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Ontario to Match U.S. DST Change
Devastator writes "CBC is reporting that Ontario will be the first Canadian province to change daylight savings rules to reflect the changes happening in the U.S in 2007. Attorney General Michael Bryant says 'the province's economy was the deciding factor and that if Ontario isn't on the same time as the United States, it will be hurt financially.'"
Last time I checked, both Canada and the US did trade with countries other than each other. Some of these are in other time zones. Hell, there's a 3h discepancy between here (BC) and Ontario, and I live in the same country.
I hope that a lot of people come out very vocally to demonstrate what a stupid idea this is, and how it's just a case of nose-to-ass following without justification.
U.S. President George W. Bush signed on to the change in August as part of a massive energy bill.
Coming from a man who can only read digital clocks.
Just your everyday corporate code monkey.
Now Canada is yielding to the DST rules. What next ... speed limits and gas rations?! The handwriting is on the wall ... Peak Oil is real and the government is panicking!
I can't stand daylight savings time, it kills my day. If the sun is only up for a few hours it should be up later in the day, not like 7 in the morning till 5:30 or something... 8 to 6:30 would be much better. It pissed me off when they started it "so children could get on the bus in the morning in the daylight" and it continues to piss me off now that it is expanding...
they can change time itself.
Woe.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It is
This seems to be a typical Canada/US relation. It's like the old saying goes:
"When you sleep with an elephant, if it rolls, you roll."
An exploration of mixology, spirits and bartending.
Right next to eachother.
****NEWS FLASH*****
Today the EU has pledged before the UN to create a new UN controlled Daylight Saving Time system. Emperor Bono of the EU declared this pre-emtive strike a hit back at US hegemony over Savings time.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Wish the australian government would do the same, so that don't have to wake up stupidly early to make conference calls to the US East coast.
bash$
When we turn back the clocks 2 hours, do I gain 2 hours or lose 2 hours?
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
That messes _this_ up:
:)
http://www.stemhaus.com/firefox/foxclocks/
But at least it gives me the opportunity for a shameless plug
Actually I'll add that as an Ontario resident, and a despiser of the current US regime, I think Ontario's move is entirely pragmatic: the US accounts for perhaps 80% of Canada's exports, and presumably a large portion of that comes overland from Ontario to the Eastern US. Having said that, I'll confess to the knee-jerk reaction that I don't want _my_ clocks set by a man who can't even set his own.
Andy
Something about Canada prime minister 'Jean Putin' and Bush LOL.
Mayor of Bangalore says "that if Bangalore isn't on the same time as the United States, it will be hurt financially"
UTC for everyone!
Half an hour later in Newfoundland
"When you sleep with an elephant, if it rolls, you roll."
I'd rather sleep with a woman. When she rolls...er, never mind.
Did you know that a Canadian minute is actually longer than an American minute due to a strange anomaly in the space-time continuum? Iowa Governor Thomas Vilsack did!
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
i'm with you on that
No daylight savings, no time zones, no AM/PM even! It's just GMT 24hour.
I've never understand the argument that a business loses money by being in a different mode of Daylight Saving Time. I grew up in Indiana and never understood why other states changed their times, but I figured maybe we were just backward or stupid (which the state is, but for wholly different reasons). When I moved out to California I learned just how stupid DST really is. It is a terrible idea. It's not just that I'm too lazy to change the 12 clocks in my house/car/office, but more that in the winter the sun goes down at like 5pm. I hate driving home in the dark and having the sun wake me up an hour earlier (all hail flex time). I've lived in both and can compare the two. The people I know who have moved from a DST state to Indiana say they like not having DST. Anyone who hasn't lived without DST can't argue with me. Indiana is changing this year to DST, and I can't wait to hear all the bitching that occurs.
My mom has an international shipping business in Indiana and works with all time zones and all permutations of with/without DST. It has never affected her work. How can being in a different time zone affect your business? You already have to work with other time zones, so why would this affect them?
IANAL, but I play one on
Any idea how?
You're a copraphilliac?
Where are the mods??? I really wish I had mod points to put this at -1, AND DESTROY HIS KARMA. *Devil Grin*
NO~, I read Slashdot because I think it's stupid.....
what are you doing with a keyboard?
"The amount of oil predicted to be saved over the several weeks involved in the time shift, is less than all of the oil the USA uses in a SINGLE day."
So we shouldn't do it because it doesn't hit some arbitrary limit.
"There are going to be millions of VCRs and other hard coded devices designed to change to the old DST law, meaning many will auto-adjust to the wrong time."
Poor design-a la Y2K.
"Airlines and other businesses that depend on time are going to have to reprogram many things, and thus this will impact their bottom line. [Is this a good thing when so many are going bankrupt?]"
