My Phone Was A Day Fast
My Phone is NOT Smart
I don't have one of these Smart Phones, for several reasons: one being that I have no intention of taking out a contract with the mobile phone companies - I have heard too many horror stories of enormous bills and unfair charges, with months to sort out the company's mess and people's credit ratings being ruined. Another reason is totally personal - i KNOW that if I had a Smart Phone, I would be checking the internet and my email very frequently, instead of enjoying life.
Do You Look At The Date?
I use my mobile phone to check the time, because I don't use a watch but I don't normally check the date. Last night, I happened to notice the date on my watch and it said 10 March. Now even though it was the middle of the night, I knew it was only 9 March, so while I was changing the date, I wondered why it had gone wrong.
Leap Year
Then it struck me - an ordinary cell phone does not know to take account of leap year. So it must have changed the date to 1st March on what was actually 29th February and I hadn't noticed.
Image Credit » https://pixabay.com/en/cellphone-mobile-phone-149868/
Comments
VinceSummers wrote on March 9, 2016, 9:06 AM
Phones may be smart, but what about the engineers who design them?
MegL wrote on March 9, 2016, 9:13 AM
Yes, indeed. They are only as good as the design and coding.
VinceSummers wrote on March 9, 2016, 10:19 AM
Which to me is a serious issue. To illustrate: I studied Quantum Chemistry at Drexel. We had to learn a ton of math. That was about 1970. But I took grad level qm at UVA decades later. NO MATH was required. Why? They had modeling software that accomplished all that. The catch is this: who designed the software? How was the quality to be evaluated? And without the math background, how could one be said to truly understand the basis for it all?
MegL wrote on March 9, 2016, 10:27 AM
That is VERY serious. We have shop assistants who don't understand that the cash register can be wrong and who cannot add sums of money, never mind do quantum mechanics.
CoralLevang wrote on March 9, 2016, 10:30 AM
You have just made the best argument for the study of mathematics that I have ever heard. Now, although it's a great argument, you were unwilling to convince me to take mathematics. I am just not that smart! I am proud to have gotten through what I needed to in my mid-forties when I got my bachelor's degree. I did take a college-level mathematics class that was designed for beginning math majors and survived it... Barely. But I made it!
CoralLevang wrote on March 9, 2016, 10:37 AM
I am ready to get rid of this Smartphone and go back to a phone where I can dial in and dial out and nothing more. However I am very glad I had my smart phone last night. The ability to find out information when you're stuck somewhere is very valuable, and since I don't even know if they have information operators anymore, I would have been out of luck last night.
MegL wrote on March 9, 2016, 11:40 AM
Yes, there are times when a piece of modern technology can be a real lifesaver.
VinceSummers wrote on March 9, 2016, 2:39 PM
You just need the right teacher. Smart has little to do with it, really. Not that you aren't smart. It's obvious you are. But really, math can be taught as simply as spelling.