Remember the Y2K "bug" hysteria we had a decade or so ago? Remember what caused it? I do:
People (specifically programmers in this case) who listed the year as MMDDYY instead of MMDDYYYY (those of you in Europe can switch the M's and the D's, of course).
Two weeks ago, I saw more of this same mindset. I woke up to "OMG! It's 11/11/11!" It was on the news. There were thousands and thousands of weddings and births. One website claimed it would likely be "the only binary date of your lifetime."
Sadly, they were all two thousand years too late for 11/11/11. Two weeks ago was 11/11/2011. Nine hundred years ago was 11/11/1111. A few weeks back was 11/02/2011 - a truly palindromic date. And the last. we'll see until ... um .. 2/10/2012. Unless I'm wrong, which I sometimes am.
It's funny to me - just over a decade ago, the fact that we were using two-digit years in our date format caused mass hysteria and panic. And we've fallen back into that same pattern of laziness that caused the problem in the first place.
Does it really take that long to write two more numbers?
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