Slashdot Mirror
One Step Away from Changing Daylight Savings Time
An anonymous reader writes "Congressional leaders from both parties have signed off on a proposal that will change daylight savings time in the United States as early as this year. All that is left is a signoff by President Bush. If the proposed solution becomes law, DST will be extended two months, from March to November. With many IT applications relying on accurate time information and many having automatic adjustments for DST, how will the IT world handle this change? And with the proposal reportedly taking effect this year, is there enough time to implement change?"
The purpose of DST is not to remind you when to check your batteries. If it works for that too, fine; but that is something extra, not the reason for DST. Support or oppose the DST change for REAL reasons.
From the article:
For years, the International Association of Fire Chiefs has framed a widespread public information campaign around Daylight Saving Time, reminding people to change the batteries in their smoke and carbon monoxide detectors when they change their clocks. The last weekend in November is too late for the reminder, fire officials say.
I used to live in a non-DST state. And you know what? It was great, not having to wake up an hour earlier or go to bed an hour earlier, and not have one or two time-keeping devices with the wrong time a month later. It was a real headache this year because I had to travel, and keeping track of time zones is hard enough without worrying about DST.
Heck, I'm not a believer in time zones, either. Let's adopt one time standard and adjust schedules accordingly. I don't need to be tricked into waking up in the morning.
What happens to Canada and Mexico? Surely they will have to follow if this is to be effective.
We have these nifty fucking things called ELECTRIC LIGHTS now. You can use them to, like, see when it's dark. It's really fucking amazing.
We have this nifty concept called "conservativism," or not wasting electricity, money, and natural resources now. That's the point behind DST: using less electricity and benefitting because of it.
Area IV, here I am
...other than mine, without permission?!
This is yet one other sign that we need to shoot lobbyists that approach D.C. as if they were a direct Al Queda attack. This is a crackpot idea that not only screws with all the time-sensitive software (right down to our operating systems and their time zone support) but also fucks with the world agreement on such use of DST.
I'm in Indiana, where we have just approved the use of DST for the majority of the state that never observed it (Arizona and Hawaii are similar holdouts). And NOW some politico-corporate lackey wants to change things just for business...never mind that you aren't saving a damn bit of daylight in November, unless their laws affect the Earth's tilt and orbital position to give us more sun than we're to have at that time.
There's no reason for this...and the cost for changing everything will make the costs of Y2K seem like a pittance. Problem is, I don't know who would profit from it. Once I do find out, I hope they're shot. A lot.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Daylight Saving
I always post this when the topic comes up. I'm a fan of Franklin and really enjoy reading this.
More
What an idiotic idea!
I understand the theory that by changing people's work habits relative to the solar day, we may be saving some energy. I think the reality of it is rather less impressive than the theory, and certainly doesn't justify the expense and hassle, but it's undoubtedly there.
Too bad changing DST is the stupidest way to do it. As has been mentioned before, DST impacts way more than just work schedules. It's buried deep in various applications where it doesn't belong. It's hard-coded into embedded systems where it can't be changed. It's stuck on old software installations that will never see an upgrade. Changing DST is bad enough, but a half-assed mix of new-DST machines and old-DST machines is just a recipe for disaster.
If the government really wants to save energy by changing work habits, there are enormously better ways to do it. Tax credits for corporations that stagger their workers' start times by a significant margin would save way more energy than this DST nonsense, and it wouldn't have the unpleasant ancillary effects that changing the definition of time of day would have. Unimaginably large (you can look for the true numbers as well as I) amounts of gasoline are wasted in rush-hour traffic across the nation. Tax credits for starting 1/3 of employees 2hr earlier than normal and 1/3 2hr later would motivate employers to do it, and reducing the time people spend idling their cars on the freeways, or worse, driving in stop-and-go traffic, would save tons of fuel.
Tax credits (or some other incentive) makes people happy because the government's not forcing anyone to do anything they don't want to. It would have very few unintended consequences. And it would save many times more energy.
The reasoning that leads to a change in DST is just tortured. The government wants people going to work at a different time. So rather than ask (bribe, punish/bribe, whatever) businesses to employ people at different hours, they change the meaning of 8am, and screw up the entire country. Where's the logic in that?!
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Why not just pass a law that makes a standard work day for salaried employees from 10:00 am to 2:00pm (with the standard hour for lunch).
Find coupons in Greeley
Except that this moves the time window to include more daylight hours, so you don't need to have your lights on. At least that is the theory.
Except that in practice, I have never, ever seen a place of business actually turn off the lights and depend on what comes through the window.
