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Impact of Daylight Savings Time Changes?
jason718 writes "With the pending changes to U.S. Daylight Savings Time, what impact will those changes have to existing systems and their applications? Are some operating systems more open than others with regard to the configuration of Daylight Savings Time start and end dates, or will we need yet another update or patch to modify the internal calendar?"
With over 800 comments, I thought that's enough to get an idea of its impact and suggestions to deal with it.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
The sleep patterns of Slashdotters will be messed up... Oh, wait a minute...
Cause more dupes.
I live in Arizona, you insensitive clod!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This seems like it is going to be a great deal of trouble. Although most software will be fairly easily patched, it still seems like a hastle. People will inevitably forget to patch, and different will be handling time differently.
Voice your opinion!
Did someone turn the clock back to the discussion we already had on this issue?
But banks and financial institutions have all had their software built for daylight savings time ending sooner! Now everything will be out of whack as the banks and computers and the electronic grid system will think it's an hour later than it is!
Planes will fall out of the sky! The banks will collapse! LIFE AS WE KNOW IT WILL CEASE! We need to panic people! PANIC! Start hiring floors and floors of programmers to change all the code out there.
Ok, maybe not...
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Unfortunately, due to inconsistent implementation of Daylight Savings, an erroneous timestamp will cause the system to place this post significantly further down the list. Rest assured, though, that this post was made an hour before the timestamp shows, and was, therefore, first.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
You'll need an update to /usr/share/zoneinfo/ . Expect the next Debian release in late 2012 to support this.
...but don't worry. Daylight Savings Pwnage is a common occurrence, within and without Slashdot.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
(Until we follow you guys)
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
Let me just look around my room here... My TV does. So does my VCR. There are lots of things out there besides 'computers' that adjust for DST. Certainly my TV and VCR aren't 'patchable' to changes to when the time changes occur.
And about 10 years to get fully deployed. There are machines still running unpatched copies of Windows 98 and IE 5.0 out there.
I hope they give us several years' notice, so that we can all go out and buy New-DST-compliant VCRs along with our HDTV-compliant TVs.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I hae no idea why Congress thinks this thing will svae oil. Back when DST was invented, it was understandable. Now, we're different. Now we have people who work at any time during the span of 24 hours. We have 24 hour stores and there's more activity at night now then ever before. I bet that the existing DST does nothing to save oil now at this point. Sure, it's nice to have those extra daylight hours and what not but is it worth causing untold number of devices (regular desktops and servers will be fine, but it's the embedded stuff that is the problem now). Changing it now would not make a difference in oil usage.
Gorkman
The absurdity of fooling yourself by changing the clocks (not really unlike those that set their alarm clock fast so they are never late) reminds me of a former coworker, who came in later to work every day. One day he came in as we were leaving for lunch. Soon he came in on a Friday as we were all leaving for happy hour. Eventually he "lapped" himself and started coming in so late it was early the next morning, and eventually he came in at a normal start time of 8:00 or so. Of course, the trend continued and he just started coming in later again.
Upton noted that the extension means daylight-saving time will continue through Halloween, adding to safety. "Kids across the nation will soon rejoice," said Upton, because they'll have another hour of daylight trick-or-treating.
:)
This is the silliest reason I've ever heard of. Energy consumption I can understand if the facts support that it will really make a difference.
Here in northern Michigan for our family at least we always wait for it to get dark before we go out. Maybe it's like having snow for Christmas, but it's doesn't seem like Halloween would be the same when you can see just how cheap all the costumes and decorations really are.
Also how would this affect livestock? How do they know what time it is? If daylight savings time is so great, why revert at all why not just move it forward the whole year and let Indiana print their own TV Guides.
I have about 54 Unix servers to care and feed.
I estimate that we will perform zero patches to handle these specific rule changes.
The switch already happens - it'll just happen on different days. And if you recall, these changes have happened before - so it isn't really unexpected for those who have been in the business a while.
The Y2K contracting folks will have you jumping off your seats, but for everyone who runs these systems: no big deal.
I'm sure some home users will be caught off guard, but then again most desktop users have their clock set to the wrong timezone.
Many of the packages are expecting the 1st Saturday/Sunday in April to have 23 hours and the last Saturday/Sunday in October to have 25 hours.
Do you really want the power grid to put into production a patch that hasn't been tested for many months ? ( Or do you want blackouts, or the cost to quadruple ? )
UPS Sucks
It's Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight Savings Time.
Sheesh.
Ok, let's take as a given that Peak Oil has already passed, just for the sake of argument.
All that this means is that crude oil pumped from the ground will continue to become more expensive. Not in great leaps and bounds, but at a relatively steady pace.
As crude oil becomes more expensive, alternate fuels become relatively less expensive. Sooner rather than later we'll see both synthetic crude (from farm waste, of all things) and expanded hydrogen trade.
In a hundred years, we won't be back to hand-working on farms. We'll have a bunch of telecommuters working the same networked jobs they all want to work now, and the same green revolution farms, only the tractors will use more electric motors and less internal combustion.
Is Peak Oil going to give us change? Yes. It is going to cause a capitalist apocolypse? No, not really. We did rather well before gasoline, and we'll do farily well long after it's gone.
Cisco devices, both IOS and CatOS based, use the 'summertime' command to compensate for daylight saving time (example [cisco.com]). This means that a change in the DST setup would force you to upgrade code.
Or at least it would force you to study the command reference a bit better, and find the second optional form of the command that allows you to specify the beginning and end of summertime.
