Daylight Savings Change Proposed

AveryRegier writes "CNN is reporting that Congress has added an amendment to the Energy Bill to extend daylight-savings time by two months. They expect to "save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day." How long it would take for the associated energy savings to overcome the cost to make, test, and deploy the necessary code changes? How would the cost of this change compare with Y2K? Does most date routines' reliance on GMT make this just an issue of presenting the right time to the user?"

Comments

Creating a Boom?

[ackthpt]

How would the cost of this change compare with Y2K?

It has been speculated, and fairly so IMHO, that Y2K was what initially drove the .com bubble. While I certainly wouldn't discount releases of many previously classified technologies and growth of the internet, there was a consider amount of capital put into hardware and software upgrades in the mid-to-late nineties.

Imagine what kind of capital would be required to change DST behavior on govt computers alone. We could probably convert CO2 and H2O back into hydrocarbons cheaper.

CSC, Accenture, EDS, et al are probably salivating at the thought of such a passage of law.

Re:Creating a Boom?

[lgw]

Y2K drove the dot com bubble indirectly: the Fed loosened the money supply when it would ordinarily have been tightening, in order to give companies easy access to capital in case Y2K became a crisis. When Y2K passed uneventfully, the easy acces to capital became a different sort of crisis. IMO it was a risk worth taking, as the dot com bubble only destroyed my bank account, but Y2K seemed poised to destroy my ability to bank.

Re:Creating a Boom?

[jeff4747]

Imagine what kind of capital would be required to change DST behavior on govt computers alone.

I submit that the vast number of programs out there are going to rely on the OS for TZ information, instead of trying to calculate DST themselves. Especially given the patchwork nature of DST in the US.

So, 1 OS update later, and most programs will 'just work' with a longer DST. (Yes, some highly specialized programs will need updating)

Re:Creating a Boom?

[ackthpt]

Y2K drove the dot com bubble indirectly: the Fed loosened the money supply when it would ordinarily have been tightening, in order to give companies easy access to capital in case Y2K became a crisis. When Y2K passed uneventfully, the easy acces to capital became a different sort of crisis. IMO it was a risk worth taking, as the dot com bubble only destroyed my bank account, but Y2K seemed poised to destroy my ability to bank

The Fed did loosen the money supply, but they did also post 9/11, and it's still ultra inexpensive to borrow, but companies aren't because they lack faith that they'll be able to pay back loans based upon exected revenue forecasts (geez, I'm a geek, why do I know this stuff?, oh, right, I love econ :) anyway, fear of Y2K drove spending, because fear of being stranded was more compelling than fear they couldn't pay back any loans.

Re:Creating a Boom?

[ackthpt]

I submit that the vast number of programs out there are going to rely on the OS for TZ information, instead of trying to calculate DST themselves. Especially given the patchwork nature of DST in the US.

OS will likely account for much of it, but every damn computer will have to be thoroughly checked to be sure. You know how it is, right?

I once worked in the logistics industry (fancy name for transportation of goods anywhere on a schedule) and we had huge tables of locations and had to indicate whether they were or were not subject to DST. IIRC Indiana has some bizarreness, where Arizona uniformly doesn't do DST. It's an example and I don't know how many others in transportation, telecommunications, etc would have similar concerns. But they have to first be certain whether they will or will not be affected then test the patch, so it's still a bit Y2K-like.

Re:Creating a Boom?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that pisses me off is people going "oh, Y2K, nothing freaking happened.". Nothing freaking happened BECAUSE people like me spent a year poring over 20-year-old code in minute detail and at great expense! To consider all that expenditure a "waste of money" because "nothing happened" really pisses me off, like saying "what's the point of paying for seatbelts, when I was driving and dinked that lampost wearing one, I didn't even get a concussion!"

Re:Creating a Boom?

[Dachannien]

It has been speculated, and fairly so IMHO, that Y2K was what initially drove the .com bubble.

...because it couldn't possibly have been the Internet.

Re:Creating a Boom?

[lgw]

Fear of Y2K drove very narrow spending, while a much larger pool of resources were kept in reserve just in case. 1999 only looked good if you were in consulting. Every major company I knew about had a "no new computers unless abosultly critical, and maybe not even then" policy during 1999. Purchasing cycles were delayed in case critical systems weren't 2K complant after all and had to be purchased from scratch. In 2000 all that pent-up demand was released and it looked like money would flow like that forever.

But's thats all within the world of computers.

Re:Creating a Boom?

[el-spectre]

I wish I had a link, but I recall that the DoD did an experiment for y2k. They used the software fix as an opportunity to replace some only mainframes with newer hardware and software. Then they let these 3 old machines run through the end of the year, unpatched.

Yup, all 3 failed within seconds.

Re:Creating a Boom?

[pikine]

We could probably convert CO2 and H2O back into hydrocarbons cheaper.

You mean carbohydrate , right?

The cheapest way is to grow lots of plants. Let the nature takes care of them! We just need to figure out how to use these plants as an efficient source of energy. Energy researches who are botanists will have an edge here.

Re:Creating a Boom?

[saigon_from_europe]

The cheapest way is to grow lots of plants.

That is one reason more for DST. Plants will get one more hour of sunlight for free.

Re:Creating a Boom?

[LordPixie]

I wish I had a link,

I sense a need for my Mad Googling Skills. LordPixie, to the rescue !!

After wasting the last 15 minutes of my life. (OK. Fine. My employer's time/money.) I have determined that this little story is not apocryphal bullshit !

For example, see this little site. It not only covers the anecdote you mentioned, but also includes a link to a (now defunct) CNN article. Further references can be found by simply googling for Koskinen "three computers".

I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that LordPixie usually charges for the services of his Madcap Googling Skills. This time was free. =)


--LordPixie

Re:Creating a Boom?

[Pionar]

IIRC Indiana has some bizarreness

Yep, you're right. Basically, all of Indiana is on EST year-round. However, a few counties in the SE corner (around Cincinnati) go with DST. In addition, some counties in the NW and SW corners (basically the Chicago and Louisville areas) are in the Central time zone and observe DST. (map)

There's a bill just about every session of the state legislature to change this. There's a boost right now in that the new governor is actually pushing for it. I might go through this year, probably (the plan would be to switch on June 5 this year), but they amended the bill in the House to say that counties could "opt out" of DST. The feds came in (Dept. of Transportation, I believe) and said that that would be illegal, it's either all or none. But, the House passed it anyway. The Senate leaders have said they won't touch the bill until it goes through a conference committee to take that part out.

See stories here and here.

It's not as clear cut as this, though. It's a hotly debated topic in Indiana, with most of the business people for it (they say not having it hurts business) and farmers against it (they say it makes no sense). Generally, Republicans are for it, and Democrats are against it. Technology people that I know are generally for it, but the timeline (June 5) has them worried about keeping systems up to date.

I'm agnostic on it, though I do follow it closely.

Re:Creating a Boom?

[Seumas]

How about we just get rid of daylight savings entirely. It's even more idiotic than the idea of timezones. This isn't 1860.

Re:Creating a Boom?

[el-spectre]

Y'know... I could really use someone who follows me around doing BS checks... Somehow I'd need said check BEFORE I say something stupid, though.

Why not go to DST permanently?

[sachmet]

Here's a PDF of the amendment, as agreed, from the house.gov page on the session yesterday. Realistically, if it'll make that big of an impact, why not make Daylight Savings Time a year-round proposal? If this amendment is passed by the House, we will have a period of a little over 3 months annually (Dec, Jan, Feb) in which DST is not in effect. That seems ridiculous. Not to mention that if DST becomes year-round, the change in software becomes a static offset to GMT as opposed to figuring out when the annual switch days are. Even Windows allows you to set a time zone that ignores DST, so a company in permanent CDT would only need set their time zone to EST and not worry about changing the clocks again.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[ch-chuck]

actually that happened during WWII - it was called 'war time' and lasted for the duration, from 3 Feb 1942 to 30 Sep 1945

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[atteSmythe]

I've long felt that this should be the case. The modern workday favors it. Honestly, who cares if it's a bit darker when you go to work. When you go home, wouldn't it be nice to have it be light outside?

There's so much talk about SAD (seasonal attitude disorder, or whatever they're calling it these days), and all of America seems to be on antidepressants. How much of that would be eliminated if people could drive home in the daylight?

Especially this year, since the changeover, the change in my mood has been dramatic, and I even find myself unintentionally working a little later just because it's still so bright outside. I can't see how permanent DST could possibly be a bad thing.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Paradise Pete]

we will have a period of a little over 3 months annually (Dec, Jan, Feb) in which DST is not in effect. That seems ridiculous.

Because then you'd have kids going to school in the dark. As soon as one is hit by a car that's the end of that.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Just Some Guy]

why not make Daylight Savings Time a year-round proposal?

Because where I live, on December 21, the sun rises at 7:55 AM CDT. This means that it's almost daylight when I drive to work. Ain't no way I'm going to go along with changing that to 8:55 AM.

Remember, you're not lengthening the day - you're taking time from the morning and adding it to the evening.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[rjune]

Permanent DST was considered in the 1980's during the oil crisis. The problem is that some children would be walking to school in the dark in the winter months. I don't remember if some were actually hit by cars or not, but it was this concern that killed the idea.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[That's Unpossible!]

Absolutely -- rest assured. Kids are now safe.

For 3 months.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

This is how Governments add to anything! :-)

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[stinerman]

Farmers.

Farmers hold a decent bit of lobbying power, moreso than one would expect by chance. They complain about DST one way or another. Most farmers like DST so they don't need to get up so early in order to get chores done. My grandfather didn't really care; he just got up when it was light out, regardless of time.

Indiana still doesn't do DST (due to the farm lobby), but, IIRC, they're trying to work it through their legislature. Whenever I go to my mom's in the summer I always laugh at them because the sun rises around 5 a.m. in June / July.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[forrestt]

Yeah, but I typically get up at 9:00 a.m. This might be the one chance I get to wake up at the crack of dawn.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[ArsonSmith]

Grew up in AZ. No day light savings time. Never hit by car.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[cft_128]

I once woke at the crack of dawn, then I realized I was looking west.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Nos.]

A lot of people have responded to your post with a variety of reasons on why not to go to a permanent time. All my life I have lived in Saskatchewan (just north of Montana and North Dakota). We do not change times, and are one of the few places in North America that doesn't. Usually every spring there's talk about it and without fail, the government decides to just leave things alone.

Yes, this means that children to go to school when its dark. No, this typically does not mean that more are getting hit by cars. Farmers typically don't start work at a given time, they start with the dawn and finish when its to dark to see properly. The only reason they worry about the time is when they need parts to continue harvest/seeding/etc. Most parts places around here are starting to have extended hours during the seeding and harvest seasons.

It does cause a little confusion at times. Most of our TV channels will start an hour earlier/later. If you're doing business outside of the province you have to be aware of the local time.

