do do strange things, but usually not that one.

[Ralph Mowery]

I also grew up when there were no digital clocks for the most part. There were some but they had mechanical numbers that clicked off. No digital watches that I know of in the mid 1950's when I learned to tell time.

I always refer to noon and not 12 PM, but would call it 12:01 PM. Same as for AM being in the dark part of the night and midnight.

While not the offical calling, we were tought to think of the AM as being At Morning and PM being Past Morning.

Not sure if there is an offical way or not to do it.

[Ralph Mowery]

I didn't even know anywhere but the US had the DST. Interisting that they would not go to a whole hour when they switch.

[trader_4]

An interesting re-invention of history. I've existed a lot longer than the digital watch and like Ed, I knew as a kid that 12AM was midnight, 12PM was noon. It's hard to imagine that with the 12 hour clock system, that dates back many centuries, the issue of whether noon is 12PM or 12AM or neither, never came up and it took the digial watch for that to happen. I suspect 12PM being noon was arrived at shortly after the concept went into use. It certainly was what I grew up knowing in the 60s, before digital watches.

[trader_4]

That's a very good point. The rest of that entire 12:xx hour is in the PM period. Makes a lot more sense to associate the 12:00 instant to it, than to the 11AM hour. And clearly convention has always been for 12AM to refer to midnight, 12PM to noon, in my lifetime. With or without digital watches.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

A few months back I ordered a book from the UK on a Saturday. Estimated delivery was 3 to 6 weeks by surface mail. It was delivered in the USA on the following Saturday.

The "free shipping" from NewEgg and other online vendors often involves pickup by UPS, FedEx or DHL and transfer to the USPS for delivery. IOW, USPS can deliver things more cheaply than any of those other services. Just once a small package got lost between UPS and USPS (NewEgg shipped a replacement), but other than that I have no complaints.

Perce

[Percival P. Cassidy]

In the UK DST is called "British Summer Time" (BST). During WW2 and for many years after, there was "British Double Summer Time": *two* hours of Daylight Saving Time for a short period each year.

Perce

[Guv Bob]

If it were shipped by post office, it wouldn't really matter what time they said it would arrive.

[Phil Kangas]

Nah. I prefer date format like this: 08jun14 for example. If this was written 08/06/14 is it the eigth of june or august sixth?

[Guv Bob]

time they said it would arrive.

Estimated

USPS is fine for the big junk mailers and 1st class individual pieces. They deliver those right on time. Little mailers like my group (1500 pieces) gets no respect, no respect I tell you. Delivery within 75 mile radius is anywhere from 4 to 12 days for standard mail. First class is supposed to be 1-2 days, but if we mail 1st class with imprint instead of 1st class stamps, it's a week.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Good luck with your effort to educate 99% of the world. Right or wrong, common usage still puts noon at 12:00 PM

I also see many metric countries dating dd/mm/yyyy. I deal mostly with Canada, Italy, Austria, China.

[micky]

And the rest of the 12:00 minute. And the rest of the 12:00:00 second. And the rest of the 12:00:00.0 tenth of a second, and so on.

Everything is post noon except the very instant of noon.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Order of decreasing significance (big-endian), month written with letters (to avoid ambiguity). That's good, but is it June 14, 2008? It'd be even better with 4 digits for the year.

BTW, It's also 1408110819 (Unix clock).

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Little-endian, and with 4 digits for the year so you can tell it's that way.