"DoN. Nichols" on 12 Sep 2011 03:44:27 GMT
typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:
On 2011-09-12, wrote:
On 12 Sep 2011 01:26:14 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2011-09-11, David Billington wrote:

I wasn't born when JFK got shot by about a year but I can remember

[ ... ]

As a side question what is the background to the US date system of
month/day/year as it seems nonsensical to me, I lived with it for 12
years when in the US, but ascending or descending precedence make
sense but mixed precedence seems bizarre.

What you see is the written form of the oral convention "It was
August, the twenty third day." (Even though a lot of people also say
"It is the twenty third of July".


I have to agree, and I have to live with it all the time.
(Except when *I* define the format. I tend to prefer YYYY-MM-DD so files
so marked will sort in chronological order. (And the '-' because on
unix, '/' is the subdirectory delimiter.

YYYY MM DD is "ISO Standard" and the usual standard of computer
geeks the world around.

[ ... ]

In Canada d/m/y is becoming the standard.


Which *still* does not sort properly.

BTW I also prefer the GB/European way of naming particularly
large numbers (e.g. "billion" is one million million (10^12), not
one thousand million (10^9), and "trillion" is one billion
million (10^18), not 10^12.

That is because, back when decimal notation was first in use, the
term "million", Billion and Trillion had not been invented. But
decimals were "bunch" in groups of there or six. I.E., large numbers
(such as the US Debt at 147301988355) would be written either 14 730
198 835 or 14730 198835 . As the terminology was adopted in various
places, the first bunch (reading from the right) is thousands, the
second millions, the third billions and so forth.

--
pyotr filipivich
We will drink no whiskey before its nine.
It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!