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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.
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.
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
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...