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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.
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.
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$
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!
i'm with you on that
No daylight savings, no time zones, no AM/PM even! It's just GMT 24hour.
- 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.
what better way to force people to upgrade to the new Digital HD equipment...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
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 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.
"So we shouldn't do it because it doesn't hit some arbitrary limit."
As with any choice there are trade-offs. Saving oil is good, but there are better ways to do it, and ways that cause less harm or disruption like this new time law.
"The high price of oil products will address this issue without dragging Bush into the equation. Free Market strikes again."
The only thing high oil prices addresses is the Bush family pocketbook. Oil is a commodity that people can't avoid having a stake in, since all of our goods rely on it. If you aren't an oil owner, you're an oil buyer, so high oil prices hurt even if you buy a Prius. Farmers aren't going to combine using a Prius.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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.
Here's some facts: [...] 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.
Well, no, I guess those are NOT all facts, just guesses.
XDS, the data system that is used to transmit the time to your VCR, includes a bit indicating Daylight time versus Standard time. That bit is transmitted by the time provider (your local TV station).
The algorithm is not hard-coded on any of the VCRs that use my former employer's XDS-capable chip [most?]. We just used the indicator from the XDS data stream... that was the only right way to do it. I'd be shocked if any vendor bothered to bake in all the various time rules into their devices... especially since the rules change all the time. DST rules changed most recently in the USA in the 1980s.
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.
Neither. You're instead taking two hours of daylight from the morning and putting it into the afternoon. Daylight Saving Time is intended to shift the gain in sunlit hours after the vernal equinox primarily to the hours after noon.
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.
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)
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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!
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?]
Being in airline IT, I can tell you that the changes to our systems have almost zero cost. Being an international carrier, we deal with time rule changes just about every month. We know how to handle these changes with ease. Just because this one happens in the US doesn't make it any different.
Airlines WANT to declare bankruptcy. Airlines are going bankrupt because corporate laws are such that declaring bankruptcy results in the airline not having to pay money to those people it owe, and results in the cancellation of existing contracts.
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.
You're right! I say why shoot so low?
Let's legislate those flying cars we were supposed to have by now. Oh, and while we are at it, how about legislating a cure for cancer and AIDS?
Hell, we might as well legislate against murder. Yo know, ban it. Then there'll be no more murder!
This is amazing! We can fix anything just by passing a law!
Right?
"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."
The federal government is not responsible for poor design in consumer goods, or else we should have passed a "Y2K Saving Time" law stating that the year after 1999 is 1900 again.
If you can put a longwave receiver in my watch to tell it when DST starts or stops, you can put one in a VCR.
"Airlines and other businesses that depend on time are going to have to reprogram many things, and thus this will impact their bottom line."
Again, the federal government is not responsible for poor design.
Besides, the change to Daylight Time and back is technically not a change of clocks so much as a change in time zones ("Eastern Daylight Time" is just a fancy name for "Atlantic Standard Time"). And if airlines can't handle changing time zones, they've got problems beyond DST.
"If we legislated that vehicles must achieve twice the MPG rating they have today,"
The Interstate Commerce Clause has been strained to the breaking point as it is, thankyouverymuch. The Weights and Measures Clause, on the other hand, works just fine and has yet to infringe on, say, Arizona's right to ignore DST entirely (and, coincidentally, the Mexican state of Sonora has chosen to ignore DST because of its shared border and commerce with Arizona)
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!!!
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)
My God, the most insightful comment I have read in months! :)
- 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.
While I agree this is not the most potent measure (following the links from NIST to webexhibits gives a figure of about 1% energy savings), anything that aids in getting the concept of conservation into the mainstream shouldn't be immediately derided as ineffectual. Let's be honest: any critical system will have an upgrade process for patching and this is the simplest patch in history. It's just changing one database of dates. Everything else? Mostly upgradable. The only things that won't be are watches, VCRs, microwaves, etc. that are dependent on time but not networked.
At this juncture, let it be. Explain to your parents how to set the time on their VCRs and then explain whatever new conservation energy bill has just been proposed as x number of daylight savings bills. It'll be the easy to comprehend benchmark, like "times the national debt" or "flaming Libraries of Congress".
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.
- 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.
You are so right! I think you've convinced me that if we can't reduce consumption by at least [arbitrary] percent then we shouldn't reduce consumption at all! What a logical thought!
- 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.
Perhaps I haven't kept up with technology, but my VCRs and alarm clocks don't adjust to DST. My "atomic" radio clocks will adjust according to NIST. My computers will adjust correctly. I imagine even Tivo will manage just fine.
Oh, I'm sorry, were you trying to bring up another y2k type scarecrow? Oh no! I can't adjust my clocks by hand! The world shall end!
- 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?]
Oh no! The world shall end!
- 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!]
Ah, back to the "if we can't save [arbitrary] consumption, it's best not to try at all" argument.
DST is such a non-issue, and I say that if we can save some energy by adjusting our clocks (because us stupid humans like to live by the clock) then by all means let's go for it. Other countries change the DST change dates on a yearly basis, and so most electronic and computer hardware is already equiped to deal with this. Yes, there is some US-centric equipment whose designers, like MBA graduates, look only to the short term and those items will suffer.
Is it worth all the consternation you're working up? I don't think so, but I'm not you, and perhaps this is the most important activity you need to spend time and resources on in your life.
-Adam
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.
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Ummm. What about oil used for heating? For industry? For Electricity? I'm pretty sure that uses much more oil than transportation. Or, at least, it's significant enough that there won't be a 1-to-1 correspondance between percentage decreases of fuel consumption in cars to the total used.
