[Terr_]

To be pedantic, that's not a problem of relatives times as much as the data being lossy vague approximations.

Still, "1 year, 7 months, 2 days, 5 hours, 3 minutes ago" isn't always ideal either, not even when it's done in a lexically sortable way.

Ultimately it boils down to a choice which doesn't match problem the user has, and in different circumstances someone might want relative or absolute.

[WirelessGigabit]

It can be solved by putting in an absolute date. I still don't understand what kind of problem relative dates solved.

[Terr_]

They work when relative-times are part of the question or mental model the user has when approaching the system.

Then the user doesn't have to mentally cross-convert between relative measures and absolute timestamps, which is less error-prone and annoying.