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GMT is deprecated, please use UTC instead: "GMT is no longer precisely defined by the scientific community" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universa
by jankeromnes 10y ago
GMT is deprecated, please use UTC instead: "GMT is no longer precisely defined by the scientific community" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time
- arethuza 10y agoTo be fair it is a BBC site - if they started reporting times in UTC then it would just confuse the vast majority of their readers.
- lucideer 10y agoThis may be true generally, but given the subject of the article this would be an ideal pilot for a gradual changeover
- jbb555 10y agoBut most of don't want a changeover. So no.
- roninb 10y agoMost of us don't want sustainable energy, agriculture, etc., that doesn't mean we don't fight tooth and nail for them...
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoIt's possible (probable?) an absence of sustainable agriculture and / or energy may present an existential crisis at some point. Agreeing on a set of weights and measures not so much.
- roninb 10y agoI was simply presenting a counter-example to the argument: We don't want to change so we shouldn't change.
- lucideer 10y agoI'm not sure who "most of us" are, but either way, I wasn't suggesting "we" did. Just replying to the gp that this would be the least abrasive way if the bbc did wish to.
- lovemenot 10y ago>> The moment of flatline in the control room is still expected at 11:18 GMT; 12:18 BST; 13:18 CEST +/- 2min If the BBC's Science Correspondent had mostly been concerned with not confusing the vast majority of users, they'd have quoted the time of descent in BST first and qualified it with GMT and others. Instead they gave their preferred "standard" time first and then qualified it with a daylight savings time that is currently relevant to the vast majority of the BBC's readers.
- willvarfar 10y agoTrying to tell the Brits not to use GMT is like trying to tell the HN audience that there are exactly 1000 bytes in a kilobyte ;)
- _asummers 10y agoOr getting Americans on the metric system.
- nf05papsjfVbc 10y agoOr getting them to use a sensible way to state dates.
- khedoros 10y agoAgreed. Ditto for most of Europe. Everyone should standardize on YMD. Lexical sorting and least-to-most specific times make the most sense.
- bobwaycott 10y agoOr just [year].[day#] Like 2016.276
- mineshaftgap 10y agoAside from shutting up a few whining Europeans, forcing a nominal change, road signs etc., will only cause useless death in the change over. American deaths are probably seen as a good thing by weak Europeans, but all science is already done in metric, you probably knew that and replied anyway.
- Toenex 10y agoYou start by making gun calibres metric. Then they either start using the metric system or stop using guns. Win either way.
- 10y ago
- Someone 10y agoYou may complain to the editor if the scientific papers coming out of this use GMT, but this isn't aimed at the scientific community; the story in the #1 spot on http://www.bbc.com http://www.bbc.com always aims for a way broader audience.
- JackFr 10y agoI don't get the downvotes. This is precisely the kind of pedantry for which I come to HN.
- Symbiote 10y agoPerhaps because of the misleading partial quote from Wikipedia. The full sentence is "For most purposes, UTC is considered interchangeable with GMT, but GMT is no longer precisely defined by the scientific community." The ESA website gives all times for the descent ±20 minutes, so GMT, which is ±0.9s from either UTC or UT1, is fine.
- kijin 10y agoInstead of arguing about this ad infinitum, we should just collectively execute ln -s UTC GMT and call it a day. It wouldn't break backward compatibility with anyone's usage, would it?