Yeah seems obvious, but I don't think it really makes sense to guess that it's a UK format date based on whether one of the numbers is bigger than 12. 4/5/2012 could be 4th May or 5th April and it would be impossible to tell programmatically.

People really need to start using yyyy/mm/dd :-)

I live in Switzerland; I speak English (and a very slowly increasing amount of German). Switzerland uses DD.MM.YYYY almost exclusively (yes, with dots).

I was filling in a web form using Google Translate. It took me several phone calls and about two weeks to sort out the problems caused when Translate back-converted some (but not all) of the dates that I'd entered into the form from DD.MM.YYYY to MM.DD.YYYY before submitting.

/self rage

dd/mm/yyyy and yyyy/mm/dd are as valid as each other, since it proceeds in either increasing or decreasing unit size. Having dates as mm/dd/yyyy makes about as much logical sense as writing: 10492 as 49210.

It doesn't make sense mathematically because it isn't a mathematical notation, it's linguistic in nature.

In Europe, '4th May' is shortened to 4/5.

In the US, 'May 4th' is shortened to 5/4.

Neither is right, wrong or illogical.

I'm from the UK, but have spent a lot of time working with US based clients/colleagues. They only way I've found to avoid confusion and ambiguity is to use YYYY/MM/DD.

It still makes no sense to have MM/DD/YYYY.

That's for a commercial license.

Home subscriptions are about £25.

My local did this, until he was caught, prosecuted and subsequently lost his job/business and something like £30-40k IIRC.

I know many who do this and Sky activly try to pressure the publicans to purchase sky but can't do anything about it.

Yeah this was in 07/08-ish - I think someone successfully challenged them in court since.

Ask for forgiveness, not permission!

I've never understood this argument.

You need a connection for web-based use-cases.

You don't need a connection for non web-based use-cases (document editing, etc works offline).

The same is true of any OS.

But it's true that with ChromeOS the entire usability of the product is massively different without Internet access. All of the "apps" don't work as well without an Internet connection. This doesn't happen with an ordinary machine (if you open Word whilst offline, it isn't crippled).

I think storing all of your data online is foolish, basically as it means that offline you're scuppered.

That something does more, doesn't make it better for a given task. In fact in some cases the extras make it less suitable.

When you eat a meal, do you use a knife and fork, or two Swiss-army knives?

Yes - https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

Personally I develop on a Chromebook by SSH-ing into a Digital Ocean server direct from Chrome OS. I don't use it full-time as a dev box though.

No, it isn't just about the cost.

If I had a choice between a £150 Chromebook and a £75 Windows laptop, I'd choose the Chromebook.

Windows isn't an 'upgrade' to Chrome OS.

It's been changed twice since then.

First it was changed to include one capital letter, one numerical digit and an asterisk.

Now it's correcthorsebatterystaple.

UK English. We say Lego or Lego bricks, rather than Legos.

Same way we'd use sand & grains of sand as plurals.