Poor design AND poor managment.
"If we legislated that vehicles must achieve twice the MPG rating they have today, then we'd use approximately half as much oil. That's a savings of 50% every single day. [Maybe if George thought about that every...single...day, just like he thinks about the Iraq War every..single..Day, then we wouldn't have to put up and deal with this stupid time change!]
"
The high price of oil products will address this issue without dragging Bush into the equation. Free Market strikes again.
You mean we have to wait until 2007 for this paltry half-assed extension of DST?
Ugh! Government moves real slow, doesn't it? Come the bird flu we are doomed.
We should adopt Double DST - as done in Europe in WWII. I don't mind geting up in the dark - hey, in the winter it happens whatever the clock says - but having lived in more northern latitudes I have to say that it is a PITA when it gets dark at 3:30 p.m. or so.
Yes, I know you guys in Alaska get nearly 24h dark in the winter. Sorry! Can't buck nature..
I'm not surprised at the whining from my fellow Ontarioans - after all, it is the provincial sport.
It's stupid to think that Ontario would do otherwise than adopt the US change. Ontario is in the business of selling goods (mostly cars & parts) to the US. Allowing for a difference in time changes would cost far more aggravation than will the three extra hours of DST for people too dim to figure out their VCR's. The TSX will have to remain in the same time zone as the New York indices, as well, if it wants to retain any relevancy at all.
Then EU kicked in and harmonized the rules for changing to and from DST, and this had made everything a lot easier. Even EU countries in different time zones have the same rules, so you know the time difference is always the same.
To me it really makes sense that nearby countries want to have the same rules for changing to/from DST.
The entire practice of Daylight Savings time is inane and utterly ridiculous.
The primary reason for changing it yet again is to reduce overall fuel consumption. So, instead of mandating higher fuel economy (the average being lower than it was two decades ago) we choose to change time.
Just stop and think about that for a moment. The insanity of it threatens to collapse in on itself and tear a hole in the universe.
George H.W. Bush once said in response to calls for conservation that "The American way of life is not negotiable." We want what we want, when we want it, without having to deal with the realities and consequences of acquiring it. It's too inconvenient to consider that we might be taking the wrong road. We Americans get viciously defensive when anyone questions our habits and have to largely be forced into making any changes that will benefit us in the long-term. What pleases us this instant is usually the only concern we have.
We assume that any problems can be glossed over and this stands as a prime example of glossing over a major one at our own peril. When gas prices rise, legions demand that the president "Do something about it". Just wave the magic wand, make the problem go away, let us go back to living the way we want to, even if it isn't sustainable, simply because we desire it. There is nothing wrong with desiring something, but having unrealistic expectations for receiving it is pure greed. I could stand up and demand that the local bank hand over a large sum of cash just because, but my desire alone does not validate my demand. We act as if we deserve low gas prices simply because we want them to be low and cannot reconcile the demand/price relationship whatsoever.
If you choose to drive a vehicle that gets 12mpg, you really have no leg to stand on when you bitch about rising gas prices. You are part of the problem. You cannot, and should not be protected from the widespread impact of your choice. You are not a child. Grow up.
When you buy into sprawl by moving into the latest subdivision on the edge of the city to escape the last subdivision you lived in on the old edge of the city, you do not generate much sympathy when you complain about your traffic woes, lack of greenspace or rising taxes. You are making the decision to encourage the kind of development which is unsustainable and lowers your quality of life. (Note: I know in some areas, there is little choice about the kind of neighborhood you live in - sprawl is the only option, but many, many people continue to move further and further out to the same kind of development they already live in expecting the process not to repeat and that they will somehow escape the sprawl, and become indignant when they have to deal with the consequences I mentioned above. This example referred to the active supporters of the lifestyle and not the helpless participants who have no other choice.)
I may want to eat ice cream all day, but if I choose to do that (which I do not) I cannot demand to be thin. Most people would laugh at me if I did. Yet, when we are greedy and selfish in other ways, we act as if some Constitutional amendment has been violated if we actually have to face up to the effects our actions produce.
Time to take out the pacifier and deal with matters properly.
Awesome idea, mate! Just imagine not having to wake up early because you are already awake. By getting on US Eastern time you can live that cool all nighter life style. Siderial, smiderial, who needs sunlight?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
a singer who can't count
I don't think N8F8 meant Paul "Bono" Hewson of U2. Try Chastity. And let's hope she doesn't follow in her late daddy's footsteps by 2018.
