This thread blows.

The most important date in the United States of America is.......

The 4th of July

Figure that one out ;)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...erio_Oeste.png

Spot the UK :2 cents:

NO it's not. I hate seieng videos from Europe and have a date like 12/3/2008 makes me think it's Dec 3rd when they actually mean March 12th. Yes REALLY less confusing.

MONTH-DAY-YEAR makes the most sense since that's the way we say it. If I ask you what the date it is what are you going to say? You are going to say "It's December 1st, 2009" Well translate that

December=MONTH, 1st=DAY, 2009=YEAR. So 12/01/2009 makes perfect sense.

Yes 4th of July, not 4th July.

04/07 is not "4th of July" in Eurospeak it's "4th July". We don't celebrate "4th July". When I ask yout the EXACT date of the signing of the Delcaration of Independance do you say "4th, July, 1776"? No you say "July 4th 1776" or 07/04/1776

Yeah, but who is "we"? 250-300 million people out of 6 billion?

If you include leading zeros (and flip the direction of sort) then DD-MM-YYYY should also sort properly. :)

"flip the direction of sort" ? :helpme

50 date formats :)

Here ya go!

<php

echo date();
echo time();

?>

Hmmm ignore that... I thought one would need to be a forward sort and one a reverse sort, but I was wrong. Both these sample dates sort the same way if you do a forward sort...

2009-10-01
2009-10-02

01-10-2009
02-10-2009

This argument about how you say it is nonsense.

If someone asked me today's date I'd say is was the 2nd of December. (02/12/2009).

You guys in the US say it like that because that's how you incorrectly write it down :1orglaugh

of course it makes more sense having the day first

Am from the UK and I've never ever seen money written like you are suggesting the whole of Europe does.

Oh and date wise. It's so should be d/m/y simply because you dont do hours/seconds/minutes. That's just logic in my opinion. Days go into Months, and Months go into Years so I'll stand by d/m/y. However I agree that when writing it out I prefer to write December 1st 2009 but not if just numerical.

If you're from the UK, spot Oregon. :2 cents:

The UK is just a little smaller than the state of Oregon and just as irrelevant to you as the UK is to us. I can't stand it when people use the "find it on a map" argument. Expecting average Americans to find another country that is completely irrelevant to them is just stupid.

Yes, Europeans can find more countries on a map. They should be able to considering it takes numerous countries to equal the geographic size of the US and those countries are their neighbors. We have two neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Those are the only two that are relevant to Americans...and they both drive on the right side of the road btw.

I like the date thing. For filing, the month first allows you to find your file easier.... :2 cents:


But why are the Brits the only ones to drive on the right side of the road, literally! :thumbsup

They aren't the only ones but close.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_...t-hand_traffic

reading this shit is worse than listening to star trek weirdos argue about something that isnt real

Pretty much everywhere else does it the other way around and it does get confusing when dealing with people from different parts of the world. Especially when a date could be read two ways. For example, the 5th of May. If it is written 5/5 and I am not totally sure who wrote it I have to really think.

As far as what is natural, I am so used to saying '5th of May' as I just did rather than May 5th that it now feels odd to write dates in the American style. Neither is wrong just what makes language interesting.

The only place in the UK I ever see , used instead of . in a price is in Ikea. So, that is weird even to the British but I guess it is done in other parts of Europe.

Though I assume you're trolling, sadly the US seems to have a disproportionate amount of people who actually think that way.

No, I am not trolling. Not even a little bit. I can find more places on a map than most Americans because I have traveled since I was a kid. If I hadn't I can completely understand not knowing where irrelevant places are. Why would the average American need to know where the UK is? We can't get there by car. Knowing its location seems trivial to me. I mean, who cares?

Yea you better........ idiot. :1orglaugh

That is the one we use here too.

Good explanation. Thank god we use the logic here.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh good idea

That would be fine if the world actually wasn't relevant to the average American but just being ignorant of the rest of the world doesn't make it irrelevant. Ask the troops, ask anybody that works for an international company, ask anybody that buys any goods manufactured somewhere other than their own country. The world is relevant and then apart from that there is just the desire to have a decent education in which geography is one part.

