Re: Debian was hacked: The Canterbury Distribution (howto write the date)
On 02/04/11 23:35, Aaron Toponce wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 02, 2011 at 02:23:31PM +1100, Scott Ferguson wrote:
>> Why not use the Debian standard??
^ It *was* a question, and I *was* soliciting an answer.
>> Reasoning - it's already been extensively debated *and* voted on, it's a
>> system already in place, it's the "Debian" way.
>>
>> (Is there more than one (Debian standard)?)
^ Again I was asking a question.
>>
>> >From :-
>> http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-source.html#s-dpkgchangelog
>>
>> The date has the following format[17] (compatible and with the same
>> semantics of RFC 2822 and RFC 5322):
>>
>> day-of-week, dd month yyyy hh:mm:ss +zzzz
The above is a "selective" re-quoting of my original post - possibly the
cause of confusion.
The short form is ddmmyyyy - which I agree, is ambiguous. Whilst widely
practised, like the metric system. it's not universal. I suspect that's
why the ISO standard for an abreviated date format runs - left-to-right,
highest-to-lowest eg 20110401. An emminently sensible solution in many
circumstances.
>
> I'm not the one who typed the initial date of "04/01/11".
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2011/04/msg00007.html
> Had the Debian
> standard of "Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700" been used, there would have
> been no ambiguity, now would there?
Agreed - simply 1 April or April 1 (April Fool!) should have been
sufficient.
I don't know how others see posts from the debian-user list, perhaps
their method strips out or rewrites the date(?). While Freeman *did*
write the date USA style - the date of the post, shown in the post *is*
unambiguous.
The way my mail appears, as a subscriber to the debian-user list (not
gmane or whatever), makes writing the current date into a post doubly
redundant... ;-p
I suspect Liam's response was made in jest :-)
>
> Further, why do all that typing on a mailing list thread, when "2011-04-01"
> is, oh I don't know, _one_ _third_ the length, and still retains
> unambiguity?
>
> Heh. You can do things the short way or the long way. I'll take the short
> way.
>
Indeed (and agreed).
Perhaps even, "why type it at all if the mailing list date stamp makes
the process redundant?" :-D
(Please note that's not a criticism of your comments Aaron)
Now just imagine the trollfest/flamewar that *would* occur if the
Canterbury Distribution had been a reality instead of a brilliantly
orchestrated prank! (the result of half a dozen FOSS people getting
drunk at the Delirium Cafe in Brussels a couple of months ago??)
Cheers
--
Tuttle? His name's Buttle.
There must be some mistake.
Mistake? [Chuckles]
We don't make mistakes.
[Crash]
–That's bloody typical!
They've gone back to metric
without telling us.
"Brazil" - Terry Gilliam
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