POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.competition : anyone there ?? Server Time
29 Mar 2024 11:43:24 EDT (-0400)
  anyone there ?? (Message 13 to 22 of 22)  
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From: scott
Subject: Re: anyone there ??
Date: 19 Oct 2004 04:10:42
Message: <4174cc02@news.povray.org>
Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> The word "midnight" is not ambiguous at all.  It is well defined in
> every English dictionary.

The problem is that although midnight is defined as "the middle of the
night", or 12 o'clock, if you say "Tuesday at midnight", it is unclear
whether you mean the midnight at the beginning of Tuesday, or the midnight
at the end of Tuesday.

> Personally I am really disappointed that a few people here try to
> infer bad intentions by default and challenge even the most basic and
> common terms of every day life.  IMHO this is not only inappropriate
> but also uncalled for.

Even in everyday life people get confused with dates and times when not
explained exactly.  That is why the ISO-8601 standard exists and is used by
anyone who has anything important to do with date and time.

I'm sorry you feel it was uncalled for, but I was only just suggesting that
for next time it would be far simpler just to follow the standard rather
than getting arguments from people.
From: Thorsten Froehlich
Subject: Re: anyone there ??
Date: 19 Oct 2004 05:05:41
Message: <4174d8e5$1@news.povray.org>
In article <4174cc02@news.povray.org> , "scott" <sco### [at] spamcom> wrote:

>> The word "midnight" is not ambiguous at all.  It is well defined in
>> every English dictionary.
>
> The problem is that although midnight is defined as "the middle of the
> night", or 12 o'clock, if you say "Tuesday at midnight", it is unclear
> whether you mean the midnight at the beginning of Tuesday, or the midnight
> at the end of Tuesday.

There is only one 12 o'clock in the evening, and it is the one that follows
the 11 o'clock in the evening.  If you wish to discuss the philosophical
aspects of "midnight", please do so in p.off-topic and please do not attempt
to create ambiguity where there absolutely is none.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org
From: scott
Subject: Re: anyone there ??
Date: 19 Oct 2004 06:41:46
Message: <4174ef6a@news.povray.org>
Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> In article <4174cc02@news.povray.org> , "scott" <sco### [at] spamcom>
> wrote:
>
>>> The word "midnight" is not ambiguous at all.  It is well defined in
>>> every English dictionary.
>>
>> The problem is that although midnight is defined as "the middle of
>> the night", or 12 o'clock, if you say "Tuesday at midnight", it is
>> unclear whether you mean the midnight at the beginning of Tuesday,
>> or the midnight at the end of Tuesday.
>
> There is only one 12 o'clock in the evening, and it is the one that
> follows the 11 o'clock in the evening.  If you wish to discuss the
> philosophical aspects of "midnight", please do so in p.off-topic and
> please do not attempt to create ambiguity where there absolutely is
> none.

Calm down! I never said there was any ambiguity with the rules (although it
appears there was), I was only suggesting that you might use the correct
standard in future to be sure of avoiding any ambiguity.
From: Thorsten Froehlich
Subject: Re: anyone there ??
Date: 19 Oct 2004 06:55:15
Message: <4174f293@news.povray.org>
In article <4174ef6a@news.povray.org> , "scott" <sco### [at] spamcom> wrote:

> Calm down! I never said there was any ambiguity with the rules (although it
> appears there was), I was only suggesting that you might use the correct
> standard in future to be sure of avoiding any ambiguity.

Be honest to yourself: How many people do you think are able to read ISO
8601 times and dates correctly?  More than who understand the word
"midnight"?  BTW, these are rhetorical questions.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org
From: =Bob=
Subject: Re: anyone there ??
Date: 19 Oct 2004 16:18:39
Message: <4175769f@news.povray.org>
"Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote in message
news:4174f293@news.povray.org...
[deletions]
: Be honest to yourself: How many people do you think are able to read ISO
: 8601 times and dates correctly?  More than who understand the word
: "midnight"?  BTW, these are rhetorical questions.

What I find interesting is this from the standard itself:
===============================================
An example time is

  23:59:59

which represents the time one second before midnight.

=Bob=
From: povray
Subject: Re: anyone there ??
Date: 19 Oct 2004 19:02:26
Message: <5htan0ljcijdhoeag663j86smfvqgvkrte@4ax.com>
On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 17:52:31 +0200, "Thorsten Froehlich"
<tho### [at] trfde> wrote:

>
>Personally I am really disappointed that a few people here try to infer bad
>intentions by default and challenge even the most basic and common terms of
>every day life.  IMHO this is not only inappropriate but also uncalled for.
>

A contest with such a large prize tends to bring this out
in people.  I'm just amazed it's not gotten even worse
than it has.





-- 
to all the companies who wait until a large user base becomes
dependant on their freeware, then shafting said happy campers with
mandatory payment for continued usage. I spit on your grave.
From: =Bob=
Subject: Re: anyone there ??
Date: 19 Oct 2004 21:45:32
Message: <4175c33c@news.povray.org>
Come'on now, ya gotta think it's pretty ironic that the
ISO standard has that exact verbiage...


: What I find interesting is this from the standard itself:
: ===============================================
: An example time is
:   23:59:59
: which represents the time one second before midnight.
: =Bob=
From: Jeremy M  Praay
Subject: Re: anyone there ??
Date: 19 Oct 2004 22:19:05
Message: <4175cb19$1@news.povray.org>
Continued in off-topic.
(My last post is no longer here, so I think that was a hint.)
-- 
Jeremy
www.beantoad.com
From: Glenn
Subject: Re: anyone there ??
Date: 20 Oct 2004 23:20:00
Message: <web.417729d612fa79c84f84ca0b0@news.povray.org>
For what it's worth, I too had the same question about the deadline, and
certainly didn't want to make a costly mistake.  I asked several people
about the exact meaning of "midnight October 15 2004, Australian Eastern
Standard Time" as stated in the rules -- and got conflicting responses from
them.  So I looked at several dictionaries, which didn't help: one site
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Midnight even says, "each day thus has two
midnights, one at the start and one at the end" in its definition of
"midnight"!  I then contacted the competition organizers for clarification.
 They replied that due to apparent confusion, the deadline had been
extended.
I like the suggestion of using the ISO 8601 standard and eliminating the
word "midnight".
From: Fernando G  del Cueto
Subject: Re: anyone there ??
Date: 21 Oct 2004 19:43:36
Message: <417849a8$1@news.povray.org>
Perhaps it is not to you, but it is for some of us. I think it is sad to 
infer that people have bad intentions instead of giving them the benefit 
of the doubt and understand that there is an actual confusion.

The other day some friends and I were buying some online tickets for an 
event that began at "midnight". We were not sure if we should buy them 
for that day or the next one exactly because of this ambiguity in the 
system.
We were not trying to exploit anything. We had an honest question and 
didn't want to possibly waste our money because of this uncertainty.

Fernando



Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> The word "midnight" is not ambiguous at all.  It is well defined in every 
> English dictionary.
> 
> Personally I am really disappointed that a few people here try to infer bad
> intentions by default and challenge even the most basic and common terms of
> every day life.  IMHO this is not only inappropriate but also uncalled for.
> 
>     Thorsten
> 
> ____________________________________________________
> Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
> e-mail: tho### [at] trfde
> 
> Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org
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