Tuesday 2 December 2014

Planck Time

Because of the uncertainty principle there's only so small a distance that you could ever measure. Because the universe has a strictly enforced speed limit  (the speed of light)  and a minimum feature size (the Planck length) there is a theoretical shortest time that could ever be measured – it's called the Planck time. It's the tick of the fastest clock that the laws of physics would allow. It's vanishingly small.

I strongly dislike JDBC database connections, but it's as nothing compared to my intense burning hatred for Microsoft SQLServer. Like all digital measurements SQLserver timestamps have their own minimum resolution. THE MINIMUM RESOLUTION ISN'T AN INTEGER. When you store a timestamp in an SQLServer database it is rounded to the nearest three-and-a-third milliseconds. When you query it back it is rounded again to the nearest millisecond.

8ms you say? The closest I've got is 6 and two thirds.
That's fine, 6.66recurring will do me.
Yeah I'm sorry about this, but that’s not a whole number, I'll have to give you 7 instead.
7 then.
7ms you say? The closest I've got is 6 and two thirds.


Richard "how do I hate thee, let me count the ways" B

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