Personally, I love the fact that regardless of the time of year, I can say that we are GMT -6. When a story gets posted that mentions an ecllipse or meteor shower, I can quickly determine the best viewing times from almost any summary.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[saintp]

Somehow children in Canada and Scandinavia make it to school, too. Kids waiting for the bus in the dark wouldn't bother anyone living reasonably far north, but it'd be a hell of a talking point for overprotective mothers from New Jersey to Oregon.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[twiddlingbits]

We can't do that! Changing DST to be year-around would be an economic disaster!! The drug companies Anti-depressant Sales (A-D's are the #1 prescription drug in the USA) are required to meet Wall Street's expectations or the stock crashes. If Wal-Mart and CVS (the store not the software package) don't sell as many prescriptions they don't make as many mega-millions and their stock goes down. And so on and so on until we have a dammed economic crash all because the goofballs in Congress wanted to get in 18 holes after work instead of 9! :)

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[XMyth]

Or maybe you WERE hit by a car but you have amnesia?

Must've been a pretty bad hit. I hope you're OK.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Eric S. Smith]

Because then you'd have kids going to school in the dark. As soon as one is hit by a car that's the end of that.

That traffic accidents increase slightly in the week after the switch to summer time was in the news around here.

In terms of health and safety, it might make most sense to avoid making people change when they get up and go to sleep arbitrarily. I, for one, have been feeling like hell this week: "spring forward" sucks.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most farmers like DST so they don't need to get up so early in order to get chores done.

Dairy farmers need to milk the cows at the same time every day. Cows don't really care what the clock says the time is. Cows are very much creatures of habit, as herd creatures tend to be; they like routine, and they hate change. If you milk cows even an hour late, they will kick, bellow, and generally be a pain to deal with, and they won't give as much milk. Eventually, they'll get used to the new schedule, and then they'll fight just as hard if you try to change it back.

Changing the cows' daily routine twice a year is not something a wise dairy farmer would try to do: it's just easier to get up an hour earlier or later, and ignore the "official" time, in favour of true consistancy. After all, what's the real difference between 5:30 and 4:30 am, anyway?

And if farmers can do it, I don't know why other businessmen can't: how hard is it to schedule your employees to optimize for daylight? They already need to schedule to optimize for other business expenses; what's one more?

It's not like daylight savings time saves daylight: it just adjusts the clock, to pretend daylight is during "working hours", which we're of course free to change anyway. Why not just set $WORKING_HOURS to what we really want, and stop tampering with the clocks?

--
AC

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Wyatt Earp]

I personally think DST is idiotic and pointless.

Here is a...semi-serious piece on it

http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/miller2005040 10806.asp

"Congress passed the first DST law in 1918 and repealed it the next year. Franklin Delano Roosevelt imposed year-round DST for three years during the Second World War. In 1966, Congress approved a uniform DST standard for the whole country. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon had the nation go on DST for 15 consecutive months in order to conserve energy. The last president to modify DST was Ronald Reagan, who advanced DST's start date to the first Sunday in April."

"As Michael Downing points out in his new book, Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, urban businessmen were a major force behind the adoption of DST in the United States. They thought daylight would encourage workers to go shopping on their way home. They also tried to make a case for agriculture, though they didn't bother to consult any actual farmers. One pamphlet argued that DST would benefit the men and women who worked the land because "most farm products are better when gathered with dew on. They are firmer, crisper, than if the sun has dried the dew off." At least that was the claim of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, chaired by department-store magnate A. Lincoln Filene."

"We're also informed that DST helps conserve energy, apparently because people arriving home when the sun is still up don't switch on their lights. Didn't it occur to anybody that maybe they compensate by switching them on earlier in the morning? Moreover, people who arrive home from work an hour earlier during the hot summer months are probably more prone to turning up their air conditioners. According to Downing, the petroleum industry once was "an ardent and generous supporter" of DST because it believed people would hop in their cars and drive for pleasure -- and guzzle more gas.

But the very worst thing about DST is that it's bad for your health. According to Stanley Coren, a sleep expert at the University of British Columbia, the number of traffic accidents and fatal industrial mishaps increase on the Monday after we spring forward. The reason, presumably, is because losing even a single hour of sleep over the weekend makes a lot of people a bit drowsier on what we might usefully call Black Monday. Unfortunately, there's no compensating effect of a super-safe Monday as we go off DST and "fall back" in the autumn."

http://www.mcmaster.ca/inabis98/occupational/coren 0164/two.html

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[madfgurtbn]

Now, if those schools would get real and start school after 8:00 like reasonable people, we could get around this little problem and be much more flexable with the time.

I don't remember the exact times and dates, because I was in 1st grade or 2nd grade, but in about 1974 they had Daylight Savings Time in the winter because of the energy crisis. My school started after 8 a.m., but we were getting on the bus before daylight so after a couple weeks they just cut the first hour of the school day so we went in at 9. Missed half a year of science because of it. Maybe that's why I'm so stupid today.

The current proposal is a joke, really, it is expected to save 00.05% of U.S. daily oil usage for two months a year. We need to concentrate on changes that would actually, you know, make a difference.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[nmos]

Most farmers like DST so they don't need to get up so early in order to get chores done.

I've heard this arguement before but I've never really understood it. It's not like the cows know what time it is. IMHO farmers will get up when there is enough light to get done whatever needs doing. This whole thing sounds a lot like "get the stereo that goes up to 11 caus it's louder".

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Epi-man]

Honestly, who cares if it's a bit darker when you go to work. When you go home, wouldn't it be nice to have it be light outside?

Hmmm, where do I start? I guess with me. I care. I loath trying to get out of bed when it is dark outside (my alarm goes off at 5:15 AM). I hate trying to get my nearly 3 year old and 18 month old to eat dinner when they want to play outside instead because "the sun isn't sleepy yet daddy." Because trying to get them to go to bed at 8:30 PM is hard enough as it is, let alone with sunshine ("daddy, it isn't sleepy time, it isn't dark yet," yes, my almost 3 year old has said these things). Personally, I think DST is one of the stupided concepts ever created (so yes, I am biased, grew up in Indiana where we are smart enough to leave our clocks alone). I get so frustrated and depressed after we switch the clocks and I again have to drive with the sun in my eyes in the morning, wake up in the pitch black, grrr! (sorry for the mini rant there)

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[slackerboy]

Farmers hold a decent bit of lobbying power, moreso than one would expect by chance. They complain about DST one way or another. Most farmers like DST so they don't need to get up so early in order to get chores done. My grandfather didn't really care; he just got up when it was light out, regardless of time.

Indiana still doesn't do DST (due to the farm lobby), but, IIRC, they're trying to work it through their legislature. Whenever I go to my mom's in the summer I always laugh at them because the sun rises around 5 a.m. in June / July.

According to Wikipedia, most farmers actually hate DST (as others have mentioned). And the reason that Indiana doesn't do the whole DST thing has more to do with the fact that the state is divided between time zones as it is.

But hey, if you want to blame the guys that grow the food you eat, go ahead.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[temojen]

When I lived in Northern BC, we went to school in the dark, had recess in the dark, had sunshine for noon hour, and went home in the dark, and played outside in the dark.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[eric76]

In Loving County, Texas, there are kids who ride a school bus something like 100 miles each way to school and back.

My 12 years of public school involved a 40 mile school bus ride each way. With all the stops, that was at least two hours each day on a school bus.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[geminidomino]

Hey, why not. Maybe if the little bastards develop some dexterity, they can reverse the obesity "crisis"

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Spock the Baptist]

Not for the U.S.A..

The 'war time' being referred to in the grandparent of this post clearly refers to the U.S. as this thread is about a bill in the U.S. Congress.

Thus, the parent of this post is nonsensical.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[poot_rootbeer]

Because then you'd have kids going to school in the dark. As soon as one is hit by a car that's the end of that.

Maybe we should stop expecting children to show up at school at 7:30AM, then. Sleep deficit in high school students is heavily documented. Let them sleep in an extra hour, then it will be light enough that they don't get hit by the packs of roving cars that people think seem to be out and about during the pre-daybreak hours.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Matje]

Let me get this straight. You are dismissing a perfectly feasible proposal because you read about some other proposal which you yourself admit is infeasible. Worse, your infeasible proposal still only saves 5%!

Let me give you another infeasible proposal which would save us 100% oil every year: let's all kill ourselves.

The sad thing is that conserving oil doesn't matter, as long as our intent is to run out of oil anyway. Taking longer to burn all of it doesn't fix the environmental damage. Moving to clean energy sources would. It is ironic that the best way to achieve clean energy is high oil usage. That will keep energy prices high, which is needed to make new (clean) energy economically feasible.

So please, everyone go out and buy a SUV. It helps ;)

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[rw2]

I am biased, grew up in Indiana where we are smart enough to leave our clocks alone

Smart enough?

I have a family member in government in Indiana and he's looked into this given that Indiana is likely to finally cave and join the rest of the country (for right or wrong) soon.

He found out that the original lack of DST isn't due to smarts, but due to lobbying from, get this, the drive-in theatre owners in days gone by.

Their lobby isn't as strong as it used to be. ;-)

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Wyatt Earp]

If you want to be on DST year round, move to the edge of a timezone and then you can feel like you are on DST all the time.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[athakur999]

Grew up in a car. Have never seen day light. Need saving.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Physics Dude]

Remember, you're not lengthening the day - you're taking time from the morning and adding it to the evening.

No, you're not doing either. You're just changing your clock which doesn't have any effect whatsoever on time iself, the amount of sunlight, the length of the day or the distribution of time in the day.

The problem isn't with the clock, it's with when your work starts... which SHOULD be something that can adjust seasonally.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[thogard]

What a euro centric view. The war in the pacific was in full swing by then. Japan was marching on Peking in July of that year.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[poot_rootbeer]

Here's an article which could serve as a good starting point for researching studies on the high school sleep deficit problem:

http://www.theithacajournal.com/news/stories/200 50 309/opinion/2059690.html

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[The Taco Prophet]

But the very worst thing about DST is that it's bad for your health. According to Stanley Coren, a sleep expert at the University of British Columbia, the number of traffic accidents and fatal industrial mishaps increase on the Monday after we spring forward. The reason, presumably, is because losing even a single hour of sleep over the weekend makes a lot of people a bit drowsier on what we might usefully call Black Monday. Unfortunately, there's no compensating effect of a super-safe Monday as we go off DST and "fall back" in the autumn."

Off the cuff, I'm inclined to say that it has a lot to do with people banging buttons like a retarded chimp trying to remember how to adjust the clock in their dash as they drive to work instead of watching the road. The quotage says the Monday after we go off DST isn't safer than usual. I wonder if it's more accident prone as well?

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[vsprintf]

So you're saying we need to keep an eye on Arnold?

How does the US differ from EU ?

