Prepared for Next Year's Time Change? 293
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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The best part of making exit numbers reflect the mile markers that they're near is that
folks who can do simple math can figure out how far it is to the next exit.
If I just passed exit 125 and I know the next exit is at 142, I can ask my kid if their
bladder is
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Re:I vote for no-DST and use GMT (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I vote for no-DST and use GMT (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
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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.)
Let's look at the present situation - before you call your grandma, you need to know 3 things
What time (local time) does she get up/go to bed
What
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But: I do agree that changing it is stupid. Daylight savings does have application - particularly to farmers, ranchers, etc. who by essence set their daily schedule to the li
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As an anecdotal story, I used to drive to work going East. Starting early fall, the sun would be in my eyes every morning. Then it would finally be dark my whole commute when DST would end and put the sun right back in my eyes!
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Getting rid of DST would have little to no impact for most people.
As far as using GMT, I'd have no problem with that either and might as well get everyone on a 24hr clock too while we're at it.
This would involve a lot of small changes - business hour signs, clocks, etc. plus take awhile for people to get used to it.
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Actually, 12:00 is noon in 24-hour time too. However, midnight is not 12:00 in 24-hour time; that, of course, is written 00:00 (or 24:00 if you want to associate it with the previous day's date.) 12- and 24-hour time agrees from 01:00 (AM) until one minute after 1
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There is a LAW for that ??? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Hey, how about this. Here where I live I will call tomatoes oranges and you call them apples where you live.
Kind of makes me think of "chips" (as in potato)...
Over in the islands... (Score:2)
Aloha!
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Y2K a joke?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
One of those damned if you do, damned if you don't things I guess.
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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?
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Right on dude! I don't even know why they bother babysitting those mainframes running ancient code. Just re-write it all in Ruby. I could have done it in a couple of days. It's not like those mainframes store any really important data, like your bank balance or... Hang on!
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But if you'd been someone who did any work for y2k, you'd know that.
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Why bother? (Score:2)
I still wonder why we bother with DST. At this latitude (49 north) the summers are plenty light anyway (latest sunset about 2100 PDT, still light after 2200), and the winters are dark (earliest sunset about 1600 PST), no matter what we do. It's even more pronounced the further north you go.
I agree with others: Y2K wasn't a joke. There were real issues, but these were identified and resolved ahead of time. It only looked like an anticlimax. It wasn't.
...laura, who babysat computers and satellites the eve
No problem (Score:2)
One for each -- Europe, the East Coast of the USA, etc. I've never had to worry about Australia, though -- do they play with clocks down there or do they have better things to do?
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As it happens we do, well most states do. Moreover, Western Australia is currently going insane [abc.net.au]. A bill is currently being debated as to whether or not a "trial" daylight savings thing is started on the 3rd of December this year . A month to go and we don't even know if it's going to happen yet. It's going to be a freaking nightmare.
A tip from Arizona (Score:2)
Now, when someone tells us about how wonderful it is to crank the clocks forward one hour, we get all gushy about it and tell them that twelve must be even better. Moonlight Savings Time is a wonderful idea when your summer temps regularly run above 45C and the only decent time of d
Crikey! No worries (Score:2)
The announcers on national radio are calling out five times each half hour. I live in the tropical and subtropical state that voted on it - 49 percent for, 50 percent against changing and less than 1 percent informal votes in a compulsory election - it looks like people actually cared.
Last year daylight saving was extended in one state and Microsoft operating systems were still set to change back early - I beleiv
my last employer (Score:2)
My vote goes to..... (Score:3, Informative)
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What a big waste!
http://www.abandonedstuff.com/2006/10/29/bushs-mar tial-law-bill-signed-daylight-time-replay/ [abandonedstuff.com] Here are the levels of oil saved, and my guess as to the cost of implementation. It's a boondoggle by Bush, to distract us from real oil saving measures.