Straight from the mighty wikipedia:
Rationales for DST
One of the major reasons given for observing DST in the United States is energy conservation. Theoretically, the amount of residential electricity needed in the evening hours is dependent both on when the sun sets and when people go to bed. Because people tend to observe the same bedtime year-round, by artificially moving sunset one hour later, the amount of energy used is theoretically reduced. United States Department of Transportation studies showed that DST reduces the country's electricity usage by one percent during each day DST is in effect.
Part of the reason that it is normally observed in the late spring, summer, and early autumn is because during the winter months the amount of energy saved by moving sunset one hour later is negated by the increased need for morning lighting by moving sunrise by the same amount. During the summer most people would wake up after the sun rises, regardless of whether daylight saving time is in effect or not, so there is no increased need for morning lighting to offset the afternoon energy savings.
Another perceived benefit of DST is increased opportunities for outdoor activities. Most people plan outdoor activities during the increased hours of sunlight. Other benefits cited include prevention of traffic injuries (by allowing more people to return home from work or school in daylight), and crime reduction (by reducing people's risk of being targets of crimes that are more common in dark areas).
When the U.S. went on extended DST in 1974 and 1975 in response to the 1973 energy crisis, Department of Transportation studies found that observing DST in March and April saved 10,000 barrels of oil a day, and prevented about 2,000 traffic injuries and 50 fatalities saving about U.S. $28 million in traffic costs.
He can always blame it on Microsoft... er, I mean 'M$'
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/actualites/article/artic le_complet.php?path=/actualites/article/16/1,63,0, 102005,1193040.php
So they'll also have to change it back when the stupid US version of the law gets pulled before its supposed to take effect.
Damn near every DST-aware invention is going to be screwed when this happens for those four extra weeks.
I think they should give us a three-week national holiday so that we don't have to deal with the chaos. Who's with me?
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
It would make things simple and just go by UTC. So when we mean we are going to have a meeting in New York at 15:00, we mean we are going to have a meeting in California at 15:00.
You make the time different based on what you are and work around the time... No the other way around. I wake up at 13:00 and you can wake up at 18:00 whever you may be. It would save the trouble of having to talk with other people in other time zones and always manually adjust the time.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Bah, I have a hard enough time remembering the time difference between myself (in Vancouver) and my parents (in Ottawa) without the time difference changing due to some new kind of DST. However, realistically, if Ontario is doing it, most other provinces (with the possible exceptions of ones which want to appear "distinct") will probably follow suit... no matter how silly they think the whole thing is. If something is annoying for me, it'll probably be even worse for someone running a business.
Please.
When you can drive across the border, and time loads to arrive at particular locations at particular times, then time matters. The less weirdness, the better.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
... that the government of this country takes time out of it's day to even think about things like this. The only message this sends is that the citizens of this country are idiots (according to the government). Either A) They believe that changing the clocks actually changes the number of daylight hours in each 24-hour rotation of the Earth, or B) They believe that everyone is too stupid to just set their clocks an hour earlier or later, as needed, without the government passing a law forcing everyone to do it. Moronic.
I've seen plenty of devices that switch times when they should not. I should know, I'm in a place that doesn't change the time when DST rolls around, yet the devices change anyway. This includes radios, VCRs, and probably microwaves too [if they bothered to insert a DST rule for it.]
I'm aware of VCRs that have the ability to get the time signal from the cable. I own one.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
... that any place crazy enough to get on the DST bandwagon should go all the way and adopt year-round DST. If a little of it is a good thing, and more is better, then shouldn't we maximize that goodness and adopt DST 365 days a year?
I mean, in the absence of any sort of hard data as to whether or not there actually is any beneficial impact to DST (and one would think, that after a century of bickering about it, someone would have collected some data to statistically demonstrate that DST does ANYTHING, but NOooo!), Why the Hell Not?
The morons^H^H^H^H^H^HThoughtful Citizens who insist that this is such a Good Thing will be happy, and I won't have to change all my clocks multiple times a year. Software could be simplified and a ton of consumer electronics could have one less poorly-implemented configuration item for the consumer to screw up.
I have finished this thread for you:
>It's not broke, don't fix it. (Score: 5, Insightful)
>>Yea but America controls it and I don't like America. (Score:4, Interesting)
>The Government is controlling too much stuff (Score: 4, Interesting)
>>We can just have some countries control it, then (Score: 5, Insightful)
>>>Rules are made to be broken! (Score: 5, Funny)
>>>>What time is it now? (Score 5, Interesting
>>>>>At least they don't bomb people! (Score: 4, Funny)
>>>>>>I hate Canadia. Ive never been there, but i hate it. (Score: -1, Troll)
>>>>>>>Arrogant Americans. Just like all Americans. All Americans are ignorant and generalize. (Score: 1, Redundant)
>I hate microsoft (Score: 1, Off-Topic)
>Canadian Weed (Score: 3, Interesting)
_29 replies_ below your current threshold
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Saving sig aborted.
