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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.
It's Y2K all over again. :)
Hopefully the consulting companies will be able to sell the scare and raise the billing rates!
Jobs!!!! Jobs!!!!
How about we have our 'puters set for GMT?
Seriously-Many applications have DST deep in the code. I can see the folks that develop things like the Netbackup scheduler (and others) to be freaking. Didn't they just fix bpsched? (again?)
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
"How will the IT world handle this change?"
I'll tell you how they'll handle it. They'll handle it the same way they handled Y2K, and that's by offering more jobs for people like me. The increase in demand for employees posessing the special skills needed to fix this problem will subsequently raise the expected salary for software engineers and IT professionals. Under these premises, I'd say this gives us something to toast and look forward to.
I hope that Bush doesn't screw this up by not signing off.
--
I'm not a troll; I'm just a skeptic.
Falun Dafa is good!
What I'd prefer is that they passed a law making the hours between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm shorter.
I don't think it will be a huge deal to patch all of the software out there that relies on this. The main problem will be things like VCRs, TVs, watches and such that change the time for you automatically.
It's nice to see the American government coming up with a solution like this instead of concentrating on and suggesting alternate energies.
Really warms the ol' cockles of the heart.
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.
Badly. No.
Score yourself at home. How did you do?
They should break up the day into 100 hours instead of stupid 24. Potential benefits:
- Working 9 to 5 becomes a breeze.
Are you insane? With a 100 hour day, working "9 to 5" becomes a 96-hour day, equivalent to 23.04 of your Classic American Non-Metric Hours. That's no good.
For more information, click here.
...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.
"Surprisingly enough, daylight-saving time was thought up by Benjamin Franklin, not drunken voters. According to http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/, it seems that one day Benjy got bored and wrote a little something called An Economical Project. It was an essay mostly about "himself, his love of thrift, his scientific papers and his passion for playing chess until the wee hours of the morning then sleeping until midday," and it was meant to be a joke.
However, an Englishman named William Willett (how can you take someone with that name seriously? Come on!) was apparently too dense to realize that Franklin was joking. Therefore, he thought it would be a novel idea to set clocks back for 20 minutes on each Sunday in April, and then turn them back on the Sundays in September. Eventually, daylight-saving time came to be as we now know it."
Taken from here
"What is the answer?" (Silence) "In that case, what is the question?" --Gertrude Stein
This isn't a problem; simply get Hallmark to create yet another holiday. Something catchy like, "Don't burn your house down" day to help people remember to change their batteries (maybe even with a pocket to hold replacement batteries).
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
For most *nix systems, look in /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo for zone definition files. If you're lucky (or have Solaris), there's a src directory in there.
You'll find a README file with a reference to a place with updated zone files.
On the other hand you could try to roll your own like I did for Belo Horizonte and edit the rules in one of the source files (I would think "northamerica" for the US ;)
Do a man zic for more info on compiling and then distributing to other systems.
This comment does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the author.
Now if there were only a way to automagically delete all occurrences of the word "automagically." What are you: Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer? Does our world frighten and confuse you? Your cell phone updates from the network because of software. There aren't little demons in there doing it.
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)
If we're going to be in Daylight Savings Time 9 months out of the year, they should call Daylight Savings Time "Standard" time, instead, and change Standard Time to "Daylight Wasting Time" (DWT).
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Actually, the Windows patch should be very small and easy to implement. Time Zone definitions are stored in the registry. Part of that data says when the DST changeover happens.
Blessed AZ. Giving the finger to you time switchers the world over.
I agree no DST is awesome.
Sweden changed the DST period few years ago. As far as I remember there were no big problems.
:-)
Microsoft changed it through some Windows patch, and *nix people tend to fix things themself
Wow, it's pedant day on slashdot! The point, Captain Obvious, is to provide the most daylight during waking hours for the average diurnal person.
DST is already bad enough from an Orthodox Jewish perspective, because we our holidays and sabbaths start at nightfall, and this makes "night" exceedingly late for much of the year.
:(
The specific case which shows the problem is the Passover Seder, which has to begin after nightfall, and there's about 2 hours of stuff before eating. Right now, about half the time, Passover falls during ST, and starts at a reasonable hour. With this change, it'll be much harder to keep children up to participate.
-David Barak
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
...and abolish DST altogehter. For much of Canada DST makes no sense anyways--except perhaps in the most souther parts of the country like Windsor. Why do Canadians have to "save daylight" in the summer? WE HAVE SO DAMN MUCH OF IT ALREADY!
I don't live all that far north--maybe around 300km north of the 49th parallel. Even after you set your clock ahead the sun rises before 7AM--right now it rises here before 6AM. In Saskatoon (they do not change their clocks) it'll get light at 5AM...in either case I'll still be asleep for another 30-90 minutes so I'm not going to care.
Where DST REALLY peeves me off is at bedtime. I have to rise by 7AM so I like to be in bed by 11PM...but it's DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME so its still F'in light outside! Let it get dark before 11PM please--thanks but I don't need any more day--it is long enough. A lot of people in fairly norhtern cities like Edmonton will thank you--and people in Whitehorse and Yellowknife won't even notice the difference since the sun won't set again for another few weeks anyways.
So here is what I think Canada should do: Instead of all the expense and confusion around changing DST, or the similar confusion around keeping it the way we have it when the US will be different, we should just go to standard time and STAY there at the point when the US changed their DST. Sure we will still be different from the US, but it'll be the least painful solution because:
* Even though we'll be out of sync with the US we won't have people getting confused when the US TV programmes remind people to change the clock at a different time than Canadians would have to.
* There is data suggesting that the loss of sleep on the first Sunday of April due to DST is responsible for increasing the number of injury and fatality accidents on the following Monday. Abolishing DST would eliminate that risk.
* Since there are already parts of the world that do not do DST all current electronics and computers support NOT adjusting the clocks. Changing DST would be expensive because all those systems would need to change too.
* It'll finally be dark enough to fall asleep at night in the summer!
I've always thought that DST was backwards anyways--if we moved ahead for the winter then it wouldn't be pitch black by dinner time--it would be totally dark at 7PM instead of 6. I dunno...the whole concept of DST doesn't seem worth it at all to me anyways.
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.
DST is there to make factory workers get up an hour earlier, without the government having to admit that it's telling everybody to get up earlier in the morning. Rather than messing with the clocks, they *could* just tell the TV stations to run earlier schedules, and most Americans would obey....
There's no reason to set the clock to some other time - during Standard Time, the sun is at its highest at 12 Noon in the middle of the timezone area, and you could just as well leave it there.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Tzedit.exe from Microsoft will allow you to create your custom designed time zone registry entries. One thing is they MUST be within 12 hours of the system's GMT (UNC) value or they will not load.