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Most meeting requests and other stuff (Which affects the most amount of people) will be sent using GMT. Although some things like street lights and other stuff may not come on at the right time, in the grand scheme of things, I don't think this will affect people.
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Halloween (Score:2, Interesting)
If I didn't have my tinfoil hat on I'd think it was part of a plan from the religious right to do away with it
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I have a feeling one of the industries that sent lobbyists for this is the candy industry, since it means they'll get an extra hour of trick-or-treating in the places that do have ordinances about it.
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Time change is embedded in millions of devices (Score:2)
Our phone system has the change encoded. It will require a full software upgrade to fix this.
So... it's a bummer!
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So is using 2-digit years when you have room for 4. Doesn't matter. They did it. Now, given that fact, do you have any productive suggestions for how to deal with all the VCRs out there that these stupid people shipped without firmwar
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Or, you could just change the time on those systems twice a year. It's not that difficult a problem. I also think you're overestimating how many
Looking forward to it (Score:2)
Then again I also think that times should be shifted by 6 hours making midnight 6 PM, dawn (roughly) 1 AM noon 6 AM and dusk 12 AM (12 should be the end of a time section, not the beginning, it's amaz
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Daylight savings changes isn't a big deal (Score:4, Informative)
Most people know what hour it is anyway, so it's only important computer systems that matter. And if Microsoft can have a patch for two states and one territory in a relatively small country, then they can have a patch for the vast majority of their home country...
Absolutely nothing to worry about. Just enjoy the extra daylight in the evening!
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> the vast majority of their home country...
I wouldn't bet on it, they screwed some people in Europe up since the move to "last week in October" from "fourth week in October":
http://www.support.microsoft.com/kb/910268 [microsoft.com]
Still, I'm not aware of any planes falling out of the sky because someone turned up to a meeting an hour late...
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What is it with people and daylight (Score:2)
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Not a problem for Windows users. (Score:2)
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I'd like to see... (Score:2)
[/bizzaro politicians world]
I'd be happy to ditch the whole thing. For those of you who complain about skipping DST and having the sun wake you up at 4am I have one word: Curt
Change more often (Score:2)
No one taking it seriously? (Score:2)
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The real issue here, along with my opinion (Score:2)
Personally, I wouldn't mind year-round daylight saving time, where solar noon is pretty much at 1pm, give or take. Since we're on DST most of the year, this is just a minor change during the lesser-light months. Plus, how many would enjoy having more light toward th
Central Stoopid Time... (Score:3, Funny)
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No you don't. You'd pull the patch out after a week of getting inundated with messages.
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Wouldn't you prefer it notify you the moment they do something that isn't stupid? Much less likely to be annoying.
Finally (Score:2)
It affects some radio stations (Score:3, Interesting)
Case-in-point, WFIF where I work. WTOP (now WTWP) has operated on 1500Khz for many decades. They are the dominant station on that frequency for the entire Eastern half of the US. (At night, you can hear them from Maine to Florida. Been there, done it.) They are located in Washington, DC. WFIF was licensed to operate on that frequency in 1965, as a daylight-only station. Thus, every day at the FCC-established "legal sunset", we must sign off. We cannot return to the air until the FCC-defined "legal sunrise". (The FCC defines the sunrise/set times for each month, based on an average, so the actual sign-on/off times remain the same through each month.)
Now we throw the DST/Standard time curveball into this. Because the sun doesn't change, only our clocks do, this affects when we can sign-on and off, and it affects our program schedule.
Example- under the present system, in October, during DST, we sign-on at 7am and off at 6:30pm. When we change to Standard time on that last Sunday, we get to sign-on at 6am and off at 5:30pm until we hit November. In November, we sign-on at 6:45, and off at 5pm.
Now throw this new monkey wrench into the works...
We will no longer have *any* Standard time operation in October, because it won't kick-in until November... so, that means we won't be able to sign-on until 7:45am! (Right now, our latest sign-on is 7:15am in December & January.) That's pretty darned late in the morning to be signing-on! Once Standard time takes effect, we'd be back to where we are, now: 6:45am to 5pm.