Reason: Your subject looks too much like ascii art
I have read all of the comments here and virtually all people are not understanding the issue here. As is stated in the article, Ontario did this for *economic* reasons.
Ontario is US' largest trading partner in the entire world, and the vast bulk of that trade is with the eastern timezone states of the US. There are vast economic reasons for them to keep to the same daylight schedule as the US.
There are literally no other reasons to do this, and if the reason was anything else, those complaining would have a point. But given the economic issues at stake, with full consideration, I can't see how anyone can argue against this move by Ontario.
Just to say that Ontario isn't the first province that will match US DST time. Québec will to, announced last week.c le_complet.php?path=/actualites/article/16/1,63,0, 102005,1193040.php
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/actualites/article/arti
The answer IS 42.
I think that DST is really good. Let's all do it all year round!
It's a tricky concept, but the public can figure out how to readjust time itself twice a year, they might just be grown up enough to handle getting up when the sun's up. Those bastions of progress and ingenuity, farmers and other backwater hicks, have been adjusting their sleep schedule to match the sunrise since, oh, the dawn of time.... but we're not smart enough to keep up with those slack jawed geniuses, right?!?
Nah... way too radical!!!
This is gonna cost Canada *and* the US a tonne of money, because businesses now legally have to screw around with all their clocks for no good reason. Who really cares!!! If Ontario really need to do business with US trading partners during the very first hour of the day, we can certainly get up an "earlier" or "later" to do it. If we can schedule late night conference calls to accomodate clients in California, we can afford to be an hour out of synch with Michigan, too.
But then we "won't be the same" as the US, and we'll magically "lose business"... somehow... because the business between two major trading partners is somehow going to go up in smoke!!! They'll both get disgrunted with each other and go off in a huff and even start trading with some other developed country
Stupid DST. Stupid Canadian government. Stupid US government! Bad politicans! No biscuit!!!
Some parts of Australia have adopted daylight time. Of course, it's done a little differently than in the Northern Hemisphere where seasons are opposite. So, when daylight time starts in Canada, it comes to an end in Australia and vice versa. When Canadians are waxing their skis in December, Australians are waxing their surfboards because it's summer there. (Emphasis mine)
Are there actually people who don't know that it's summer in the southern hemisphere when it's winter in the northern? Although I do know that you north americans have some stunningly thick people (+1 Insightful, -1 Troll), it beggars belief that this is sufficiently unknown to warrant comment.
Windows Tweaks
I think we should set the clocks back 1 hour every Saturady night for a longer weekend and more time to party!!!
Of course. But remember Slashdot basically is a group blog. Were we come on here and rant and rave, and occasionally praise. But it's NOT a forum for education about economics, law, business, government, or even human nature. The day that it does, is the day it ceases to be Slashdot.
the singer "Bono" is very active in global politics
"Bono" is from across the pond. Much closer to the EU then Sonny Bono, or Chasity.
"Bono" was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize
"Bono" is one of the foremost experts in hunger policy, Accross the globe.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is funny... Because a few days ago Quebec announced that it had decided to follow the US and that the gov of Qc was trying to convince Ontario and New Brunswick (that are also in EST). Radio-canada reported it (in French)
Why won't you just die already?
were to jump off a cliff, would Toronto do it, too?
Face it, people are stupid, and the internet is the place where they all meet.
Why is this great news? Because of all the software maintenance effort that will be required to upgrade the systems to comply. The additional workload will mean more money and maybe even a recovery in the job market after the tech bubble a few years back.
This is the one thing GWB has done that will benefit me. Thanks George!
It messes up my sleeping every year, and my birthday falls right on it sometimes what a great gift...usually takes me a few weeks to adjust at worst or 1 week at best. I hate changing my damn 15000 million clocks everytime its DST !!! WTF IS THIS BULLSHIT WHY TORTURE US LIKE THIS? pick a time and stick with it. My body will always want to wake up when the sun comes up no matter what. Damn you bastards.
The last time I checked, both the US and Canada had a pretty firm grasp upon the concept of electric lighting. Why are we still messing around with this daylight savings time hooplah?
also some care is needed with computer setups and in places where theese things are done by hand its rarely done right.
generally your computer works in either local time (windows) or UTC (unix) and converts to the other one as needed. The problems start when a user sets things up such that local time is shown right but the time bias is wrong so the computers idea of UTC is wrong.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
If I were to have my way, DST should be in winter not summer, so when I am going home, the sun is still up, and it is not dark.