[foobsr]

There is (should be) a study dated 1998 (which I was not able to locate yet) sponsored by the EU Commission which states that daylight saving time does not have the desired effect on energy consumption (which is taken as a common fact anyway here (de)). I wonder why the US should differ - anyone any idea?

CC.

Re:How does the US differ from EU ?

[networkBoy]

Because our politicans are dumber than yours :-)
-nB

Re:How does the US differ from EU ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we are the US and we can change time if we want to. We could make time run backwards if we so desired.

Re:How does the US differ from EU ?

[paranode]

Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

While European nations have been taking advantage of the time change for decades, in 1996 the European Union (EU) standardized an EU-wide "summertime period." The EU version of Daylight Saving Time runs from the last Sunday in March through the last Sunday in October. During the summer, Russia's clocks are two hours ahead of standard time. For example, Moscow standard time (UTC+3) is about a half-hour ahead of local mean time (UTC+2:30); this is about the same situation as Detroit, whose standard time (UTC-5) is also about a half-hour ahead of local mean time (UTC-5:32). During the winter, all 11 of the Russian time zones remain an hour ahead of standard time. With their high latitude, the two hours of Daylight Saving Time really helps to save daylight. In the Southern Hemisphere where summer comes in December, Daylight Saving Time is observed from October to March. (The clock at above right is viewed from within the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.)

Re:How does the US differ from EU ?

[Otter]

This brings up the bigger (but still not that big) issue: we just got through the week where Europe was on DST and the US wasn't, and no one here knew what time to show up to cross-ocean video conferences. Extending the out-of-sync periods will only lead to more confusion.

On the other hand, Israel has perhaps the world's most complicated DST issue in the world, as there are two separate lunar calendars in use. So not only do the competing demands of Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Muslim and secular have to get resolved, the optimum solution has to change every year. And it's still the most technologically productive per capita country in the world, so I wouldn't panic.

Regarding code changes -- c'mon. It's literally a single line of code for the whole Windows platform, same thing for Mac. Even for the Linux UI spaghetti, it's a one-liner for the KDE and GNOME date handlers, and whatever else is in use. And none of it affects anything important.

Re:How does the US differ from EU ?

[Phisbut]

Wouldn't it be much less complicated to just drop DST altogether, and make the work day an hour earlier? Instead of working from 9 to 5, work from 8 to 4 and voilà, you have an extra hour of daylight in the evening.

What's so hard about that?

Re:How does the US differ from EU ?

[arose]

Too easy.

Re:How does the US differ from EU ?

[CoffeeJedi]

in america, we don't work 9-5, we work, 7:30am to 6:00pm
(officially its 8am - 5pm, but ha! we're salaried!)

Re:How does the US differ from EU ?

[Carewolf]

Because it is easier to change time itself than change the minds of corporate bureaucrats.

No problem

[waynegoode]

This would not be anything like Y2K. The code to change the time for Daylight Savings Time is already there. This is just a change in the data. Plus, it is generally only the OS that needs to be changed. The only real problem would be embedded electronics.

Living on the eastern edge of a time zone, I would love for DST to be extended.

I could be wrong...

[DaHat]

But isn't it "Daylight Saving Time" and not "Daylight Savings Time"? (ie no s)

Re:I could be wrong...

[Alien Being]

The extra 's' is for extra "savings".

Adjust the time so that it really saves daylight

[DeadSea]

The problem with standard time in the summer is that the sun rises before anybody is up (like 4 AM) and some daylight in the morning is just wasted. Daylight savings time moves dawn back to 5 AM and gives you an extra hour of daylight in the evening.

You probably see where I'm going with this: who in their right mind is actually awake at 5 AM to enjoy the daylight?????

Daylight savings time should move the day another five hours or so. Imagine if the sun were just coming up as I started thinking about getting out of bed by 10. At 11 or so it would have fully roused me and I could get up and enjoy the full day. At 2 or 3 in the morning the sun would be setting just as I was starting to grow weary of my hacking and start thinking about going to bed. I -- along with most other similarly minded geeks -- would be ever so much more productive.

Of course some of you might complain about the extra screen glare, claim that you don't get any natural light in your basement anyway, or state that you just plain dislike that burning yellow eye in the sky.

--
Rate Exchange Calculator and Currency Convertor

how about just....

[supernova87a]

why doesn't congress stop tapdancing around the real issue, and instead pass some well-thought out legislation to reduce wasteful energy use, implement a rational gasoline use tax, and other things that would actually address the real problem? Hm?

Re:how about just....

[tjic]

why doesn't congress ... pass some ... legislation to reduce wasteful energy use, implement a rational gasoline use tax, and other things that would actually address the real problem?

Perhaps because under Article I, section 8, the people have not delegated to Congress the power to do any of those things.

Re:how about just....

[gatekeep]

I agree that we need to encourage energy conservation. It'd ridiculous that nearly every day when I leave my office, 80% or more of the lights in the building are on. When I come back in the morning, those SAME lights are STILL ON. I've tried turning them off, only to find that the cleaning people turn them on and then never turn them off.

I know my case isn't unique. Even late at night on weekends, one only needs to glance to the side of the freeway to see the rows of highrise buildings all aglow in artifical light. I can't believe that many people are putting in such long hours. It's as if energy has 0 cost, financially and environmentally. Maybe if taxes were increased it would encourage businesses to be more thrifty with regards to energy uses.

Re:how about just....

[Ironsides]

With regard to the lights. Flourescents use a large amount of energy when initially starting up. So much so that my UPS takes over power when I turn the floor lamp on (Lamp, computer, monitor on same UPS, monitor+computer=150watts peak). Floor lamp is a 60-90 watt flourescent. Depending on what percentage of the day you need light, it can actually be more efficient to leave the light son rather than turn them off. Additionally, those lights are helping to heat the building at night and keep the heating system from coming on (even the little bit of flourescent helps). Can also be used by the security guards when patroling (we have them at my place of business).

Another thing on the lights is that it is cheaper (in many places) to leave them on, than to pay someone to go around and turn them all on and off in the evening/morning. It also (slightly, but signifcantly enough) degrades their lifespan causing them to need to be replaced sooner. So for financial and environmental, they are essentailly the same. The more environmental (less energy) they use the less it costs. Businesses do use this when looking at the bottom line already.

Re:how about just....

[Charcharodon]

That may be true of older flourescents, but it is not necessarily so for the modern ones. Besides its a simple matter of requiring all new buildings to have either a timer system or motion control system installed during major renovation or initial construction. It's inexpensive and has a measureable return.

Re:how about just....

[tegjr]

quoted from: http://www.anr.state.vt.us/reflect/may1401.htm "Your dad or grandpa probably taught you that you'd save electricity, or at least save money, by leaving fluorescent lights on for extended periods of time rather than turning them off and then back on. That may have been true once, but not any more. The following, borrowed from Kansas City Power and Light, answers the question: Should I turn off fluorescent lights when I don't need them, or is it more energy-efficient to leave them on in an empty room? Fluorescent lighting was developed in the 1940s when electricity costs were low. Design and manufacturing compromises in these early lamps caused them to burn out more quickly if switched on and off daily. Consequently, many companies left their fluorescent lamps on day and night. The electricity consumed -- given the extremely low power rates at that time -- actually cost less than the labor and material needed for lamp replacement. Much has changed during the past half century in the world of lighting. Technology advancements and increased electricity cost have prompted the lighting industry to rethink the conventional wisdom of fluorescent lighting system's operation. Many people continue to believe that it takes significantly more electricity to turn on a fluorescent lamp than to operate the lamp for long periods. Modern fluorescent lamps, however, use little starting energy. Turning them off actually helps them last longer and lowers lighting energy costs. Researchers at the U.S. Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory have found that a fluorescent lamp's initial "start surge" lasts only 1/120 of a second. The entire starting current for two-tube rapid-start luminaries lasts less than one second before it stabilizes. Consequently, Navy engineers assert that turning the lamps off for only one second saves the energy required to turn them back on. A standard fluorescent lamp can run for 34,000 hours if left on 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. This equals 3.9 years of round-the-clock use. However, by turning the lamp off for 12 hours a day, it increases the overall longevity of the lamp to 6.8 years. Not only does turning off fluorescent lights reduce lamp replacement costs, it also reduces electric bills. For example turning off a single one-tube light for only one-half hour a day can save about $3 in energy over the life of the lamp. In fact, the money saved by this routine is typically more than the price of a new lamp. In short, you should turn off lights in your office or a room in your home when you leave, even if you leave for only a few minutes. For more detailed information and additional data about fluorescent light use, visit the Kansas City Power and Light website at http://lighting.bki.com/pubs/bull4.asp?link=kcpl Article posted for the week of May 14, 2001."

Re:how about just....

[Vellmont]

Flourescents use a large amount of energy when initially starting up.


That's all a bunch of hogwash. Florescent lights take more energy to turn on for maybe half a second or two. So if you're going to turn off the lights for a minute or two, you'd save energy keeping them on. Beyong that, turn them off.


Additionally, those lights are helping to heat the building at night and keep the heating system from coming on (even the little bit of flourescent helps)

They do, but the heating system is actually engineered to produce heat, not light. Obviously that makes it a lot more efficient. Electric heat is by far more expensive than gas heat (which is what most heating systems use). It's also a lot more efficient in energy usage to go from gas-> heat than from (coal,gas, etc) -> heat -> electricty -> power_lines-> office -> heat.


Another thing on the lights is that it is cheaper (in many places) to leave them on, than to pay someone to go around and turn them all on and off in the evening/morning.

Telling your employees to turn off the lights at night is mighty inexpensive. From what I understand most people have mastered the high-tech lightswitch.

It also (slightly, but signifcantly enough) degrades their lifespan causing them to need to be replaced sooner.

This is far less than the lifespan lost by keeping the lights on.

I'll take the daylight

[vmcto]

I don't have the information necessary to make an observation regarding the net energy savings if any exists, but as a resident of Pennsylvania which runs from Lattitude 39 43' N to 42 N I would sure welcome the extra daylight.

I gotta say that driving to work in the dark and driving home from work in the dark is not a prticularly gratifying experience. In fact it's downright depressing.

Interestingly enough the times have been changed in the fairly recent past (according to the US Army:

During the "energy crisis" years, Congress enacted earlier starting dates for daylight time. In 1974, daylight time began on 6 January and in 1975 it began on 23 February. After those two years the starting date reverted back to the last Sunday in April. In 1986, a law was passed permanently shifting the starting date of daylight time to the first Sunday in April, beginning in 1987. The ending date of daylight time has not been subject to such changes, and has remained the last Sunday in October.

Re:I'll take the daylight

[ab762]

I gotta say that driving to work in the dark and driving home from work in the dark is not a prticularly gratifying experience. In fact it's downright depressing.

That's not a condition that can be much improved by diddling the clocks ... I live in Ottawa, Canada, about 45N. Mid-winter sunrise is about 7:55 EST and sunset 4:25 EST. Now, you can make a big-enough offset that the sunrise is 12:55 PM and the sunset is 9:25 PM, if you really want to ... but you can't make more daylight by playing with the clock.

The British tried double daylight savings time in 1968-1970 as an accident prevention mechanism, but the results were apparently inconclusive.

As for the energy use ... surely this mostly impacts lighting energy? That's not a huge part of the energy budget, and with, as others have posted, office lights on 24/7, the reduction from clock games is likely unmeasurable. Back in WWII, when "play" meant "play outside", not "play X-box", that might have been different.

Oh no, not again

[youngerpants]

Does anybody know any FORTRAN or COBOL hackers for some contract work?

Re:Wrong Target

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Err... Highest percentage of the problem is the military, not Social Security.... The military has a retirement program on top of just social security. Stop listening to the republican on your television please.

Didn't we do this in the 70's?

[winkydink]

If memory serves, we did it for the entire year. If it was such a great energy-saving idea, why didn't we just keep it?

Poor Animals...

[vmcto]

I'm sure some environmentalist will quickly decry this because of the negative impact it will have on wildlife...

With them being exposed to more light each day and all.

Doing some numbers.

[Badgerman]

Let me try and get this straight. We'd save 10,000 barrels a day. We use 20 million.

This is a savings of 1/20th of a percent. And I'm not able to make out if that savings ONLY exists for those 2 months or the year round. Not particuarly impressive either way.

Here's an idea. Let's start passing legislation and using incentives to promote recycling, efficiency, and alternate sources of energy. You know, going to the heart of the problem as opposed to screwing around with something that presents piddly savings and smells more like a publicity stunt.

As for the coding repercussions . . . I can't say for sure.

Re:Doing some numbers.

[nmos]

his is a savings of 1/20th of a percent. And I'm not able to make out if that savings ONLY exists for those 2 months or the year round. Not particuarly impressive either way.

Here's an idea. Let's start passing legislation and using incentives to promote recycling, efficiency, and alternate sources of energy.

Just sending congress home for an extra month in the summer would save more than that in AC costs alone.

retarded

[nordicfrost]

(excuse me for the bad typing, i hadsurgery in my hand...)

this is the way you want to save energy? a saving of 10 000 barrels / day? if you look out on the streets, do all the people that drive SUVs need to drive them? this is an argument that also apply for eupoe, but goes double for the us. tax the hell out of fuel guzzling monster cars (almost the same size as monster trucks) and lower the tax waaay down on cars like VW Polo, MB Smart and hybrids. this also deal with a lot of other problems like parking. some snowy staes might be a little m ore lean on the tax, like snowy states. But theres no need for an Suv in LA, NY, Paris or Oslo.

Re:retarded

[That's Unpossible!]

Yes, let's just tax everything.

If you "tax the hell out of fuel guzzling monster cars," then you are skipping taxation of older fuel guzzling cars that are not as efficient as the newest SUVs.

If you tax gasoline more, you increase the burden on everyone, including poor people that cannot afford to buy a new gas-efficient car. You increase the cost of all goods that are shipped anywhere, or the cost of services that rely on those goods or shipping services.

And where does the tax money go? Does it fund research on alternative fuel sources? No, it is spent on pork barrel projects by Congress.

As/if oil gets scarce, the price will go up naturally, and the market forces will dictate people drive more efficient cars or alternatively-fueled cars.

Artificial taxes on things only screw everything else up, with no actual benefits. Its just a political game.

Re:retarded

[TheWickedKingJeremy]

As/if oil gets scarce, the price will go up naturally, and the market forces will dictate people drive more efficient cars or alternatively-fueled cars.

That is a nice, market-driven fantasy that I wish I could believe, but you need to consider the realistic implications of such a scenario. After all, we go to war now over oil, and we are not even at the point of crisis yet. When larger countries like China (which will soon pass us in oil consumption despite being at the beginning of its development phase!) begin staking their claim in the same way that we do now, it is not unreasonble to think that it might be in our best interest to act more decisively and not wait until our hand is forced. I realize that waiting for the market to handle the problem is a possibility... but is it the best one in this case? Compounding the problem with waiting to let the market sort it out is that the cost of oil is heavily subsidized by our government/military, which prolongs your proposed cycle... after all, it is difficult to let the market do its thing when you are keeping oil prices artificially low.

I feel that market-oriented fixes are often a great way of letting situations play themselves out naturally, but also feel that this is not one of those cases. Oil is a limited resource largely controlled by foreign, hostile nations. With competition escalating, it is not difficult to see why weaning ourselves off it should be made a national priority, and that acting sooner rather than later will pay dividends.

Re:retarded

[nordicfrost]

Yes, let's just tax everything.
Well, we already do in one way or another. The question is how much.

If you "tax the hell out of fuel guzzling monster cars," then you are skipping taxation of older fuel guzzling cars that are not as efficient as the newest SUVs.

No. If we (you) tax the hell out of huge cars, and lower the tax on small cars, people will trade in their beaters to get a smaller cheap car. At least now when the petrol price is "high" (You think todays price is high? You're in for a surprise!)

If you tax gasoline more, you increase the burden on everyone, including poor people that cannot afford to buy a new gas-efficient car.

Eh, no. There is a price point that need to be found but good public campaigns and a really low price on efficient cars (and when they sell more, the price goes down. Yay capitalism). Expand train lines and use ISO containers more. Make trailers only do short haul. Watch the transport costs go down.

And where does the tax money go? Does it fund research on alternative fuel sources? No, it is spent on pork barrel projects by Congress.


Well I'm sure that you as a responisble citizen will see to that.

As/if oil gets scarce, the price will go up naturally, and the market forces will dictate people drive more efficient cars or alternatively-fueled cars.


Isn't it better to stop that from happening? And reduce the oil-producing countries' influence?
Well, it's your call. Be sure to stop by when the US invades us, I live in Norway.

Re:retarded

[zeux]

If you tax gasoline more, you increase the burden on everyone, including poor people that cannot afford to buy a new gas-efficient car.

Well, this is actually a little more complicated than that.

If you increase taxation, the people will ask for more efficient cars. This will increase the demand of such vehicles and the vehicle manufacturers will start to do a lot of R&D to improve the efficiency of their cars.

20 years later you have a country with efficient cars and highly priced gas.

That's what happened in most European countries and that's why europeans cars are more efficients than those in North America.

Congress gets in your business

[Matt Clare]

First they intrude into one individual's health care, now they want to bend time itself!

Is there nothing Congress doesn't assume it has control over?

Statistics!!

[SnotNosedKid]

10,000 barrels of oil a day certainly sounds like a lot if you're planning to put it in my back yard, but exactly what percentage is it. Is it just a drop in the proverbial oil bucket. I imagine so. How would it compare to having cars get one extra mile per gallon?

Re:Statistics!!

[invincerator]

The United States uses 20 million barrels of oil a day, so these 10,000 barrels a day would save .05% (.0005)

Re:Statistics!!

[zhiwenchong]

Let's do a quick naive calculation:

10,000 bbls/day * $56 / bbl * 2 months * 30 days / month
= $34,720,000 in extra savings.

$34 mil is really not that much money to a country.
I wonder if the cost of changing systems over for the sake prolonging DST for that minute amount of savings is worth it.

Re:Statistics!!

[rnelsonee]

As previous posters pointed out, the DST thing saves us 0.05% of oil.

As for the other calculation:

The average American drives 8000 miles per year (I think car owners drive 17,000 mi/year, so this average includes non-drivers)
Let's say the average car gets 28 mpg
The US has 296M people.
Each barrel of oil yeilds about 20 gallons of fuel.
So we have 8,000 miles/year * (1/28) gallons/mile = 285 gallons used by each American per year, or 285/20 = 14.25 barrels per year.

14.25 * 256M = 3.648 billion barrels used by cars in the US per year.

Now the same calculation getting 29 mpg, we get 3.531 billion barrels used, saving us 117 million barrels of oil per year, or 320,500 barrels per day.

My question is....

[DarkMantle]

How does Daylight savings affect the use of energy? Either way, we sleep (using minimal electricity) get up, go to work, come home, cook supper and go back to bed after watching TV.

Please cure my ignorance and tell me how this effects power usage.

Re:My question is....

[WidescreenFreak]

My guess is that they believe that you would not need to turn the lights on for another hour at night thus saving 1 hour of electricity, assuming that we would sleep through the extra hour of darkness in the morning. So, they're equating the lowered use of electricity with lower use of fuels to generate that electricity.

But that's just my guess. Just more "feel good" policy to make it seem to us like they're doing something.

Admittedly, the extra two months would be nice as far as I'm concerned. I hate getting home when it's dark as it reserves any necessary outdoor work until (A) days off or (B) the weekends.

oh yeah....

[WndrBr3d]

"The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use," said Markey, who cited Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.

Apparently they're also going to change how the Earth tilts on its axis. The weather doesn't care what time of day it is.

Leave it to American politicians to think this one up.

Re:Why not just eliminate DST

[raygundan]

Yeah, no kidding. Here in good ol' backwards indiana, we don't use it, and it seems to work fine. There's a bill in our state legislature to change that, though-- the given reason being that it's hurting our state businesses because people can't figure out what time to phone here from other states.

My vote is for eliminating it altogether. While I'm dreaming-- if we can slow the earth down to, say, 25 hours a day, that would be super, too.

Horrible for the security industry

[SenorAmor]

As a panel programmer (among other things) for a security company, this would be a major pain in the butt. All of our security panels (and I would assume most others) have built-in DST changing abilities.

Having to reprogram each of our panels to change at a different time would be extremely time-consuming for a small company like mine. I don't even want to imagine what bigger companies would have to go through.

The security field is very time-dependant. One hour could mean having the police called thinking someone is trying to break in or having your premise completely unsecured.

I, for one, hope this change does not get approved. At least Y2K had the possibility of not causing problems. This will definitely cause problems.

If we're going to change it anyway...

[yotto]

Why not abolish it?
Seriously, Daylight Savings is the biggest PITA. Either half of your company is late to work or half of them are early and won't get paid for that hour they're sitting around. Then they stand around talking to those of us who are on work on time, wasting our productivity.

Embedded Systems

[bsd4me]

In every embedded system I have worked on, we always dealt with time in UTC or ticks from a predefined epoch. Presenting local time to a human was always up to the system communicating with the embedded system, as was converting time to UTC or ticks for sending to the embedded system.

Yet another spelling error in the headline...

[MisterLawyer]

Quoting from The Daylight Saving Time Web Exhibit:

"The official spelling is Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight SavingS Time."

Btw, there's lots of other cool info about DST on that page, e.g.: In the U.S., the changeover time was chosen to be 2 am, when most people are at home and, originally, the time when the fewest trains were running. This is practical and minimizes disruption. It is late enough to minimally affect bars and restaurants, and prevent the day from switching to yesterday (which would be confusing). It is early enough that the entire continental U.S. has switched by daybreak, and the changeover occurs before most early shift workers and early churchgoers (particularly on Easter).

