What's messing with your Groove?

[EyeKhan]

Why aren't October, November and December the 8th, 9th and 10th months of the year? Who fucked that up anyway?

[Ominous Gamer]

I got the roughly same e-mail from Tivo, except they didn't name who their e-mail provider was. I'm guessing that it's also Epsilon.

Dear Capital One Customer,

As we have communicated over the course of the last week, Epsilon—a marketing vendor that sends e-mails on our behalf—notified us about unauthorized outside access to files that included Capital One® customer e-mail addresses.

The information obtained was limited to the e-mail address of some customers. No account information or other information was compromised. We’ll continue to provide updates when we have important new information to share. And, we’ll let you know what impact, if any, these developments will have on you.

Protecting our customers’ information is always a top priority for Capital One. We’re working with Epsilon and law enforcement, and we’re thoroughly investigating this incident to help prevent future ones like it. Epsilon is also conducting its own comprehensive investigation in cooperation with the appropriate authorities.

It’s always a good idea to ignore any e-mail that requests your confidential account or login information. And don’t forget, if you get an e-mail you think is suspicious, don’t click any of the links. Just send it to us at abuse@capitalone.com. Then delete it.

We apologize for any inconvenience this unfortunate incident has caused and appreciate your patience. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.capitalone.com.

Sincerely,
Capital One

Best Buy, the people who want my money, a full week faster than Capital One, the people who control my money.

[Loki]

Why aren't October, November and December the 8th, 9th and 10th months of the year? Who fucked that up anyway?

The names are based on a Roman calendar that had 10 months that didn't include 2 months of winter. The first month was March and the last December.

[EyeKhan]

So shouldn't January be 11 and February 12?

[Loki]

So shouldn't January be 11 and February 12?

No, they were added in front of the previous ten months.

[Hazir]

No, they were added in front of the previous ten months.

I am pretty certain the system was fucked up by attributing a month to Julius Ceasar and Augustus.

[littlelolligagged]

My daughter wanted to play Portal again, and since I deleted it a long time ago we're having to redownload it from Steam. It's taking forever. I'm so glad I almost never have to deal with their shittiness.

Also, I want my NoDo update for my phone.

[Flixy]

I am pretty certain the system was fucked up by attributing a month to Julius Ceasar and Augustus.

Nope, those just renamed the months, not add any. July used to be Quintilis (fifth month), August Sextilis.

[Wraith]

The names are based on a Roman calendar that had 10 months that didn't include 2 months of winter. The first month was March and the last December.

I don't think that's right. At least, that's not how I learned it. We're based on the Roman calendar that originally had 10 months, the first six named based on their religion (January - June, Janus = January, Mars = March, Juno = June, and I can't remember the rest), then September through December because they got lazy or something. Julius Caesar later added a month named after himself to the end of list of named months (July) and Augustus Caesar later did the same (August). At least, that's what I was told in school, years ago.

[Loki]

Wiki says you're wrong and wiki doesn't lie.

[Flixy]

I don't think that's right. At least, that's not how I learned it. We're based on the Roman calendar that originally had 10 months, the first six named based on their religion (January - June, Janus = January, Mars = March, Juno = June, and I can't remember the rest), then September through December because they got lazy or something. Julius Caesar later added a month named after himself to the end of list of named months (July) and Augustus Caesar later did the same (August). At least, that's what I was told in school, years ago.

That's definitely not true. Like I posted right above you, July used to be quintilis (fifth) and August Sextilis (sixth). According to wiki a roman guy added January and February in 700 BC. Before that, winter was just 61 days that had no month assigned to them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar , for your reading pleasure.

[EyeKhan]

How many times have you heard a month referred to as being four weeks long? Well, only one is and that's not even all the time. However, if you did make all the months exactly 28 days long yo would have 29 days left over. Then you could add a 13th month with a stand alone global holiday called New Years Day. Then all the months would be the same and evenly divisible into halves and weeks. What should we call the 13th Month?

[Loki]

Except there are ~365.25 days in a year.

[EyeKhan]

Of course there'll still have to be a leap year. That would be a double New Year's holiday. Imagine the parties! Seriously, I think this could work. I'm going to write a letter to my congressmen. What should I suggest for the 13th month?

[littlelolligagged]

why not just begin numbering days. no months. no years. no days of the week on your socks and underpants. just numbers.

or maybe we could simply call each day by things like "waffle day" or "strawberry day" or "hug a tree day"

[Catgrrl]

Every other day should be "Wine Day".

[Flixy]

or maybe we could simply call each day by things like "waffle day" or "strawberry day" or "hug a tree day"

Sortof like the church's saint days? Too easy to forget!

[littlelolligagged]

Every other day should be "Wine Day".