Failing that, let us unify time across the whole world. UTC would be the time everywhere, anywhere, any time of the year. It would be hard when setting up appointments and such, but we are in a mess anyway.
I have to use a tool like Time And Date to know what time it is in a city I am calling.
As someone living in Ontario, this is yet another fine mess we got ourselves in, in the name of trade and economy.
As others have pointed out, we do trade with China and Europe and they are not on the same zone we are in.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
fine - so ontario is the 51st state and not canada - were allowed to be partly wrong every once in a while
I'll give you a worse scenario than VCRs. In sydney during the Olympics, daylight savigs was started a month or so earlier than usual (sugust rather than October).
MS issued a "patch" for for Windows to "create a new timezone". You would not believe how many problems this caused in the corporate world (using outlook calendars). It was a problem in some companies for years afterwards. The problem arose when one company applied the patch, but another didn't and the appointments were off by an hour and people missed important meetings. People who have thought this through, actually decided not to apply the patch "and told their employees to manually move their appointments during the extra DST period". These were the companies that didn't have problems.
So, to answer another question about why 2007 for the implementation date: well it gives people time to prepare for situations like this!
It's really because we don't want to screw up the TV schedules and miss our favourite shows.
Just curious here but since you mentioned the Weights and Measures clause, any more initiatives for finally switching over to the metric system? I mean if we're changing time around why not the measurements as well. I bet if they did it the only people that would have trouble with it would be the people that hadn't been taught it in school or havent heard of it (a very small number I'm sure). I'd like to see it start gradually, say by putting the road signage in kilometers and miles both. That way we can all dip our toes in the water gradually :).
"The boy is dangerous, they all sense it, why can't you?"
Of course, the easy, cheap answer is to just encourage people to work different hours, with things like tax credits, etc. Save a lot of money, save a lot of fuel, everybody wins. Changing your clock is just silly.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
With this, now we have what, only 3 months now NOT in DST - why not just move our timezone to -4 instead of -5 all the time? Why even have DST? From a programming prospective, it sure would make it easier on me. Of course, if no other province is dumb like us, then it's just another joy of adding in code to handle DST for a specific province. Nice...
KeepTrackOfIt.com - Find the lowest gas prices in your area graphically
This seems to be a typical Canada/US relation.
It is remarkable that we deal with organizations throughout the world from Ontario, but it's so very important that we match the US for 3 weeks of the year. Of course we'll only match one timezone, and actually by ignoring this DST extension we could have benefitted from matching another timezone (CDT) for those weeks. We could have called it "MidWest Monster Mash!"
Anyways, many people don't even understand how DST affects them, or what this change will mean. Wouldn't you know it - I put up an entry explaining it!
Last time I checked, both Canada and the US did trade with countries other than each other. Some of these are in other time zones.
80% of Canada's exports go to the US; 25% of the US' exports go to Canada. Each country is the others' largest trading partner. 40% of Canada's population is in Ontario. The next largest province is Quebec, which is also in the Eastern timezone. The largest city is Toronto (in Ontario), the next largest is Montreal (in Quebec). Toronto and Montreal are two of Canada's busiest airports (Vancouver is in the top three as well I believe).
Anyway you cut it Canada and the US are interconnected economically. Anything that messes up the interaction can have serious repercussions.
It's linked in another thread, hidden deep in conversation, and I though it worthwhile, so here's a graph of DST in Toronto, Canada. One of the few informative things I've read in this.
>
WTF, why don't they just become the 51st state. All of it except the smelly french part.
Clue; it's in W Washington. (upper left hand corner of the map).
I live in Vancouver. Toronto has thought of themselves as the centre of the universe for longer than George Bush has. We'd very much like to see Toronto jump off a cliff, with or without the United States. :)
Québec was the first one but since CBC has no clue what happens outside of Toronto that is no surprise that they haven't
heard yet. Québec has made the decision as soon at Washington decided to make the change.New York being one of Québec's largest trading partner they have little choice.
This is a business decision much like the one that Indiana made this year to join the daylight saving time scheme. The decision in Indiana wasn't made because it was popular but to please business. Close to 75% of the population didn't want to make the change but it was on the platform of the republican party who took power. They knew that the population didn't want it but didn't give a rat's ass because the voters were not the important factor to the election of the new governor.
Without big money from corporations who wanted the swith this prick would never have gotten elected governor. You have to remember that he's the same asshole who refused to fund the levies in New Orleans when he was working for the nutcase GW at the White House.
There isn't even any Adsense or ads there. Very cool.
Thnx
My family has owned at least one, it was Sanyo I think, although it might have been RCA. It wasn't a generic Walmart model, and this was about 4 years ago.
The option is to turn the feature on [which is now broken in some parts of North America], or off.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
We should just legislate that cares take NO fuel - that would save even more!