To THEM it may be relevant but the average American doesn't need to know how to find European countries on a map. That ability is trivial. Like I said, the US has a land mass greater than most of the countries in western Europe combined. Ask Europeans if they can find West Virginia or Oregon on a map. If they can't, chastise them and disregard their opinions. That's the holier-than-thou attitude Americans have had to tolerate for a long time.

Britain has used the left since roman times.

Being an American living in the UK, I totally understand that the average British person, for example, doesn't have more than a vague idea of the map of the USA when you get away from the big cities or tourist destinations. Nearly every time I am asked where I am from and say Philadelphia I have to follow it up with 'it is bellow New York but above Washington, D.C.'.

However, one is a part within a country and the other is an entire country. It also really doesn't matter is somebody that calls themselves an 'average' American thinks that the rest of thee world is irrelevant to them. They are wrong. Finding anybody in the the Western world whose life was not impacted in some way by another country is going to be very hard in a global economy. Why on earth would one want to champion the cause of ignorance? Surely we should want people,wherever they live, to have the best education they can have and that includes - as I said - geography.

Eh, thats the same tolerant Americans who are still considered ignorant and thick by the rest of the world whose isolationist attitudes made them late in entering the parties called world war one and world war two? (BTW dont give me that crap about the US winning WW2, we had to pay you guys and only just paid off the debt a couple of years back, the US was a mercenary force). And whose isolationist attitudes and foreign policies currently has seen the growth of anti-american feelings range from anti-capitalist attacks on the likes of McDonalds and Starbucks to the growth of terrorism.

BTW, i could point out West Virginia or Oregon on a map, could you show me where East Sussex or Suffolk is?

incorrect

MOvie: Born on the 4th "OF" July - see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096969/

Macy's 4th "OF" July Fireworks Spectacular - see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1473398/

Excerpt from Wikipedia - "In the United States, Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July"

And on the USA.gov website even it says "Fourth of July is Independence Day" - see http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Independence_Day.shtml

It is not EuroSpeak - I have traveled a huge chunk of the world, and for the MOST part the peoples of the world use DAY/MONTH/YEAR

I think the Mayans weren't saying the world was over in 2012. I think they knew that we would be all pissed off with two date standards, and we would start a new system from that date ;)

Who cares whether we use Year/Month/Day, or Month/Day/Year or Day/Month/Year... I think in this new internetercized global village that we can all agree to use just one standard

now - is is 10:11 as I type this - is that PM or AM, and could I be up at night at 22:11 hours or did I just have my first cup of coffee

oh the pain.... the pain

I got used to this already..

Ummm - seriously?

Remember Australia?

Remember when the UK joined the EU and dumped Australia (a country that has defended the commonwealth without fail every single time, and shed the lives of our soldiers without hesitation), and the UK gave practically all our export business to the EU

I also remember lining up at Heathrow as an Australian with the Queen on my currency, whilst I watched these old Germans (probably the same old farts that tried to kill my grandfathers) sail past me through the EU line as if they were special guests

The world isn't fair, and the US has done heaps of shit for and against the world. The USA has the best and the worst of everything - that's because it is the new Empire, and you have some sour grapes stuck in your throat for letting your empire dwindle away through ineptitude.

The POMS did way worse to the world IMHO, and giving up on Australia was (for me) the final straw

As an Aussie who used to want to defend the Queen and our Commonwealth - eat me!

To my Yankee mates - love your country ;)

But watch out - The Chinese have their sites set on being the next empire already!

I agree with you, the EU was the biggest mistake our government ever made and i wouldn't be suprised if we leave it again within the next ten years, Parties like UKIP make inroads every election. I'm not too sure what you are getting at with the "remember Australia" bit, the input of the AUZ and NZ soldiers are remembered during Rememberance, especially their great war sacrifices.

Saying that Britain did worse to the world is a bit strange, most large european counties had an empire of some sort, for every injustice done by the British, you can find the same for the German, Dutch and French empires, but it was Britain that lead the way in industrial, commercial and social improvements for more than 250 years.