Prepared for Next Year's Time Change?

wohlford puts forth this query: "Next year, daylight saving time will be extended another four weeks. Slashdot has covered the time change proposal and its estimated impact, already. Since then it has been signed into law. Looking around on the Net I don't see anyone taking this seriously. Will this become the next tech doomsday or just another joke like Y2K?"

I vote for no-DST and use GMT

[Loconut1389]

Personally, I hate daylight savings time and see no need for it. Just get up earlier or later as needed. Further, I don't see why we can't just all use GMT. So you get up at 08:00 and I get up at 21:00, big deal.

Re:fp

[Loconut1389]

Except that it'll get its time as GMT and it still has to make the decision about how much to offset it. A simple rules update for linux and windows should take care of a lot of the problem- but many custom apps will have to be altered or potentially produce incorrect times. I imagine .NET will help some of this in the windows world as it'll just use the underlying routines, which can be updated once by an MS update.

I imagine it'll be a headache, but things generally wont come to a screeching halt.

Y2K a joke?!?!

[NaugaHunter]

Go to hell. A lot of people put a lot of work into resolving a real problem. We'd sure as hell have heard about it if we hadn't.

One of those damned if you do, damned if you don't things I guess.

Re:Use GMT

[Marc_Hawke]

Indiana switched this year.

Indiana has historically had 2 timezones. Part of it was Eastern, and part of it didn't change. They changed this year to all be on Eastern time. (wrong choice) A lot of our customer read that news and changed the timezone on their servers to Eastern. All of their historical data got screwed up.

The REAL fix was to apply an OS patch and keep in the same Time-zone they've been in. The OS patch changed that TZ file to understand that previous to a certain date the timezone behaved differently. That's going to need to happend for all the timezone definition files with this new law.

Unfortunately...that means even if they DID get rid of daylight savings time, the whole history of how it has changed through the ages would need to be contained within those TZ definitions.

Incidentally, changing the timezone value on a server is actually one of the worst things you can do with for our particular software.

Re:I vote for no-DST and use GMT

[Loconut1389]

I'd vote for that too- they've been teaching it in schools here for at least 20 years. Maybe not flip the switch overnight, but start putting highway signs in both on every sign (not just a few every hundred miles on major highways)- then people will have a real feel for how fast 100km/h is and how long it takes them to go 40km to work. Once people 'feel' the distances/measurements, it'll be much easier.

Re:Pfft.

[WilliamSChips]

64-bit computers. :)

Re:Pfft.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only time that matters is seconds since Jan 1, 1970.

Seconds since Jan 1, 1970 where?

Re:I vote for no-DST and use GMT

[MeanMF]

You'd still have to know more or less what time zone other people are in...And I don't think the Japanese, Australians, Californians, etc. would appreciate their normal business hours spanning two days.

Re:Y2K a joke?!?!

[pla]

Go to hell. A lot of people put a lot of work into resolving a real problem. We'd sure as hell have heard about it if we hadn't.

I think you meant to phrase that as "A lot of obsolete geeks got to put in a hell of a lot of billable hours as a result of Y2K". Easy mistake, "resolving a problem" to "made a fuckload of cash for babysitting a mainframe". No harm done, eh? ;-)

Re:I vote for no-DST and use GMT

[aduzik]

Quick: the current time is 00:30 -- is it morning, midday, or night where I live? If I open my business at 12:00 and close at 22:00, what kind of business do I most likely own: a coffee shop/lunch place, a retail store or a restaurant? If I open at 16:00 and close at 02:00, can you make a sign that (in a non-confusing way) makes it obvious to my customers that, while I open on Monday and stay open continuously until Tuesday, that I'm actually only open for ten hours?

Now what if I tell you it's 6:30 PM local time? I don't even have to tell you where I live, do I? You would know that it's about dinnertime here, regardless of where "here" is.

I live in the states, but the time is 00:30 UTC everywhere right now. If I call my grandma in Australia, is she going to say, "ugh! Why did you call me at 00:30?" or is she going to say, "oh, you picked a perfect time to call." (My grandma does, in fact, talk like that, by the way.)

The point of time zones and "local time" is that it provides *context*. Wednesday is going to turn into Thursday (or already has) in the middle of the night -- for everybody. With UTC, it would be Thursday here in most of the US already. So while it may be a pain to have to adjust for local time in other localities, at least you'll know about what time of day it is there. Unless you happen to live in Greenwich, or maybe one or two time zones in either direction, using UTC would be nothing but a pain in the ass. Do you really think it would make sense for me to leave for work on Sunday "evening" and get home on Monday "morning" -- to say nothing about how lame New Year's Eve parties would be in most of the world. (In Eastern Europe and Asia, you'd enjoy a celebratory cup of joe first thing in the morning. How fun.)

Re:Y2K a joke?!?!

[AC5398]

Jerk. A whole lot more went into fixing y2k than babysitting a goddamn mainframe.

But if you'd been someone who did any work for y2k, you'd know that.

Re:Pfft.

[jZnat]

typedef int64_t time_t;

Hmm, that should work fine.

Re:I vote for no-DST and use GMT

[stanmann]

Yes, but when dealing with strangers you only need to know basic human behaviour. and the UTC differential.

Most people get up between 0530 and 0800 local. so after 0800 local is a socially acceptable time to call.

Most people eat lunch between 1030 local and 1330 local so if you call their place of business you are likely to miss them.

most people go to bed between 2100 and 2359 local, so after 2100 local is an inappropriate time to call a stranger.

There is a LAW for that ???

[Tensor]

Why on earth does the US have a law on when should a bar close. I used to own a bar with some friends and would close it when we saw fit. Usually between 3 and 5 am. The "land of the free" sure seem less "freer" each time i look.