I can see a savings in the south, but up north it means you get a hour more of dark in the morning. I am either going to have an hour of dark in the AM or the PM. I happen to prefer getting up after the sun.
While you're at it, have it last year-round. Not like it hasn't been done before:
/ daylight050728.html?print
The last time the United States and Canada observed different winter time systems was during the 1974-75 oil crisis. The U.S. did not turn its clocks back at all that fall in an attempt to conserve energy.
From http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/07/28
Better to have to change once and get it over with than replay the same drama every decade when someone wants to avoid problems like having hundreds of thousands of people driving huge vans and SUVs to work with no passengers. By the way, why is gas so much more expensive in other countries when we seem to waste it? From time to time I hear about equivalent prices of over $10/gallon.
--
"Extra Anus Kills Four-Legged Chick" -- Headline
Saskatchewan: "From the Plains Indian word, "kisiskatchewan", meaning "the river that flows swiftly"; a reference to the area's major river."
On November 18, 1883, four standard time zones for the continental U.S.A. were introduced at the instigation of the railroads. When people began traveling by train, sometimes hundreds of miles in a day, the calculation of time became a serious problem. Operators of the new railroad lines realized that a new time plan was needed in order to offer a uniform train schedule for departures and arrivals.
Since every city was using a different time standard, there were over 300 local sun times to choose from. The railroad managers tried to address the problem by establishing 100 railroad time zones, but this was only a partial solution to the problem.
ref: LOC: Today in History
Wow, and I thought it was just an irrelevant state... Like Idaho or Arkansas.
I'm looking over the wall, and they're looking at me!
Ontario should "benefit" more form the daylight savings change. The further you are form the equator the more daylight savings helps.
Canada and the US aren't just each other's biggest trading partners, they are THE biggest trading partners. Our economies are inseperably intertwined. There really aren't any two nations on earth with a closer relationship, despite our rather interesting political and social differences.
You deserve to be modded up. Sadly, you probably won't be, because you're not slagging the U.S., Microsoft, or SCO...
... do something! Evil!
Anyway, I digress. I just thought you made a good point. People love to invent grand conspiracy theories, especially when they can feature The Man forcing All Those Little People to change their clocks back from DST a month later. It's oppression! It's cultural genocide! It's an obvious plot by Halliburton to
I think the tinfoil has gone to their heads.
For the record, I think Daylight Saving Time (no 'S' on saving, by the way) is a pretty slick idea, and a good manipulation of the fact that time is inherently arbitrary anyway. So why not make it work for us, or at least a little bit in our advantage, if we can? Seems like a no-brainer to me.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Daylight saving time has no bearing on what time the sun rises or sets in the winter.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I think it's less confusing right now. If I say "it's 11am in Vancouver" then you know the sun's up, and people are about an hour from lunchtime. How do you get the same information when everyone uses UTC?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
(with the possible exceptions of ones which want to appear "distinct")
What do you not like about Saskatchewan ???
Wanna save energy? Why don't you shutdown or at least dim all those fscking lamp posts after the rush hour? Do we really need to light up the streets so bright that at in any large enough city (and you know its not that large) the night sky looks like dawn all night long. Just try it, stop reading /. and go
outside. Mars is in opposition and we are in the peak of the
Orionids meteor shower. There is quite a show going on and its
not too cold yet to stay hours laying on the ground.
Ummm, like if you drove over a province or two and swapped 1-2 timezones. Because goodness knows nobody goes between provinces but everyone goes to the US...
Although I see the sense in matching time zones between jurisdictions engaged in significant mutual trade, following the United States with respect to daylight savings time is not that obvious. As you venture farther North, the seasonal variation in day length increases. If the rationale for DST is to align the populace's waking day with the sun, at a certain latitude you are bound to fall short. At some point, you will have to travel to and from work in the dark. What makes sense for Florida may not translate to Northern Ontario or Québec City.
Canada does about 80% or more of its trade with the U.S. (which does about 25% of its trade with Canada). The largest share of that is from Ontario. I don't blame them one bit for trying to keep in sync' and believe it is in their best self interest. Economically, Canada relies much more on America than America relies on Canada.
