In telecommunication, time code ambiguity is the shortest interval between successive repetitions of the same time code value.
For example, in a time code in which year-of-century (the '72' in 10/04/72) is the most slowly changing field, the time code ambiguity would be 100 years; it is ambiguous whether this value refers to a date in 1872, 1972 or some other century. For a digital clock in which hours and minutes up to a maximum of 11:59 are displayed, the time code ambiguity would be 12 hours.
The Year 2000 problem is an example of the pitfalls of time code ambiguity. Very often dates are now recorded with 4 digit years (10/04/1972). Assuming that the use of a 4-digit year field would continue, even in the far future, this would change the time code ambiguity from 100 years to 10 000 years.
Famous quotes containing the words time, code and/or ambiguity:
“Piles of scrapbooks, the cuttings turned by time to the colour of the freckles on an old lady’s hand. Her hand. My hand, as it is now. When you touch the old newsprint, it turns into brown dust, like the dust of bones.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Unlike the ambiguity of life, the ambiguity of language does reach a limit.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)