We could do different types of wine, beer and liquor. And maybe even mixed drinks.

[EyeKhan]

why not just begin numbering days. no months. no years. no days of the week on your socks and underpants. just numbers.

or maybe we could simply call each day by things like "waffle day" or "strawberry day" or "hug a tree day"

If we dropped the year as a measure of time, we could do something like that. Maybe go metric. Have a day with 10 "hours"' a deciday of ten days that is analogous to a week, a centiday that's 100 days that is analogous to a quarter and so on. What is a year anyway? The measure of one full orbit of the sun? It's practically astrology FFS. Your birthday is really just the point in Earth's orbit relative to the stars where the earth was when you were born.

[Illusions]

What is a year anyway? The measure of one full orbit of the sun? It's practically astrology FFS.

The position Earth holds in its orbit determines the seasons and thus the local climate, so your assertion that its practically astrology is wrong.

[EyeKhan]

The position Earth holds in its orbit determines the seasons and thus the local climate, so your assertion that its practically astrology is wrong.

#1. Don't be so aggressively emphatic in your declarations. It's damn near rude.

#2. A year is one full cycle of the seasons, and you are right, it is important to know where the planet is in its orbit for a number of different reasons too obvious to bother mentioning.

#3. But what about using it as a measurement of the passage of time, as in birthdays? Why do that? Why not use days, or seasons, or lunar cycles or some other more basic measure of time? Of course I understand why it was taken up - its so damn convenient. The starry sky is so regular on an annual basis its like a big fracking clock. But we don't need that anymore - we have better ways, base 10 ways, easier to calculate and understand. Eh?

[Loki]

Yeah, let's spend billions of dollars and make everyone confused just to implement a new system with no tangible benefit over the old one. This is certainly consistent with your ideology.

[EyeKhan]

Loki doesn't understand EyeKhan. He doesn't show he understands light and simple social interaction at all, for that matter. He likes to attack with hyperbolic sarcasm.

[Hazir]

I think the hardest problem is actually the week; people would relatively easily adjust to any new system of time measurement that keeps the week in place. Once you start to mess around with the week though, you have the added problem that people who work or study are set in a pattern that is very very hard to break. A 10 day week for example would need a 3 day weekend in order to keep workdays and off-days in roughly the same balance (employers may disagree with that statement). For me it sounds like sheer torture to have to work 7 days before you get to the weekend.

[EyeKhan]

I had considered the upset people would express having their birthdays moved to different months upon implementing the 13 month year, and I had considered the minor irritation of having to split months to divide the year into equal quarters, and the setting of hours to base ten resulting in either a few LONG hours or a lot of SHORT hours, but the work week, huh. That's a tough one. Here's some possible patterns:

#1. wrk-wrk-wrk-wrk-wrk-wrk-wrk-off-off-off

#2. wrk-wrk-wrk-off-wrk-wrk-wrk-wrk-off-off

#3. wrk-wrk-wrk-wrk-off-wrk-wrk-wrk-off-off

[Nessus]

Yeah, let's spend billions of dollars and make everyone confused just to implement a new system with no tangible benefit over the old one. This is certainly consistent with your ideology.

I was going to post something about the metric system and how US and some African country are the last bastions, but there's one in Asia and there would be tangible benefits in which even you could be persuaded to believe

[Illusions]

#1. Don't be so aggressively emphatic in your declarations. It's damn near rude.

Rude is subjective. I find blatant ignorance from intelligent people to be about as offensive or more so than rudness.

#3. But what about using it as a measurement of the passage of time, as in birthdays? Why do that? Why not use days, or seasons, or lunar cycles or some other more basic measure of time? Of course I understand why it was taken up - its so damn convenient. The starry sky is so regular on an annual basis its like a big fracking clock. But we don't need that anymore - we have better ways, base 10 ways, easier to calculate and understand. Eh?

You're asking why we don't use some other thing that is either an abstract concept or based on a section of a year, like a season, something not observationally standard, or equated to be a division of the year, like a day, or again something not observationally standard like a lunar cycle, instead of the year. Then you go on to explain that Base 10 is a better way to do things, when its based on the fact that a biologically normal human being has 10 fingers? Really...?

[EyeKhan]

I find base ten easier to calculate. Problem is the number of days in a year isn't a nice 1000 or 100. But we could do it with hours and minutes and even days in a week, though we'd have 36.5 weeks in a year, something a bit unweildy. But any off planet habitat not beholden to a world's prexisting orbit could make everything base 10. 100 hours in a day, 100 days in a year, etc. Why not?

[Flixy]

I find base ten easier to calculate.

But that is probably only because you grew up with it. If you had grown up in a hexadecimal world, you'd find that easier.

[Khendraja'aro]

Let's convert everything to base e!