In March of '07, we're going to have another curveball to throw at our audience... we will have been signing-on at 6am for the first few weeks of March. Then the clocks will be changed. Now, we won't be able to sign-on until 7am! Programming that had already re-established itself with our audience will go on yet another hiatus, before returning in April. (The early morning music program already goes away in October & Dec/Jan due to the later sign-on.)
So, as you can see, there are some radio stations and listeners that are going to be ***VERY*** inconvenienced by this mess.
We won't even go into the issue of how many computers are out there still running Windows 98SE, which won't be getting any help from Papa Bill to patch it's internal time-shifting routines. I am hoping for a 3'rd party solution... but won't hold my breath. Since we still have a fair number of perfectly functional Win98SE boxes running, we'll just have to disable the automatic time-shift routines, and do it manually.
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Otherwise, Googling "timezone editor" came up with what looked like several alternatives and a link to a Microsoft KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317211 [microsoft.com] which d
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I imagine it'll be a headache, but things generally wont come to a screeching halt.
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The dates may change each year, but the rules used to pick the dates haven't changed for a long time. It's those rules which are hard-coded into devices and they're changing them. Specifically, they're changing 'first Sunday in April' to 'second Sunday in March' and 'last Sunday in October' to 'first Sunday in November'.
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Anyone else have that issue?
-nB
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None of my clocks (except the computer) adjust the time at all when it's time to switch. I have to do it manually. You'd have to do it four times a year instead of two, but big deal? It takes what, 30 seconds to go all the way around? Even four times a year, that's a whopping 0.000095% of your time.
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03:14:07 Jan 19, 2038 UTC = 00:00:00:01 00:00:00:00
Or is 2^32 epochs not big enough?
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Honestly, there's no good excuse for anyone not using at least 64-bit integers to represent unix time these days, yes even on 32-bit architectures.
two words (Score:2)
Your argument could just as easily have been, "Honestly, there's no good excuse for anyone not using 4 digits to represent years these days, yes even on MS DOS", 10 years ago.
You're making the same assumption that people made in the seventies. The "Nothing that runs today will still be in use in 2000" brigade. They were proved so right, weren't they? All those expensive mainframes? Phht, they'll be dead in 30 years.
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If people don't want to implement it that's their funeral.
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Hmm, that should work fine.
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We store all our times in seconds from 1970, just like you suggest. However, the end users don't seem to like looking at them, so we convert it to their timezone. If we don't switch with the their watches, then even though we're storing the right time, it LOOKS wrong to them.
We've finally, (sheesh) switched to using OS calls for all our time conversion stuff. So...the answer to broken times is just 'patch your OS.' It's been a nice shift of responsibility.
For our clients (law enf
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Try it now, see when your computer tells you DST occured in 1980, 1970, 1960. It'll most likely be wrong.
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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 beh
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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.
Indiana had THREE time zones. Most of the state followed Eastern Standard (no Daylight Savings Time); parts of the state were Eastern but used DST (because they were near Cincinnati or other areas that followed DST); and parts of the state were Central following Daylight Savings Time (areas near Chicago or along the Illinois border)
And the state is still sc
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Your software is poorly written then. Dates should be stored in GMT and only converted to local time for display or interaction with other poorly written software. Of course, on Windows, that includes the OS, but failing to compensate for that is just cutting corners. Fix it!
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It's actually not the software's fault, but rather the servers. We'll use Indiana as an example.
(although, from the other reply, I guess an incorrect example.)
Lets say you live in part of Indiana that used to not change Timezones (you stayed always in Central). You enter in a time 'June 7:00am'. That gets converted to GMT (-7 hours because of DST) and stored as 00:00. When you want to look at it, it adds the 7 back on and you see it as 7:00.
Now, change the
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