If Canada doesn't want to rely as much on America, then it should develop more trading partners... but the U.S. will always be the major trading partner just due to its proximity. Another thing Canada could do is like what they do in Quebec and Israel: pay people a bunch of money whenever they have kids. That would help encourage Canadians to increase the population. With more people would come more economic leverage as they would be able to create a larger economic output.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
the two most populated nations, china and india, each have a single time zone across their entire country. no dst, no time changes, period... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone#Trivia
so what if pakistan/china border has a 3:30 time difference.. that's less relevent here because there's nothing but water on both sides.
makes sense to me....
a single time zone, with no dst, for the entire "lower 48" and (at least) the southern canadian provinces. base it on "high noon" on the summer solstice somewhere smack in the middle.. and for a lack of a better point of reference.. how about using TIME, ILLINOIS?!? at the junction of north, south, east, and west streets. http://tinyurl.com/dcra3
if eastern canada still wants to be screwed up, they can join puerto rico and be +2 hours. alaska and hawaii should be on the same time anyway, they're approximately the same longitude.. make them -2 hours.
definately simplify travel.. no more "2 hour" flights from toronto to vancouver and "7 hour" flights on the way back.
People generally love these ideas.
The state government in Queensland (Australia) has an online petition on the subject of daylight savings. It has been running for about a week, and already has more than 3 times as many signatures as any other e-petition they have ever run. Despite sitting on the tropic of Capricorn, Queenslanders want DST. Stupid, but thats how it is.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Arizona has a lot of gall just ignoring DST; same for those counties in Indiana. I wrote scheduling software at my last job, and it was a real pain trying to keep everyone happy when it came to time. One of the first quirks I learned was Arizona. Did you know Australia extended DST for a week by government decree when they last hosted the Olympics? Try accounting for that in software. Our corporate datebook software had very primitive timezone support. We used Java for our actual application, and the timezone code was a work in progress. We did end up changing some of our code to just use the timezone of the location being scheduled because our infrastructure wasn't reliable enough to handle more sophisticated logic.
Don't forget Assawoman bay in Maryland!
Anyone else find it a bit unusual that "Standard Time" will now only be observed for 3 months of the year, while "Daylight Savings Time" will be observed for 9 months?
Maybe they should change the names, so we have "Standard Time" in the summer... and "Night Savings Time" in the winter?
I think this is a great idea. The US and Canada have a long history of cooperation. We speak the same language and use similar money. We share many cultural values. Why not share time zones as well? This is yet another demonstration that Canada is America's bitch.
A massive chunk of the Ontario economy is synchronized down to the minute with the U.S. economy due to so-called "just in time production" in the automotive industry. Quite a few posters here seem to have no clue about this at all but the Ontario government is well aware of what drives its economy. So this change makes perfect sense to me.
China is about the same width as the US and the whole country is one time-zone! I feel sorry for those people way out in the western provinces..
Theoretically, the amount of residential electricity needed in the evening hours is dependent both on when the sun sets and when people go to bed. Because people tend to observe the same bedtime year-round, by artificially moving sunset one hour later, the amount of energy used is theoretically reduced.
Theoretically, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice . . . well, you know the rest.
As a demonstration: How many of you have the air conditioner on while you're at home in the summer? (raises hand)
When the U.S. went on extended DST in 1974 and 1975 in response to the 1973 energy crisis, Department of Transportation studies found that observing DST in March and April saved 10,000 barrels of oil a day
And how many buildings had air conditioning in 1974 and 1975, or used it all the time even if they did? Far fewer than have it now, I'm willing to bet.
I predict that this change will do more harm than good in the short term - in both countries - and long before the time the proposed changes might have started to turn around economically (in terms of the so-called oil or energy savings, which one should realize won't be anywhere even close to the projected estimates because in actuality our society is far more functional around the clock now than it was when the study that predicted the energy savings was done), everyone will be so fed up with all the hassles that they've put up with so far, they will probably just drop the whole thing (probably with some sort of "oops... well that idea didn't work out very well, did it?" sort of excuse by the corresponding governments) and go back to the way things were before (that is, how they are right now).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Canada.
Honestly, it's worse to dispatch trucks in America. What with half of some states observing DST and all... It's very difficult to have a driver say "I can deliver by 2200" and they're talking EST which is actually CDT and the customer is in EDT. So they get their stuff at 2300 instead. How do you tell your customer "Oh, I'm sorry. We forgot that Indiana is in a temporal flux." I think the whole hullaballo over saving 1% of our energy costs is negligible to the amount of time, effort and energy needed to compensate for for time zone variances. While I think the whole time zone system could use some serious work, for now it seems effective to have time only changed for regional purposes and not seasonal purposes. Essentially, stop the whole idiocy of springing forward and falling back. The time should be constant year round world wide.
It may not make sense for every province to adopt the new US time, but from a capital markets perspective it is imperative. The North American financial markets generally operate on EST, and it makes sense for the TSX to open with the NYSE and NASDAQ so that interlisteds aren't an hour adrift. If you had that kind of drift, you could see capital flow from one market to another as traders try to get a jump on the day by hitting the earlier market place. These sorts of imbalances (and I'm sure there are more in other industries) are the kinds of things that would be easily avoided by continuing to share a common time.
