Otter's Journal: I don't get this Daylight Saving Time business...

1) This change in US DST was legislated two years ago, right? Why is there such a panic all of a sudden now? Why are the software makers only releasing patches now? Why are companies in such hysteria? It's not like this is Israel, where the DST dates change all the time and are sometimes still being sorted out until a couple of weeks before the deadline.

2) Why are the patches so enormous?

Why now

[Iamthefallen]

Why are the software makers only releasing patches now?

Because Windows, and many other software products, can only have one DST definition per timezone/region. If the patch had been released last year, Windows would've used the wrong DST dates for 2006. So they had to wait until after DST 2006 ended to release it.

Why they waited until the very last moment though, no idea.

Re:

[Otter]

But it can't just be that they're changing a define file, or the patches wouldn't be so huge! And if they're making a larger-scale change to functionality, why not do it a year ago?

Re:

[Degrees]

Think of the database records added to databases months ago before the define files were changed. It's only an easy fix if your code not only stored the UTC data, but it also stored a way to tell which define file applied when the UTC was stored. In other words, the application needs to operate in local time, but the database records store UTC. Without knowing which local time offset was used during the initial entry, the application doesn't know if the UTC data was stored under DST 2006 or DST 2007 (or DST

To answer

[Billosaur]

1) The panic is on, because, like Y2K, it didn't dawn on everyone that this was going to be a major problem until someone woke up one morning and realized "Gee, the DST rules are going to change in 3 months -- we better get on that!"

2) Because time is such an integral part of computing that it affects all sorts of things. After all, now, when dealing with the retrieval of time information, the time may be different than reported owing to when DST started and ended in what year.

Personally, I don't think

A tougher challenge

[Shadow Wrought]

Can we even explain why DST is a good idea anymore? If it saves more money by having a longer DST, then why not do away with the switch and call Daylight Savings Time Standard Time or, even better, Time.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

UTC

[ces]

At our company we just switched all of our computers and databases to UTC. No need to care about daylight savings time or even time zone.

A friend of mine thinks the US should just switch to using UTC for everything. Set business hours based on local daytime rather than what the clock says. Though I could see some people having problems with 0:00 occurring in late afternoon and 12:00 occurring early in the morning. Having business hours be from 16:00 to 01:00 would take some getting used to as well.

Re:

[bersl2]

Having business hours be from 16:00 to 01:00 would take some getting used to as well.

I also favor using UTC for everything (official).

Let's put it this way: such a change would probably be easier to do than switching the US to the metric system. :P