Steve, curing any of the serious maladies you mentioned is a constructive
endeavor.  You are confusing the issue of changing something for no other
reason than to create confusion versus changing something because it needs
to change.

What would happen if tomorrow ISO created a new standard which says that
the top of all maps should now be oriented towards the East?  After all,
there is no reason to have maps with the top oriented towards the North.
  Many maps have, I believe they are called rosettas, little orientation
markings that show the orientation of the depiction, so they can point
anywhere.  In order to prevent anyone from doing that, we must have a
standard.  And why not East?  Just because we have been making maps with
North at the top for a long time doesn't mean we should continue the
practice.  We would only inconvenience the map makers, the map users and
other sundry billions of people, but we would have a standard.

Whoops, maybe I should check www.iso.ch and see if they indeed have a map
standard.  I am sure they do, I just hope it reflects common usage.

Better yet, let ISO make a new standard that says the day is 10 hours long
and that the hour is one hundred minutes long and that the minute is 100
seconds long.  BTW, didn't the French try this after the revolution along
with a 10 day week?


Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
Hicomp America, Inc.
[log in to unmask]        www.hicomp.com
(800) 323-8863   (281) 288-7438  fax: (281) 355-6879



-----Original Message-----
From:   Steve Dirickson b894 WestWin [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Saturday, June 21, 1997 10:43 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: Week Numbers -- A Standard

<<Anyways, all this to say that the debate over whether Sunday is the
first or last day of the week is pointless.  Sunday has been the first
day of the week for almost 1700 years.  The term week-end by the way, is
really week-ends because it comprises the first and last day of the
week.>>


I guess I'd be a little hesitant to suggest a policy, much less make a
"no alternatives needed" declaration, based on little more than "that's
the way we've always done it". After all, for over 1500 of those 1700
years, if you got a serious infection, or pneumonia, or <insert other
malady here>, you died. I definitely prefer the deviation from tradition.

Steve