I know there are plenty of North American equities that trade in Europe or Asia overnight, but it isn't quite the same thing. To have a one hour difference, you effectively stretch the trading day by an hour because you'd have to include both market places. And since the entire TSX trades less volume in a day than a single large US financial institution, the Canadians have a lot to lose if there's an imbalance. The Canadian marketplace is small - it has a lot going for it - but it must play ball with the big boys next door if it hopes to continue to maintain relevance in an increasingly interconnected world.
1. American firm sleeping with Bush patents 25 hour clock.
2. US changes to new 25 hour time system.
3. Spineless canadians change to 25 hour time system.
4. ???
5. Profit!
Then EU kicked in and harmonized the rules for changing to and from DST
Interestingly enough, the current EU directive on daylight saving time is the ninth such directive to be issued. The eigth directive specified the date and hour to switch to and from DST, but forgot to mention the time zone. Hence Britain was out-of-synch with the rest of the union for one hour (or in-synch, depending on your point of view).
One wonders how the heck it could take nine tries to get it right...
Imagine all the systems that have "Central (US & Canada)", "Eastern (US & Canada)", etc. timezone settings (including Windows itself).
If Canada does not match up to U.S., then those settings will become out-of-sync between the U.S. and Canada.
So, basically, you're saying the same thing as Bush.
Bush: "The American way of life is not negotiable."
You: "Our use of standard time should not be negotiable."
According to many studies, switching to DST saves fuel. (I'm not going to debate whether or not that is actually true, because you basically admitted that it was.) You're saying we SHOULDN'T try to save fuel by changing to DST? Just because you don't want to give up the idea that "time is absolute"? Now THAT is stubborn.
Of course we should try to increase our fuel economy, BUT if we can use even less fuel by changing to DST, why is that a bad thing?
Oil is concrete and limited. Time is abstract (and infinite?) Which is more important to you?
...stupidity really IS contagious!
The tractors without the sleepers in the back of the cab are generally short-haul trucks that are dispatched from a local distribution center.
They don't cross time zones very much, if they can avoid it.
The long-haul trucks are the ones that cross time zone boundaries, and usually have trip lengths measured in days, hence, the China issue again.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I believe the current rules are that if the parent did not have an "english" education in the province that the children must attend a french school.
There have been some cases of pretty brutal mis-enforcements of the laws by some extreme groups. A simple search should find you more info.
It's a simple matter of complex programming.
DST is way overblown. I'm from Saskatchewan, and we're one of the few places that don't buy it.
just on the news last night, one of the reporters in Ottawa was going on about the virtues of DST, saying it will reduce traffic accidents, save energy, reduce crime, [sarcasm] and even cure cancer [/sarcasm].
last time i checked, it's still dark for the same number of hours. and i fail to see how making people get up earlier reduces accidents (if anything, i would increase them for a couple days after they move the clocks back in spring, as people are tired from getting an hour less sleep)
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Of all things, why don't shipping companies use UTC? There's no ambiguity there...
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
It's like cutting off your head and standing on it to become taller.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Many decades ago they were looking to name this new northern country. The evening "turned dark" early because they were running on Standard Time, and finally in utter frustration the leader said "I'm gonna put all the letters of the alphabet in this hat, and the first three letters I pull out, that's gonna be the name of this country:"
C, eh?
N, eh?
D, eh?
How does redesigning the currency ever 7-10 years help protect against counterfeiting? What is stopping someone from making money that looks like the old currency? Are they also going to make older bills non-legal tender?
We do, when we can... but my company in particular is a broker... so we do business with many companies most of them local to the origin of whatever it is we're moving. While trying not to heavily insult their intelligence... the best thing I could say is "They're good at driving trucks".
So basically, for Canada not to follow in doing something stupid is also stupid? There's a point where somebody has to stop and say "this is dumb, I'm not doing that" rather than saying "this is dumb, but everyone else is doing it"
twitter, quick! There's a running story about an IT meltdown in Australia! You can jump in and blame 'M$' like you did in the Comair fiasco and look supremely stupid again! Go for it!
But why do we switch back in the winter? There's not enough daylight in the winter no matter how you slice it. Whether the sun comes up at 8am and goes down at 4pm, or comes up at 9am and goes down at 5pm, what's the difference? In both scenarios we need 10 hours of artificial lighting per day.
So why not simply set clocks one or two hours ahead once and for all, and be done with it?
The NYSE is open from 9:30 am - 4:00 pm Eastern Time. Just an FYI.
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
Also stuff that's a little more critical than your VCR. Like traffic lights.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!