Quite the opposite, in fact - In rooms with a lot of windows ("Front" offices, for example), in the morning when too much sun comes in at a low angle, people draw the shades and turn on desk lamps in addition to the overhead lighting.
Personally, I think the clocks should stay constant
Agreed. If businesses can save a penny by changing when the workdway begins and ends, they most certainly will, without the need for our Nanny-in-DC to shove the idea down our throats.
I HATE non-DST time. The winter days are already too short, working standard time in an office means you go to work when it's dark AND you leave work when it's almost dark. No time to go to the park, race RC cars, nothing. It's like living in perpeptual night and I hate it.
And here DST is all screwed up. We'd need a DST from May to September or something. Currently DST forces us to wake up when the sky's all black.
Why did we do it, you ask? Pressures from the US.
I doubt Mexicans would want to accept a schedule that only makes things only worse. But as usual... we have to obey the all-powerful US otherwise we suffer the consequences.
If Bush wants to sign this to save some bills, why doesn't he stop wasting money in IRAQ. Sheesh.
In Brazil, we call DST "Summer Time" (Horário de Verão). Sometimes we jokingly refer to the Standard Time as "Winter Time" (especially during the weeks before/after the switch).
:)
Since in this proposal the non-DST time would last only three months (Dec-Feb), you might as well call that "Winter Time".
The filesystem is the package manager
DST is a stupid, utterly assinine idea and is Ben Franklin's major evidence of being human and prone to occasional, stunning attacks of stupid. Why set the frigging clock ahead or back when all you have to do is designate earlier times: "our summer business hours are 7am to 4pm" would accomplish the same thing without having solar noon arrive at 1:00pm by the clock. Arizona has the right idea.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
I figured it would be appreciated by the Orthodox Jews who don't drive on the sabbath as it would make it easier for them to drive home on friday evenings before nightfall hits.
The point, Captain Obvious, is to provide the most daylight during waking hours for the average diurnal person.
And having different work schedules depending on season is somehow inconcievable, and changing the actual time for the entire country is, somehow, a better approach.
I mean, change the 9to5 for 8to4? WHAT? NEVER! Lets have all clocks in the country changed instead, duh!
You can't take the sky from me...
Mod parent up "+5 Clueful". Yes, many UN*Xes use either the "Arthur Olson" time zone code or something compatible; this includes, at minimum, Solaris, OS X, most if not all Linux distributions, and all the free-software BSDs. For those systems, the time zone files would be updated, and anything using the OS calls for converting times, or otherwise using the time zone files, will Just Work.
DST calculations doubly so. Everywhere on the planet should be GMT. I get up at 5pm, people in London get up at 7am. No pesky timezones to figure out. If we have a meeting at 3am, the meeting is at 3am everywhere.
No more Indian timezones off by 30 minutes, or the zone in Nepal that's off by 15 minutes.
I'd be so happy if "they" would give up the daylight saving time. All my clocks are running UTC and I'm just calculating the local time on the fly since years. It's much easier than setting all my watches and clocks all the time. In the broadcasting business nobody cares about any time offsets anyway. It's all about UTC.
The funny thing is, that the switchover is not happening at the same date worldwide. That makes the whole problem more difficult.
It's confusing enough for me, that for example LA is nine (or ten!) hours "back".
And that's in the US, where Orthodox Jewish concerns don't really get taken into consideration.
Here in Israel, the compromise deal reached (finally!) this year on DST was to start on the Friday on or preceding April 1, which nearly always precedes the Seder. Bear in mind that well over 70% of Israeli Jews, regardless of affiliation, have a Seder of some sort. At least the other side of the compromise was reasonable -- we go back to Standard Time on the Saturday night following Rosh HaShana, thereby making Yom Kippur *seem* to end earlier.
Of course, it's all psychological in the first place...
That's the problem, you see... your experience might just be a bit too limited.
The authoritative sources of many of the recognized religions in this world that are not considered cults (including Judaism and Christianity, just to name a couple) practically mandate that people think for themselves, to always think clearly and rationally and not act on mere impulse or emotion, and indeed even be prepared to question whether or not something that claims to be from a higher power actually is divinely inspired by rationally and objectively comparing the claims to already known truths. This doesn't seem like brainwashing to me, but if you still think so, that's your right to have a differing opinion.
Most religions don't claim to make its followers into perfect and infallible people in this life, and I would put it to you that your experience with these religions may not coincide with what I have described above is a result of normal human failings rather than a failure in the actual philosophies that they teach.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'