That would mean you require only a configuration change, and not a code upgrade.
But of course you would need to read the manual...
Well, the radio signal does not include DST information; that's a "client-side" feature of the clock itself. Most clocks allow you to configure which time zone offset you wish, as well as to specify whether you want the clock to observe DST during the appropriate time of the year.
And therein lies the problem!
I can't exactly "patch" my clocks/watches with an update to handle this absurdity. These aren't exactly field-upgradable. If this goes through, rather than being zero maintenance, each of these timepieces will need to be adjusted 4 times per year!
(Yes--four--go count if you don't believe me: once to compensate for DST starting before the device thinks it should; again to un-compensate upon the traditional DST start; once more to compensate upon the traditional DST end; and finally yet again to un-compensate for the real end of DST.)
So count me as one, I certainly care!
Ride in the morning, dolt.
Look! Down the hall! It's Pedantic Man!
He knows it's Daylight Saving Time
(not Daylight SavingS Time)
I have yet to figure out why anyone outside of the states of Indiana, Arizona, and Hawaii actually give a rat's posterior about DST (because it's a part of life and takes place seemingly without effort). Those are the only three states which do not observe DST. Indiana has several clusters of counties near Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville which do so on their own. Indiana's legislature also enacted a law to observe it, but now it requires Federal action to finish it, including which time zone(s) are observed. So there's a "fact finding" tour underway where people can sound off regarding which time zone they want to "belong to".
One state legislator voted against it because it would mess up his constituents' schedules when they had to take their kids over the state line (to Illinois) and the time difference would force them to restructure their days. No one took the time to point out to this moron that part of Indiana was on "New York time" (an hour ahead of that area of Illinois) six months a year and on "Chicago time" (the same time as that area) six months a year. So being at the same time or a difference of one hour constantly is less confusing than switching every six months?
That's no worse than years ago when those in the rural areas I grew up in complained it would mess up the cows' milking schedules. No one pointed out to them cows' don't look at the clocks. What they meant to say is it would mess up their schedules but using the cows as an excuse seemed to make it sound like it was somehow more critical? You wouldn't have believed it this year. Parents whined it would screw up kids going to bed: "How can you tell kids it's time to go to bed at 8:30pm when it's still light out?" Drive-In theatre owners whined it would cause shows to start later (although the number of drive-ins around the country, including Indiana, is a pittance of what it used to be), restaurants bellyached it would screw up supper hours because people would go out to eat based upon how light it was, not the time on the clock. You'd think no one else in the world had ever dealt with DST before.
I think the only people who would have whined more are those who would have had a million dollars bestowed upon them - but in pennies and they'd have to count and lug them to the bank.
(To be honest, it was always good sport to watch the political turmoil. I find it no different than the current Supreme Court nomination. In spite of the long-term importance, and regardless of one's personal political perspective, I find watching political friction to be one of America's great indoor sports. The higher the level, the more interesting it becomes. All of the others (sports) have been ruined by tweaking the rules.
On a more humorous note, I actually had something cooked up to take advantage of the annual turmoil in Indiana's legislature. I planned to circulate a story to the effect:
Microsoft was behind the lobbying effort to stop the observance of DST because of all of the Windows machines which list Indiana as its own timezone. Microsoft was afraid they would find themselves responsible for creating and supporting patches for all of those PCs, even for OSes which are no longer under active support.
My intent had been to start on March 29-30 so there would be a couple of days to circulate and work toward passing it along to a couple of friends in the local media - hopefully, using some forged email as additional proof. I thought of it as an interesting birthday experiment (my birthday is April Fool's Day). Alas, the missus never permitted it. She was afraid there would be some legal repercussions, despite the opportunity for humor.
oh well.
In fact, timezones themselves are stupid.
Everyone should be on UTC.
Who said that local Noon should be when the Sun is directly above our heads?
In fact, with time zones, the Sun can be directly above your head anywhere in the range between 1130 and 1230 (or even earlier/later, because time zones are not strictly longitudinal), and DST can increase the range even further.
In the "old days", each town/city had its own time zone, synchronized to local Noon.
The railroads were largely resposible for our current system of hourly time zones.
There are places on Earth today that don't follow the hourly convention, and are one-half, or even one-quarter, of an hour "off" the conventional system.
Why does the local day have to change when the Sun is on the other side of the Earth?
I could kind of understand this back in the "old days", when everyone went to bed at sunset, but in our increasingly 24-hour society, in makes much less sense.
What detrimental effects would there be if the day changed from Monday to Tuesday when it was light out?
When everything is open 24 hours anyway, I doubt that there would be very many.
Note that I don't mean that kids should be going to school in the middle of the night, etc.
In some locales, kids would go to school at 1100 UTC, in others, at 1700 UTC.
Note that they do this already; it's just that 1700 UTC may be 9 AM local time.
People's schedules wouldn't necessarily change vis a vis daylight and nighttime; only the time measurement would change.
If everyone used UTC, communications across time zones would be much easier.
(No more "Is that 10 AM East coast time, or 10 AM West Coast time?".)
People wouldn't have to reset their watches every time they visted Aunt Mabel in the next state over.
The International Dateline would disappear.
Oh, and since we would be doing such a massive change anyway, this would be the perfect opportunity to decimalize time (and it's about time that we decimalized time).
Just think: With decimalized time, most people would be working only 3.3 hours a day!
(On the down side, whenever anyone said "Just a minute!" or "Just a sec!", you would have to wait longer.)
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana