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?"

Comments

Why the IAFC is against the change

[waynegoode]

The International Association of Fire Chiefs does not want the change because the new time to switch would not work well with the "check fire alarm batteries when you change your clock" program. That kind of reasoning is ridiculous. Do they really think the US government should set the time for DST changes to suit one group's special program? Talk about special interests.

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.

Re:Why the IAFC is against the change

[s20451]

Support or oppose the DST change for REAL reasons.

Here in Canada, the change is being presented as something the Americans are ramming down our throats. Seriously: here's the Toronto Star coverage.

What kind of a country is this where you can get a knee-jerk reaction against anything by calling it "American-style"? (I'll tell you: it's the kind of country that, 138 years later, still prints their colonial ruler's face on their money.)

Re:Why the IAFC is against the change

[Phisbut]

Wow... I just love it when people say the stupidest stuff... From the article you pointed :

While most people -- excepting vampires -- favour more daylight

... right... changing the DST will provide you with *more* daylight... it will somehow slow down the earth while the sun is shining, and accelerate it at night...

What's the point of all this? No matter how you mess around with the DST, you won't get a single minute of daylight that you didn't have before.

Re:Why the IAFC is against the change

[Desert Raven]

Arizona doesn't follow DST as it is and while it is confusing,

Funny, I don't find it confusing at all. I never have to change my clocks around, somehow pretending it has any kind of meaning. And, I know that no matter what the date, my time is GMT -7.

Given the increasingly global, and increasingly 24 hour world we live in, it makes much more sense to me to get rid of the anachronism of "daylight savings time" all together.

Abolish DST

[Solder Fumes]

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.

Original Ben Franklin Essay on DST

[dsginter]

Daylight Saving

I always post this when the topic comes up. I'm a fan of Franklin and really enjoy reading this.

Re:Original Ben Franklin Essay on DST

[Alex P Keaton in da]

I have always hated the switch- They said it was for farmers, but that is ridicerous. (Farmers get up when the cows need to be milked- it doesn't matter what a chronometer says.)
My solution? "Fall Back" a half hour one year, and just leave it there permanently. Right in the middle....

Typical governmental BS

[ottffssent]

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?!

Get up an hour earlier

[j_w_d]

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.