Also, Hawaii doesn't observe DST. I guess they get enough sunlight as it is. Either that or something to do with being so much closer to the equator.

Re:Quick Question

[Ruprecht the Monkeyb]

Not even all parts of the United States follow it uniformly. From webexhibits.org:

" is NOT observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, most of the Eastern Time Zone portion of the State of Indiana, and the state of Arizona (not the Navajo Indian Reservation, which does observe). Navajo Nation participates in the Daylight Saving Time policy, due to its large size and location in three states."

While they're making changes...

[telstar]

Can we lose the hour in the middle of a work-day, and gain the hour in the middle of the night? That'd get my vote.

He's not kidding.

[Len]

Here's what one of your members of Congress says:

The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use.

Hey, why not just stop all the clocks at noon permanently?

Re:He's not kidding.

[einhverfr]

If the daylight hours coincide with most people's work schedule then it will use less electricity.

How? Maybe it did during WWII, but have you ever worked in an office building where the lighting schedule was so determined? I.e. fewer lights on during work hours that are also daylight hours...

An extra hour of daylight is useful because it means that one can go do things out-doors after work. But I hardly see that as an electrity deman issue.

Re:He's not kidding.

[amigabill]

> Hey, why not just stop all the clocks at noon permanently?

Because then we'd need to invent power-hungry dark generators to turn on when we want to sleep. While dark generators could possibly be more energy efficient than light bulbs, do we really want to take that risk?

Re:He's not kidding.

[TheTomcat]

"Hey, why not just stop all the clocks at noon permanently?"

That _IS_ the default on most digital clocks, after all.

(12:00 [blink] 12:00 [blink] 12:00 ...)

S

Re:He's not kidding.

[chrisbtoo]

Actually it's midnight.

Re:He's not kidding.

[lewiscr]

The first legitimate use of the tag!

Changing careers right now!

[missing000]

That's a great point, I'm going to go tell my boss off right now.

Me: Hey, I quit. I don't need this stinking job anymore, congress just changed the length of DST!
Boss: Whaa?
Me: Yep, I'm gonna get rich!
Boss: Sure you are. How do you expect to make money on this?
Me: Laugh all you want, you'll just pay me extra when you need your clocks reset. I'm now a professional time changer! It's the new Y2K.

Nah, think I'll keep what I've got, you all take this opportunity if you want it :)

Re:Changing careers right now!

[yo_tuco]

"...We run our servers off GMT..."

Since GMT is an obsolete time scale (for what 30 years now), I think you will be hard-pressed finding an official time keeping source that measures time by the definition of the second in GMT. Your NTP time server will get its time from master time servers which report time in the UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) time scale which is derived from measurements in the TAI (International Atomic Time) time scale.

The basis for civil time is an atomic time scale (GMT is an astronomical based time scale). Thus, the correct "units" for time on the prime meridian is UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) which is derived from TAI.

Go to any official place that measures and reports time and you will see the complete absence of the words GMT (except for the BBC who just can't give it up).

GMT is an abused time scale used by the layman just like people use kilograms (a unit of mass not weight) to report weight without the qualifying "force" on the end. The same is true with calories in food. That one-calorie diet coke is really 1000 calories by the SI definition of the unit. The inference in this case is a Dietary Calorie (=1000 calories)

Re:Adjust the time so that it really saves dayligh

[LiquidCoooled]

Studies have shown that most hackers work better at night, and actually use dawn as a kind of alarm clock "oh shit, suns coming up, better get my head down or I'll never get to work by 9" (I KNOW i'm not the only one who has thought that)

DST is a kludge!

[ClayJar]

Why not just do away with DST completely, and by congressional mandate, require all businesses (banks, stores, employers, etc.) shift their hours back one hour? Requiring such a shift by legislative means is no worse than DST, and it need only happen once.

As far as staying on DST and dropping the shift back to Standard Time, that is one thing that I cannot allow. Noon was traditionally the moment when the sun was directly over the longitude of the observer. With Standard Time, this was quantized in order to create a manageable time system -- this is a perfectly acceptable optimization which was necessary for an interconnected civilization.

Admittedly, we do not directly depend on sunlight as much as in times past, however arbitrarily redefining "noon" to mean "1:00 'PM'" is completely preposterous. Why not just go all the way to metric time while we're at it? (Has the Swatch patent expired yet?)

With the whole 2000 versus 2001 thing, I can let mathematics slide a little due to the sociological significance of changing four digits at once. Declaring that we use the wrong time in perpetuity? That would be the real life analogue of the urban legend about redefining "pi" as equal to the integer value "3".

Re:DST is a kludge!

[KingSkippus]

Bravo, I wish I still had my mod point from yesterday. :-)

Daylight Savings Time is one of the most idiotic concepts we have around today. I cannot believe that people actually signed on to the concept of arbitrarily moving clocks around twice a year. If I were around when this idea first started, I would have mocked those people mercilessly.

Several places do not observe Daylight Savings Time at all. In the United States, the entire state of Arizona stays at GMT -7 all year 'round. Funny, I don't read news story about how many more kids are killed from walking to school in the dark in Arizona, how much more energy that state uses relative to the others, or how much more depressed Arizonans are than people in other states! Parts of Indiana are the same way.

Congress needs to repeal everything that has to do with Daylight Savings Time and pass a law prohibiting it (to keep states from doing it themselves). If companies care about when it's daylight, let them adjust their hours accordingly. My company already does that in the summer, even WITH Daylight Savings Time.

If you don't like when the sun comes up and goes down, too bad. Complain to God for making it that way. I don't like having to get up and leave my house before dawn to go to work. The way I see it, at least I have nature and thousands of years of human history on my side.

I wonder how much productivity is lost each year at the beginning of DST because of people forgetting to dink around with their clocks? Or as is most likely the case, people CLAIMING to forget? It's the one day a year when everyone has an automatic excuse for being late to work and everyone's bosses say, "Oh yeah, that's understandable." About half my office showed up late.

Nice reference to the redefinition of pi, by the way. It certainly does apply here. And I really like your thoughts about how DST redefines arbitrarily what noon means. I hadn't thought about that, but it makes a LOT of sense. And to the other poster, making a law mandating when businesses open and close IS kind of silly. I think that is the parent's point--it's less silly than the concept of Daylight Savings Time, yet we still foolishly screw around with our clocks twice a year.

In other news..........

[mrtroy]

SUV's, trucks, and 6+ cylinder engine cars for city commuting result in a ridiculous amount more of oil being consumed than anything related to Daylight Saving Time.

Re:Wrong Target

[Ironsides]

Err... Highest percentage of the problem is the military, not Social Security.... The military has a retirement program on top of just social security

Er, hate to say it but it's not Military either. Highest percentage is the "Department of Health and Human Services" (643.9 billion), followed by "Social Security Administration" (583.5 billion), "Department of Defense"+"Department of Veterans Services" (475.4+68.3=543.7 billion), "Department of the Treasury" (441.2 billion). Also, that military retirement program is just like any other pension plan people recieve. It also comes out of the "Department of Defense" budget.

Stop listening to the republican on your television please.

Stop listening to the democrat on yours.

There's a good side to everything...

[MisterLawyer]

This article focuses on all the bad side effects of switching Daylight Saving Time, but there can be some benefits too.

For example, changing Daylight Saving Time could prevent terrorist attacks:

In September 1999, the Palestinian West Bank was on daylight saving time while Israel had just switched back to standard time. West Bank Palestinians prepared time bombs and smuggled them to Arab Israelis, who misunderstood the time on the bombs. As the bombs were being planted, they exploded--one hour too early--killing three terrorists instead of two busloads of people, the intended victims. (from webexhibits.org)

Re:There's a good side to everything...

[Anonymous Coward]

We should just classify the time as secret so that nobody except the military knows when it is. Time bombs will be a thing of the past. That is if we can figure out when the past was . . .

Individual States will just negate this ...

[hlygrail]

Some states (parts of Indiana, all of Hawaii, and Arizona) have already recognized the general silliness (YMMV) in switching clocks around for some nebulous net gain. The Navajo Indian reservations ignore DST, too.

I expect if this passes Congress, the states will just pass laws to reverse this for their own constituents. Naturally, the net effect of (all of) this will just be extended chaos...

If it's not already confusing enough for only SOME of Indiana to observe DST, whose bright idea was it to make India be ten and a HALF hours off from EST ??

Its all relative!

[mrcarns]

Why move the time we can just adjust our mindset? If we want to have more daylight hours then change our work starting times or when businesses open. Instead of an average 8am to 5pm work date, switch to to 6am to 3pm - the military already does this.

The sun doesnt give us more daylight hours just because we reference time differently.

I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[Thud457]

If. I. ever meet Ben Fucking Franklin, I WILL KICK HIS ASS!!!!

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[Alien Being]

He'd probably shove a lightning rod up yours.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[cloudmaster]

Yes, sleeping an hour later every morning, relative to the sun's position, is certainly a cramp on *my* sleep, too. I don't know how I'll ever get enough sleep with that extra hour of darkness in the morning and all.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

You know what? DST saves *for free* millions of tons of oil worldwide. Oil supplies are being depleted at an alarming rate, and so every little bit helps to conserve it. I repeat again, DST is *free energy savings*. The only thing it costs is a few days of discomfort for people like you, so I reckon it's a really small price to pay. Speaking for myself, and most people I know, the only side effect of going to summer time is being a wee tired the evening after. Perhaps you should go to bed an hour earlier that night?

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, well, I don't really think he expected anyone to take him seriously, just laugh at the French. This is what he actually said.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[tomhudson]

If you REALLY want to save energy, here's 3 simple gas-saving tips:

1. Mandatory flex-time (people won't be wasting time idling in traffic jams)
2. SUV exclusionary zones, car exclusionary zones
3. Carbon depletion tax to gasoline

Any of these will save a LOT more than 10,000 barrels a day.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[pnutjam]

Move to Indiana, unless our asshat of a governor converts us to DST, :(

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[Storlek]

In that case why don't we always use DST? Arizona, Puerto Rico, some of Indiana, etc. all seem to be doing just fine without seasonal time changes. It is quite pleasant not to have to arbitrarily change the clocks twice a year.

