Vote NOW! I think that the start of the week is Monday, because:
- It's the start of the (traditional) working week.
- Sunday is part of the weekEND, keyword: END
- From a biblical point of view (not one that I'm particularly fond of I hasten to add), Sunday was the day of rest, i.e. AFTER 'God created' the Earth.

Yet, many people, calendars, diaries, etc, regard Sunday as the start of the week. I'm not sure what the arguments for this are. Any of you that believe the week starts on Sunday could add some arguments to this.

PS. Trivial, I know, but who cares?

I'll go along with Monday.

I'm usually so busy that my week never ends lol! Monday seems more appropriate though :)

Originally posted by t020
Yet, many people, calendars, diaries, etc, regard Sunday as the start of the week. I'm not sure what the arguments for this are. Any of you that believe the week starts on Sunday could add some arguments to this.

The interesting thing is, calendars, diaries etc.. from Europe often start the week on a Sunday, but North American calendars, diaries start the week on a Monday.

To add even more confusion to the matter.

It's a Monday.

And for me, it finishes early on Thursday afternoons :D!...

Originally posted by t020
- From a biblical point of view (not one that I'm particularly fond of I hasten to add), Sunday was the day of rest, i.e. AFTER 'God created' the Earth.
From a biblical point of view that is correct, however the sabbath day was a saturday many moons ago. However I'm not one to dwell in the past, so I agree that Monday is the start of the week.

From a Unix perspective Sunday doesn't exist it having the value 0 in the cron. Monday's 1 so I'll go along with that.

You forget that 0 is still a value. If it didn't exist it would have to be null.

Originally posted by Sidla
You forget that 0 is still a value. If it didn't exist it would have to be null.
Not strictly true. It's a virtual value and didn't exist until sometime in the early centuries after the death of Christ when it was invented by an Indian. I stand to be corrected on this but 0 is not a value but a concept or rather a lack of value.

Also, in earlier versions of Cobol , null and zero were the same and thus it proved difficult to search for numerical fields which contained 0. To detect this it was necessary for fields which were liekly to hold 0 to be stored as character strings.

Originally posted by max
From a Unix perspective Sunday doesn't exist it having the value 0 in the cron. Monday's 1 so I'll go along with that.

What has Unix (which, itself, didn’t exist until 1969) to do with the first day of the week? Up until sometime during the late last century, Sunday was the first day of the week, being as the Jews regarded Saturday as the seventh day. From a relatively ‘modern’ point of view, Sunday has been the ‘day of rest’, so if we are talking about a ‘working week’, then Monday would be considered the first day. I agree with Sidla.

Of course zero (0) has a value, being the first of the set of Whole Numbers, or, the central digit of the set of Integers.

I just used Db's 'Google Fight' - and the winner was Monday.:thumbsup:

Originally posted by Carlwarker
I just used Db's 'Google Fight' - and the winner was Monday.:thumbsup:

'Google Fight' is becoming a very useful tool. No longer will debates rage on, witout any result.

Marriages will be saved, as heated arguments will end in.. 'Okay, let's let Google Fight about it.. Sorted!'.

Originally posted by Carlwarker
What has Unix (which, itself, didn’t exist until 1969) to do with the first day of the week?

Of course zero (0) has a value, being the first of the set of Whole Numbers, or, the central digit of the set of Integers.
I was merely making an observation that in the world of Unix the starting day is Monday, that being the object of this thread.

There is no 'of course' about zero having a value. There is debate about zero having a value I grant you. However, none of the philosophers who indulge in this debate, to my knowledge, has the arrogance to use the term 'of course'.

Originally posted by max
... There is no 'of course' about zero having a value. There is debate about zero having a value I grant you. However, none of the philosophers who indulge in this debate, to my knowledge, has the arrogance to use the term 'of course'.

I'll use it again:

Of course, two subtract two is equal to zero, which is the name of a REAL number,

or, 2 - 2 = 0, which has a value, and therefore IS a value.

If one does not possess a certain item, then one has a zero amount of that item – which, again, IS a value.

Of course there is no arrogance in stating what is obvious, except to fools.

And, which philosophers are you talking about - the, for the most-part, time-wasting, School of Logical Positivism, or some other idiotic group? The only real philosophy that Europe has produced in the last one hundred and odd years is that of the Existentialists. Real philosophy asks, and attempts to answer, questions about life and being.

Well, I don't claim to have any specialist knowledge on the subject, but...

...look at it this way. I have 0 apples in my hand right now. 0 is a quantity.

But whilst I have 0 now, I still have no hope in hell of ever having -1...

:)


...I reckon that because of this little experiment, it's fair to say that 0 is the lowest possible amount of something.




Oh, and I already voted Monday. I think I said that.

But you could owe someone an apple...

Thinking about it thought, zero is nothing, and so is null, so they could quite possibly be the same things. Except in C they're different.

quick philosophy joke - stop me if you've heard it before

The Logical Positivists accused the Existentialists of not being sufficiently analytical.

In reply the Existentialists accused the Logical Positivists of not being sufficiently.

Uh-huh.


Nah - if I owed someone an apple, I'd still have 0 apples. If you say I have -1, it implies that I can immediately conjure up an apple from nowhere to give to that someone, which I can't. Because I've got 0 apples. In other words, for me to have -1 apples, I'd have to be able to alter that value at will, or it isn't a value. There's no guarantee of me being able to alter the value right now, ergo I can never have -1 apples. I've got 0.

I've also got a moral duty to give away the first apple I receive to the someone, as soon as I see them after receiving the apple and providing that the someone, the apple and myself are in the same place at the same time. But that's a seperate issue.


...

(How long 'til lunch?)



EDIT: hell, if I had 0 apples then I couldn't change the situation. So scrap that part of the reasoning. But the rest is right :D...

Originally posted by max
From a Unix perspective Sunday doesn't exist it having the value 0 in the cron. Monday's 1 so I'll go along with that.

Except of course since Unix is Unix that is not completely true - vixie-cron has Sunday as both 0 and 7.

g

But is sqrt(-1) a number? A mathematician would say it is, but I've never understood how.

To be honest, does it matter?! :)

Are there more apples or less apples on a Monday then?

I'd agree with Monday as the start to the week, but my weekend begins on thursday!! Even if I am at work on Friday!!

Monday for me!

Just to throw a spanner in the works.. In some countries the week actually starts on the saturday... something I only found out recently through my work on a phpBB2 calendar I mod.

Yup. Friday being the Islamic (I think) rest day, as well as a couple of other major religions...