I wonder if there's any studies on how much money is lost around the switch to daylight saving time due to people oversleeping and coming in late.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[br0ck]

These days it may not save any oil, in fact it may deplete more oil. From the Widipedia article, There is also a question whether the savings in lighting costs (people just home from work don't turn on the electric lights because there is enough sunlight through the windows) justifies the increase in summertime air conditioning costs (people home from work do turn up the air conditioning during the late-afternoon peak load times, because it's still warm outside). When air conditioning was not widely available, the change did save energy; however, air conditioning is much more widespread now than it was several decades ago.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[tbone1]

• Move to Indiana, unless our asshat of a governor converts us to DST, :(

Well, I think our previous two governors (not to mention our previous speaker of the house) were more the asshats; they wouldn't even discuss it because they were too busy taxing us into our current hole. Mitch Daniels is at least honest about it: he's mainly doing it because it gives companies one less excuse to move/invest here. Hawaii and Arizona, being those trendy COOL places and a bit more isolated, don't feel the effect of it that we do.

Personally, I dislike DST and didn't see any advantage to it when I've lived elsewhere. Really, there is only one legitimate excuse for adopting DST: the rest of the world has. For better or for worse, that is the world we live in.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[protolith]

Mandatory Flex-time would be good,
Better yet, change the standard Business work day in the US to 4-10's instead of the current 5-8's.
Having 50 or so days of commuting removed from most of the working stiffs yearly schedules would more significantly reduce energy demands.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[Malc]

Just go the whole hog and have car exlusionary zones! I chose to live in a place where I can cycle all year around (downtown Toronto) and my life would be easier without the cars :D

I also think the government should impose taxes on guzzlers and use them for rebates for non-guzzlers. Take an arbitrary fuel consumption number like 10 litres/100km (I'll let you calculate that in mpg), and then tax cars that can't do that. Say for each litre per 100km over that limit, there is an annual tax of 1% of the vehicle's original value. The owner of a vehicle that cost $20K new that does 12 l/100km will have to pay $400/yr extra tax. Give that as a rebate to people who chose to buy cars that do less than 5 l/100km, there aren't many at the moment. So the big three aren't willing to take any initiative and say they do what the market demands... well this will kick-start a change in the market!

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[Waffle Iron]

Mandatory flex-time (people won't be wasting time idling in traffic jams)

I'm not sure that that would actually help in the long run. A while back I saw an article reporting on a study of commuting habits. It seems that across all cultures and income levels around the world, they found that people on average spend roughly the same time commuting each day, whether it's walking, public transportation, bicycling or in cars.

Presumably, if flextime helps to clear up traffic jams, over time people will just tend to move even farther away from their workplaces. They'll trade in their newly freed time for a chance to live somewhere closer to their ideal accommodations, which will often be farther than they are willing to commute today.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[Vulture101]

from www.alertnet.org : "The committee voted down, 39 to 12, a separate amendment to require the federal government to find a way to cut U.S. oil demand by 1 million barrels a day by 2013. The amendment offered by Democrat Henry Waxman of California aimed to reduce imports of crude oil.

Lawmakers with automakers in their districts led the fight to defeat Waxman's proposal, arguing it was backdoor way to require U.S. mini-vans, sport utility vehicles and pick-up trucks to improve their fuel efficiency."

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[QuaZar666]

and thats probally due to the fact that people forgot to set there clocks forward and are trying to rush to work so they get there own time.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[rjelks]

I don't blame you, living in Arizona...I bet the summers get way too hot.

For me, I love getting off work and still having a couple hours of sunlight. I can pretend I didn't work all day long. Of course, here in Colorado, the evenings are still nice and cool.

On the flip side, I hate this week more than any other. I've been downing coffee all day, and I could still fall asleep at my desk. If we have to go through this, I think that we should make the change occur at 4:00 p.m. on Friday...I'd rather lose an hour of work than an hour of sleep. :)

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[alienw]

How exactly does it save anything? Most people work in offices these days, and most offices have artificial lighting that's on 24/7 anyway, so how does it matter? Not to mention that the only thing it can save is electricity used for lighting, which does not come from oil.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[It'sYerMam]

Couple of weeks? I'm sorry, I may be rather naïve when it comes to the world of work, but two weeks seems a little extreme when all that happens is you lose one hour of sleep, if you don't go to bed early.
It doesn't take two weeks for a body clock to change by an hour, and indeed, it doesn't really require the body clock to change for you to sleep pretty well.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[Le Marteau]

Oil, as any physical entity, is limited in quantity.

Well, it may be limited, but the supply might be hugely greater than has been estimated. Practically without fail, they estimate such and such a field has X number of barrels, and they CONSTANTLY move these number upward.

Could it be that oil is NOT a product of biology, but of simple inorganic chemistry? Some people think so, and they are not kooks.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[Le Marteau]

Oh yeah, I forgot to make my point. Many advocates of the abiogenic theory of petroleum origin say that the reason that estimates of reserves at various fields are always being raised is because the fields are being replenished!

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[Hard_Code]

Yeah, but you don't need to change TIME to get those benefits. Just have guidelines that employees come in earlier and leave early. You don't need to screw up the whole time system over it.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[einhverfr]

You know what? DST saves *for free* millions of tons of oil worldwide. Oil supplies are being depleted at an alarming rate, and so every little bit helps to conserve it. I repeat again, DST is *free energy savings*. The only thing it costs is a few days of discomfort for people like you, so I reckon it's a really small price to pay. Speaking for myself, and most people I know, the only side effect of going to summer time is being a wee tired the evening after. Perhaps you should go to bed an hour earlier that night?

When DST started, I think that it clearly saved energy. After all, we used *daylight* a lot more than we do today. Even during War Time, we were still more dependent on daylight and less dependent on electricity.

But also consider-- DST was originally designed not to save energy but to give farmers an extra hour of work time during the summer and harvest.

But as our economy has continued to grow, we have essentially deemed it standard that lights are on during work hours. I have never worked anywhere that expended any less energy because it was daylight. Indeed, everywhere I have worked had so little external light that it was not possible to continue to do any work without lights.

So pardon my confusion, but I don't see where the savings come from. Instead, I suspect that it now has the opposite effect in terms of lost productivity and more energy spent per productivity unit. I seriously doubt that our cars get *that* much more mileage with their lights off and at least in the Northwest, if you extend daylight time, you will be using your headlights more during the morning commute, so even that doesn't add up.

If you can explain where this magical energy savings comes from today, I would be happy to reconsider my position.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[vsprintf]

You know what? DST saves *for free* millions of tons of oil worldwide. Oil supplies are being depleted at an alarming rate, and so every little bit helps to conserve it. I repeat again, DST is *free energy savings*.

You, like the legislator in the linked article who claimed that additional sunlight (as mandated by Congress) saves oil, are a nut-job. If extending DST by two months will save gazillions of energy, then let's make the next logical step and make DST effective all year long and save lots more gazillions of energy. Be done with the farce, and stop the whole time-change nonsense. Congress does not control the hours of sunlight in a day nor the daily routine of this country's residents - yet. Warning: Additional DST, due to the Congressionally claimed increase in sunlight causes faster global warming. (Hey, it makes as much sense as the parent.)

Ban SUVs = Save More Oil Than Expanding DST

[AngryDan]

How about just banning vehicles that get less than 15 MPG? There is no excuse why we should be allowing vehicles that guzzle gas at such a god-awful rate on our roads given the current oil situation. All those stupid soccer moms can go back to driving station wagons and get their damn Lexus, BMW, Mercedes and Hummer SUVs off the damn road.

Re:Ban SUVs = Save More Oil Than Expanding DST

[LordBodak]

They're paying for the gas, they can drive whatever they want. You don't like the gas prices, you drive something fuel efficient. Some people have no problem paying for a vehicle they prefer, so it's their choice.

Re:Ban SUVs = Save More Oil Than Expanding DST

[Dachannien]

Technically, we *all* pay for gas, in at least two ways. One is the environmental cost, since lower fuel efficiency means higher emissions. And two is the increase in demand which causes all gas prices to increase, not just the gas prices for people who drive SUVs.

Maybe that's an idea in itself - only increase gas taxes on people who drive fuel-inefficient vehicles.

Re:Ban SUVs = Save More Oil Than Expanding DST

[sparty]

That would be a completely reasonable argument, if gas prices weren't so damn low. The US severely under-taxes gasoline, effectively subsidizing the use of petrol-burning vehicles.

(By "under-taxes", I mean that the current amount of tax collected in the US on gasoline, though it does vary from state to state, barely covers the cost of maintaining roadways, in the best cases. It does not cover the costs of associated damage to the commons resulting from dumping burnt hydrocarbons and various chemicals into the air, nor the damage resulting from spills associated with maintaining the infrastructure to produce and deliver the volume of petrol we use, nor the cost of maintaining sufficient access to world-wide sources of oil reserves so that we can continue burning oil for such uses. I would grudgingly, if not happily, pay more taxes on gasoline so long as (a) everyone did it and (b) the additional funds went *only* to mitigate the costs associated with gasoline usage.)

Re:Ban SUVs = Save More Oil Than Expanding DST

[raygundan]

Unfortunately, because we use gas tax to pay for the roads, we're going the other direction. Oregon, for example, is taxing hybrid cars because they don't use enough gas to pay for their share of road use.

How's that for encouraging efficiency?

Re:Ban SUVs = Save More Oil Than Expanding DST

[Charcharodon]

Because SUV are not at the heart of the problem. Auto use represents less than half the oil consumed, and SUV represent an even smaller persentage of that piece. The majority of oil is consumed for heating and generating electricity.

SUV's are an easy target, but it's kind of like blaming firearms for lots of deaths while ignoring the fact that junk food and incompetent doctors kill over 12x's the number annually.

Go for the $1 solution that gives a $100 reward. If you want to see a huge impact on our total enegery use all they would have to do is ban the good ol incadecent light bulb. It can be done without destroying the heavy manufacturing companies profits, which in any country are sacred cows so it will never happen.

Take it to the next step and all new buildings have at least 100watts or the equivalent of some sort of renewable energy integrated into them. (Inertie solar, solar hot water, or small factor windmill). At the current rate of new home building it would be like taking 40,000 off the grid a year, bump it up to 1000-5000watts and now you'd see a noticeable impact.

The SUV fuel economy is taking care of itself, especially as fuel keeps climbing up. Take a look at some of the manufacturers and you can already see them trying to boost the MPG along without sacrificing all the power people want.

Re:Ban SUVs = Save More Oil Than Expanding DST

[Dachannien]

Rather surprising (and disappointing) that something so regressive and environment-unfriendly would come out of Oregon. :(

Re:Ban SUVs = Save More Oil Than Expanding DST

[pavon]

Auto use represents less than half the oil consumed, and SUV represent an even smaller persentage of that piece. The majority of oil is consumed for heating and generating electricity.

That's not correct. In the US over 2/3 the oil is used for transportation. Futhermore, the amount of oil used for heating has been dropping every year (in real quantities - barrels/day, not just percentage) since 1978, while the amount used for transportation is growing. source. It is relatively easy to convert stationary applications to use another fuel, but we don't (yet) have a suitable mobile fuel that is as economical as oil.

Re:Wrong Target

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

What about the last few 'supplemental budgetary requests' submitted for the benefit of the military? They add to the figures you've just placed by enough to put the military in first.

I listen to the Libertarians and Greens too. They're small but don't lie as much. I listen to them first, then move on to vote for a Democrat 'cause our system is.... inefficent. Yeah, that's the right word.

Here's my idea: Slow the planet...

[JargonScott]

Why doesn't the US schedule a day where every rocket, jet, truck, car, motorcycle, go-cart, tricycle, etc all face east and at exactly the same time, they are all hammered full throttle/pedal? Maybe we can add an hour or two if we try real hard?

That would surely be cheaper than buying 10,000 extra barrels of oil a day. I mean shit, I couldn't fit more than 10 or twelve in my garage, even if I shut the door real fast on the last one!

Technological solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Because then you'd have kids going to school in the dark. As soon as one is hit by a car that's the end of that.

So, we implement a technical solution to prevent it. You see, there's this new cutting edge technology called "headlights"...

--
AC

Re:What took so long?

[http101]

Damned straight! I'm for this idea, in fact, let's make it a permanent thing. The idea of turning clocks back and hour, then forward an hour each year is a pain in my ass because I have to find every watch, clock, and VCR in the house just to do this stupid ritual. Let's keep Daylight Savings Time (DST) as a permanent setting, forget about "Standard Time" and just use what we're running with now.

The initial expense of having to change code at such a short notice is expected, but since we're doing it ONLY ONCE, it shouldn't be a problem. Just be glad we're not using the standardized calendar format mentioned here, http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/21/151923 5&tid=99

DST is stupid

[ryanvm]

Oh, don't even talk to me about Daylight Savings Time. I'm still pissed that my state (Indiana) is actually thinking about joining in this moronic ritual.

Daylight Savings Time is like pulling your bedsheet up because your chest is cold. Now your feet are cold.

My proposal is that we make the daytime minutes longer and the nighttime minutes shorter during the summer. Tadah - sunrise is at 7 and sunset is at 7 all year round. :-)

Re:This won't affect salaried/exempt people.

[smittyoneeach]

Report to Conference Room C.
You will be seated in the comfy chair and be forced to endure what initially appears to be a finite PowerPoint presentation, but you will eventually realize is a Kafka-esque random crapflooder.
It is loaded with current buzzwords about some n-tier solution, somehow integrating all 621 languages on 99 bottles, which project will become your life, assuming you scream in the proper musical sequence from a certain Partridge Family episode, which will turn off the presentation and unlock the door.
Good luck.

Change Implications

[mugnyte]

Answering the original question, I work in the power industry as a developer. I can watch the local load curve and do a bit of my own research about supposed "energy savings" by artificially making the sun set later in the day. BoooOogus. The savings would be low.

You all know this: The devil is in the details. The programming impact would be larger than anticipated. Power is usually tracking in "hour ending" and various participants use a 23 and 25-hour day when necessary, defined as "relative hour of the day". Because of this, date conversions abound and the the "first sunday in april/last sunday in october" algorithm is in quite a few places. The impact would be high.

I think it's political hot air. Why not just ask people to pay more for oil? The markets know how to react.

Benjamin Franklin Essay

[dsginter]

An Economical Project

Definitely not a new idea.

Largely symbolic

[wcrowe]

This is largely a symbolic gesture. It let's congress do something which has little effect on the situation, but allows them to say that they "took measures" to save energy.

Unknown environmental effects

[GreasyBloater]

Isn't anyone worried about the environmental effects of this? With more daylight, global warming will increase, nocturnal animals will lose sleep, and plants won't grow as long. Doesn't anyone think these things through anymore? GreasyBloater

Arizona

[overshoot]

You probably see where I'm going with this: who in their right mind is actually awake at 5 AM to enjoy the daylight?????

Well, for one I am. It's the only decent time of day to be outside around here. Why, at 0400-0600 (the two hours on either side of sunrise) the temperature sometimes gets down into the 80F range.

Back in the early 60s the flood of Arizona newcomers convinced the Legislature to adopt DST. It lasted one year. As soon as the Legislature reconvened the first thing they did was repeal it.

Re:Arizona

[kaszeta]

Well, for one I am. It's the only decent time of day to be outside around here. Why, at 0400-0600 (the two hours on either side of sunrise) the temperature sometimes gets down into the 80F range.

As someone who grew up in AZ, I always went the other day. I loved going out with my friends after work in the summer: it was around 80 degrees, dry, and a nice cool breeze most of all the time. It was also 11:30 at night.

Urban legand

[wowbagger]

The "cost" of turning on a flourescent light being higher than leaving it running is an urban myth.

Yes, a flourescent takes more power for a few cycles when it strikes.

The total energy taken to strike the arc in the light is less than a few seconds of runtime.

Don't change clocks, change habits

[pokopoko3k]

Am I the only one that is bugged by "Daylight Saving" on principle? I mean, if you don't like what time you it is when you wake up, you don't change your clock! IT'S A CLOCK for god's sake! it's an instrument of measurement, more or less. You don't adjust it to you, you adjust to it. Otherwise, why stop at daylight saving? if we want to save even more money, maybe we should implement "sweat saving temperature" time in the summer, where we subtract 5 degrees from the temperature in order to cut our air con bills? But seriously, why can't people and businesses just be more flexible about work hours? this could solve the same problems plus reduce rush hour congestion, which would save much more energy.

Why don't *you* start getting up earlier?

[nitewave]

Stop going to stores or to the city late in the evening when it's dark and go earlier in the day when it's light. That'll save plenty of oil without screwing up the time half of the year.

0.05% Change

[CrazyWingman]

Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day. The country uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day.

Anyone else do the math? 1e4/2e7 = 5e-4. That's right people - 10,000 barrels of oil is 0.05% of our annual consumption. Go back and read that again - it's not 5%, it's 0.05%.

If you're going to pick a point to lobby on, this is not it. Try something like, "it will be easier on people's health to not have to change wake up time," or "we'll be more like the rest of the world without a change."

If you want to save barrels of oil, pressure automotive companies to get their acts together.

10,000 barrels of oil a day???

[El]

Gee, how much oil could we save if they just made the fucking CAFE standands apply to SUVs???

Re:10,000 barrels of oil a day???

[frn123]

* Full-sized station wagons, like the caprice-based one. Other than Mercedes & Volvo, does anyone make a full sized station wagon anymore?

In Europe- every carmaker i know. Including BMW, Audi, Ford(!), Opel, Subaru, Toyota, Honda etc etc etc.

mac os x and EST

[pikine]

I just recently discovered that Mac OS X actually switches from EST (eastern standard time) to EDT (eastern daylight-saving time) 5 seconds before it turns to 2am on the first Sunday of April.

The clock ticked to 1:59:54 am and jumped to 2:59:55 am.

Re:Wrong Target

[SunFan]

Stop listening to the republican on your television please.

Stop listening to the democrat on yours.

How about we stop listening to both of them and learn to think for ourselves?

Oh. Dear. God.

[cbiffle]

As an Arizonan first and a programmer second, I think history is going to look back on DST as essentially equivalent to the (anecdotal) story of lawmakers legislating pi to 3.

Arizona doesn't do DST. I've only visited areas that observed daylight savings time, and it never ceases to amuse me. The conversations usually go like this:
Q. Why do you keep changing your clocks around?
A. To get more daylight!
Q. So changing your clock alters the rotation or axial tilt of the Earth?
A. No, see, normally it would get dark at 7. Now it gets dark at 8!
Q. But the sun doesn't rise until 8 or 9 AM. When you need to make your blanket longer, do you cut a foot off one end and sew it onto the other?
A. But...*gzert*...more daylight! More daylight!
Q. Why don't you just wake up an hour earlier, if you want more daylight?
A. *gzert* *pop*

(Okay, they don't actually short circuit, but they tend to run out of coherent arguments. It seems most people haven't really thought about this.)

Add to this my programmer's view of time (as a monotonically increasing quantity [relativity aside] unrelated to human foibles) and this seems a lot like Congress trying to legislate the tides, or apply our IP laws in Norway.

(Oh, wait. Heh.)

Re:Honestly, who cares...

[atteSmythe]

who cares if you go to work at an appropriate time

Employers?

Re:Wrong Target

[Ironsides]

Any and all borrowing (debt+interest) numbers would be directly proportional to the amount spent (two programs that cost equal amounts, cause equal amounts of debt). For the war spending, see here (other post). It still doesn't raise it about the Department of Health and Human services.

I wrote my Congressman

[krbvroc1]

I hear Congress is meddling with Daylight Savings Time - Leave it alone!

The real issue is for the Federal Gov't to realize that our Foreign Oil dependance is a National Security threat as well as an Economic one. We need a Federal program similar to putting a man on the moon to harness alternative fuel technologies. Only the public sector can drive the research against the vested interests. It would create jobs, increase security, and be a new technology that the USA can export to the rest of the world.

Extending Daylight Savings Time by 2 months will break computers (like Y2K) because new 'Timezone' rules will need to be programmed into every computer that manipulates dates. The estimated savings is 10,000 barrels a day when we use 20 million! What a short-sighted idea that totally misses the big picture.

Re:I wrote my Congressman

[krbvroc1]

DST isn't even a Federal law. If it becomes one, will Arizona be forced to implement it?

Sure it is. Its called the Uniform Time Act of 1966. There were many changes to DST (as well as myths). Various locations refused to abide by it. Finally a 'compromise' was hashed out and in 1966 the Uniform Time Act was passed to codify the compromise. Part of the compromise was that Arizona was exempted and part of Indiana could do their own thing.

Re: kids in the dark!

[BrianJacksonPhoto]

I grew up and went to school in Texas. I had to wait for the bus in the dark. Still here today, 20 years later!

Our school started at 0730, I was at the bus stop around 0640. The argument that kids would have to go to school when it's dark out is STUPID!

I like DST. The more lite we have in the evening the better if you ask me. As far as it saving more in energy...which is worse, running the AC until 2230 or turning on a few 100watt litebulbs at 2130? I no live in the SF Bay Area now and we don't have AC so that argument is kida moot here :/

Quitcher whinin', we showed up eventually...

[Thud457]

Shut up you bloody Euro! WWII started December 7, 1941!

Slow Down!

[SpaceLifeForm]

4. Drive slower.

That will save much more. In fact, it's been proven with the speed limit set at 55mph in the U.S. in 1974.

In fact, comsumers could have an impact if they would slow down just on weekends!

God damn it, just pick a time and stick with it!

[Greyfox]

I'm sick of springing forward and falling back! Just pick a fucking time and stick with it already! Better yet how about we ALL just start going by GMT! I'm just fine with going in to work at 14:00 if that's what it takes to get an unambiguous time when talking to people a few states or a few countries away. It really wouldn't take that long for people to get used to it and GMT's the One True Timezone anyway.

Anyway, we need to come up with a plan for energy independence. Relying on a bunch of nations who think we're Satan for our energy needs should be giving our politicians the screaming heebie-jeebies. We need an apollo-type program to come up with and implement a cohesive plan to eliminate our need for foreign oil.

A Better Idea

[TFGeditor]

Take a look at this http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001127.html

Simply mandating that cities turn off every other street light after 2300 hours would save tens of thousands of barrels per day.

Software defects

[lisnter]

Some years ago I had a bug in a Windows NT system caused by DST handling. The problem only surfaced in the period between when the US and Europe went on/off DST. There's a period of about a week when they are not in sync. The symptom of this was that system events displayed via the standard Windows GUI were different than when accessed through a character mode terminal. Same data source: the NT Event Log. After some debugging to make sure it wasn't our code and some back and forth with Microsoft I discovered that the libc.dll code subtraced the hour for non-DST (or added for DST, I forget which. . .this was a while ago) at some point in the code and then further down in the code did it again (oops). The pure Win32 API did the computation correctly. We got the DLL code and considered fixing it there but I didn't want to be in the DLL maintenance business so we pressed MS for a solution. In the end MS Support came up with a computation that used big decimals and turned the timestamps into pico-seconds since 1,000,000 BC (or something like that) and then back into MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM:SS format. This worked reliably in both applications. Every time I hear of time-zone questions I think of this story.

Re:War Time

[rnturn]

Good idea. And, with the current administration, very appropriate.

(He sez while ducking to avoid Bush Backers taking aim...)

Re: Parties

[Anonymous Coward]

If you (general "you") see a third party you like better than the Republicans and Democrats, start advocating them now, not only in the 6-12 months before Election Day like we usually end up doing - by that time most people have already started making up their minds because it's "election time" again, and the old "I'm not voting for them because they won't win anyway" kicks in.

More worrying is the safety hazard.

[SeanDuggan]

I can't remember where I saw the statistic, but I remember reading that the number of accidents involving motor vehicles sharply increases the week after either DST change. Basically, on the day that people "spring forward," drivers and pedestrians are more exhausted and less likely to be reacting quickly enough. *shrug* And honestly, doesn't the "10,000 barrels of oil" sound like an exact rehash, right down to the amount, of the original DST proposal?

No, just outdated info

[Prof. Pi]

The "cost" of turning on a flourescent light being higher than leaving it running is an urban myth.

Not really an urban myth. It was actually true in the early days of flourescents, and that's how the "myth" got started. Modern designs are much better.

However, turning the bulb off will shorten its life. It seems that bulbs only deteriorate when powering on. So one can calculate the break-even point based on bulb and electricity costs.

Re:Switch off the lights

[fishbowl]

"Imagine how much energy would be saved with that!"

Not enough to be of sufficient financial impact to the owners/occupants of the building to compel them to do otherwise. Specifically, not enough to give a measurable competitive advantage for a company that turns the lights off versus one that leaves them on.

I think they should do it because it's the right thing to do, but I know that's not how it works. Bottom line is, energy costs are still too low.

While everyone seems to get upset about $50/bbl oil, I'm preparing for orders of magnitude higher.

Re:Wrong Target

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Err... You're forgetting all the analysts, publicists, bodyguards, schedulers, network administrators, chauffers, etc.... That a congressman hires. The 100k a year figure is for the congressman alone while his staff probably costs at least 10x that. 565 members of the HOUSE ALONE talking about this proposal for 1/2 hour, voting for 1/2 hour, you've got 1210 hours right there. The analysts for each one of them costing 80k+ a year (40 salary, 40 benefits / cost of being on staff) spend two days reading it, making it 2 man years of their time.... I mean, these things snowball so quickly when you look at how much time is involved.... Really, I wuold love to see how much a bill put before congress costs ME as a taxpayer.... off I go to google.... Nope, no information there too easily. I'm too bored with this argument to continue looking at it. You're not going to look with a broad mind, and I'm not going to care about your numbers. Both positions are defensible, unless you're a pinhead.

We change it twice a year...

[dcs]

Here in Brazil we change it twice a year. I mean, every year, the government changes the date DST begins and then the date it ends based on a number of spurious factors. Mostly, I think, some politician discovers his wife bought the wrong air tickets and then pressures whoever to change it. Well, maybe not that, but it sure looks like it.

Get the tzdata for Brazil and check it out some time. Real funny. Hah Hah.

As a matter of fact, one something like that did happen. The Papa (yes, the one who just died) was arriving in Brazil in the first or second DST week, and international TV stations covering it found out they bought the wrong time slot on the satellite. So, screw us, they changed DST's date.

Because of all that, honestly, US plight is ridiculous. No decent system works with local time instead of absolute time, and Windows doesn't work anyway (EVEN if the date didn't change here every year, they mixed the sundays it begins/ends -- hell, does Outlook work with DST yet?).

I'm sorry...

[Cervantes]

Wasn't April Fools last week?
Typical government, always running behind schedule...

Politicians

[SurturZ]

With the invention of Daylight Savings, we realise that politicians will lie to us even if we merely ask them what time it is.

Re:Get rid of it entirely

[Daniel Phillips]

Congress has added an amendment to the Energy Bill to extend daylight-savings time by two months.

Daylight savings time is a stupid, usless, confusing, time wasting anachronism that outlived its usefulness many years ago. Don't tie ribbons on the pig, get rid of it.

Daylight savingfs is dumb

[GoClick]

I live north, way north, so far north in the summer we have days with no real night.

Just get up with the sun and go to bed when it's late, learn to deal with a world where work starts at 10am not 8am. It's stupid. China does pretty good with only one time zone and no daylight savings time. People will get used to it. Stupid daylight savings time.

While I'm on the topic how about metric time? I propose 1 day length days and decimal time so noon would be 0.5!

mwahahaha

ok I'll shut up now

Re:Wrong Target

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure your numbers are kosher. According to the OMB's numbers http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/tables .html,
HHS only receives ~65 billion dollars. Please see table S-3. You seem to be off by one order of magnitude. Who is www.kowaldesign.com?

Re:Get rid of it entirely

[Compact Dick]

Daylight savings time is a stupid, usless, confusing, time wasting anachronism that outlived its usefulness many years ago. Don't tie ribbons on the pig, get rid of it.

Absolutely right. Its non-uniform implementation across various timezones around the world will prove an increasingly major headache for global communications and commerce.

The earth is divided into 24 longitudinal bands. Stick to them and don't fuck around with time to suit your own cozy locale, for you do not live in a vacuum.

Here in Indiana

[Octel]

I've lived here for 6 years and love the fact that I don't have to play the fall back/forward time game! It's very nice to be able to leave work in the winter while it's still light (it doesn't get dark here until 5:30). The only bad thing is that my family and friends in other states can never remember what time it is here. I've read where our legislature wants to change this to be more business friendly...however the issue has been on the voting ballet for several years without successfully passing. People here don't want to have to join the game, but now it's out of the voter's hands -- I'm sure we'll be playing this stupid game next fall!:( I too, am sick of all the businesses that leave all of their lights on during the night and weekend! Whenever I work late at my office I go around and shut down most of the lights, leaving a couple on for safety purposes. I've always been turning lights out around my house because my father taught me how to conserve due to the fact he lived through the Great Depression. If we all did this just think of all the energy we'd save!

Sydney, Australia

[PBPanther]

Here in Sydney (and most of NSW) we have had a number of changes. The dates have gone back and forth during the 80s and 90s. Also for the Olympics in 2000 we started Daylight Savings 2 months early. Just for that one year. It hasn't changed since 2000.

Can't save what isn't there

[tcgroat]

Extending DST back into March, and especially prolonging it through November, is futile. On the winter side of the equinox dates, there isn't surplus daylight going to waste. You get up before dawn and start turning on lights as you get your kids out of bed and get yourself ready for work. You turn up the heat, because those pre-dawn hours are the coldest time of day (or the "set-back" thermostat does it for you). It's still dark when you leave for work, and it's already dark when you get home. If anything, DST should end a month earlier than it does now: no later than the end of September. At that time of year, setting the alarm clock for 6am means you wake up at dawn (think "equinox"). Enforcing DST during winter winter days means more people will be be and about before daybreak. That's counter-productive for energy savings!

I'll add my voice to the choir...

[dcr]

I hate Daylight Savings Time.

I had a conversation with some Chinese graduate students this week. They said, "we tried this for one, maybe two years - then we stopped it. No one liked it. Do Americans really like it?"

I replied that no one I knew liked it - in fact no one I knew had a feeling warmer than great disdain for it.

I've read enough of the comments that cite energy savings and doubts about those savings. All I can say is, unless the savings are staggering (much more than I have seen cited), it isn't worth the trouble. All of my co-workers, employees, students and clients are tired, grumpy or simply call in sick. The work done frequently has to be redone once inspected (if the inspector catches it, of course). The productivity hit, the lag of folks who forget about the change, and the accidents that happen from sleepy people just is just not worth it.

Not Y2K

[Mike Hicks]

Feh. It's not hard to change the timezone setup (on Linux, at least). /etc/zoneinfo just has to have the right settings, and you're good to go.

Changes all the time

[sparkz]

All OSes allow for changes in DST regulations - remember (oh, sorry, it's slashdot) there are more places than the USA. For Linux, look at /usr/share/zoneinfo/ ... update the appropriate file, and go on as normal. If you want difficult, look into Easter!

Re:Oh. Dear. God.

[evilviper]

A. No, see, normally it would get dark at 7. Now it gets dark at 8!
Q. But the sun doesn't rise until 8 or 9 AM. When you need to make your blanket longer, do you cut a foot off one end and sew it onto the other?

Nonsense. In the summer months, the sun rises earlier (and sets later too), so getting up earlier makes perfect sense, because the day DOES get longer. A blanket obviously doesn't get longer, so it's a lowsy analogy.

Q. Why don't you just wake up an hour earlier, if you want more daylight?

Because just being awake doesn't cut it... You need stores to open earlier, your own work schedule to start an hour earlier, etc. Changing all clocks is by far the easiest way to change everything.

The fact that most people haven't spent hours of their lives pondering the reason we have DST, doesn't have anything to do with the validity of the idea.

What energy usage?

[nurb432]

Our office lights are on regardless of day/dark.

The grocery, same thing. Fast food.. Yup same useage. Still drive the same distance, still caught in the same traffic jams..

Car lights? Got me on that one...

I really dont see that much of a savings happening. regardless of government spin.

Re:Adjust the time so that it really saves dayligh

[LakeSolon]

Most people have various triggers for the conditioned response of getting tired and wanting to go to bed. For some people it's just darkness, other's maybe the evening news. For a while I played Pink Floyd's "Pigs on the Wing" (both tracks, none of the ones between them) each night as I went to bed. They're short, but it got so I would be unconscious before the second one finished.

To this day my strongest trigger is still dawn. When it gets dark it may not be very late, but when the sun comes up you know it's friggin' late.

~Lake