Actually, it makes it so people use less electricty in the evening. If you expect business to just start an hour early, you are the moron.
It would disrupt WallStreet and global economics.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
"My computers will adjust correctly."
Only if they are patched, or work off a time server. And even then, you might not realize a bug is there until something goes wrong.
If DST is such a non-issue, then why is Bush and gang touting it as such a monumental energy saver? When was the last time you saw a business besides pro sports or construction not using lights simply because it was daytime outside?
How is it going to benefit children and the workforce to go to school and work in the dark?
"You are so right! I think you've convinced me that if we can't reduce consumption by at least [arbitrary] percent then we shouldn't reduce consumption at all! What a logical thought!"
Why thank you. It's good of you to notice that red herrings should be ignored, instead of being touted as energy saving measures. This is a make-work project for computer programmers, while giving the ignorant population the warm fuzzy feeling that Bush really gives half a crap about energy conservation, while it doesn't really conserve a significant portion of energy.
There are real ways of conserving energy, and DST isn't one of them.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Yes, you're right, I was referring to oil in the transportation industry, where we have the technology to roll out more efficient engines, but we aren't doing it because it's more important for people to have the RIGHT to buy a 9MPG SUV, than it is to have the right to breath.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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...
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I hope that John Deere (not the military communications spammer; the farm equipment producer) is currently working on Prius-type technology for their farm equipment. If not, their competitors surely are!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
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!
"I mean if we're changing time around why not the measurements as well."
The Constitution gives Congress the power to set standards (e. g. "meter means 39.37 inches" or the later "foot means 0.3048 meter"), but nothing's in there about the power to compell people to use them. This is why parts of the country ignores Daylight Saving Time to begin with.
On the other hand, there's really nothing in th Constitution preventing the states from compelling metric usage, but I give it a week before somebody challenges it in federal court on Interstate Commerce grounds.
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.
" Personal vehicles do not make up 50% of all oil consumption in the US. "
Nice comprehension there AC. What's 50% of 50%? 25%.
But that's not the point. The point is about 50% of the oil consumed for transportation in all new vehicles could be saved by making all new vehicles twice as efficient. It's a lofty goal, but not unattainable.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Pardon me for being an idiot, but I've often heard the argument of hard-coded, auto-changing VCRs. It doesn't seem to make sense that they exist. Do they? How many people have them? They can't be all that important, surely, because even in the US not every state has daylight savings; and in different places daylight savings starts at different times (frex, in here in Australia, it starts at the beginning of October in Tasmania, the end of October in Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and the ACT, and doesn't happen in the remaining states and territories. Compare October with the March-or-what it starts in in the US). In fact in 2000 for the Olympics, we started daylight savings in September so that it it happened while the Olympics were on, so that Americans would be able to watch them better, or something.
So are there really millions of these hard-coded auto-changing VCRs that it's a legitimate argument? Do people who make them just limit their market (to the admittedly sizable) region that has daylight savings for the same period as most of the US?
(Personally, as a Victorian, I'd prefer we started daylight savings at the start of October, same as Tasmania—it makes sleeping much easier.)
Look out!
>
Clue; it's in W Washington. (upper left hand corner of the map).
Sorry to be a bit cryptic, it was a joke at the "dear john" letters that are becoming more and more common as stays in Iraq are extended.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
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
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."
Seconded from Alberta. :-)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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....
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.
IIRC, NTP only gives you UTC. To determine what time to show, your computer relies on locally-stored static time zone information. So even synching with a time server doesn't solve the problem. As you also mentioned, though, patching would work.
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.
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?
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'
Reducing congestion is difficult, though, as people will tend to drive up to their maximum congestion tolerance level - i.e. the point at which the commute gets too tedious. Building additional roads works for a period of time but may simply encourage more people to drive on them until such time as the commute tedium threshold is reached again, at which point there are more total cars stuck in congestion. I am not sure there is really a solution, except that if congested commutes are short the total number of congested miles is shorter. Changing junctions to reduce cars bunching up, which can cause congestion miles away, would help. Even changing traffic light timing can help.
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.
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!
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.
Sounds like about 5% to me. Your statement supports the opposite view.
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.
A the US should waste millions of barrels of oil because some programmers chose a crude hack to adjust time? Also, VCR use is in rapid decline.
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?]
The airlines might have taken some of the 10's of billions the feds gave them after 9/11 to do this. Your point is adsurd.
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!]
Great idea. In mandating hybrids the average cost of a car doubles, meaning large segments of the population can't afford to drive. What George Bush really needs to do is levy a large tribute in oil from Iraq in payment for freeing their country. Say 25% of their production. GDub rocks!
an ill wind that blows no good
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.
...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.
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?
Because most people don't want to change the way they do things, and the government will use the 'DST saves us fuel' argument to relieve them from looking at the real thing to do; INCREASE THE EFFICIENCY OF VEHICLES.
That's why some people are against the idea. Most other people want to put their fingers in their ears and sing 'la la la' until some politician comes along with a token gesture and tells them exactly what they want to hear. Specifically, that they can continue to live their lives without any consequences for their actions, and feel good about it.
"In mandating hybrids the average cost of a car doubles, meaning large segments of the population can't afford to drive. What George Bush really needs to do is levy a large tribute in oil from Iraq in payment for freeing their country. Say 25% of their production. GDub rocks!"
From the last part of your comment, it's clear you're just joking. And simple economics tells us that with more hybrids supplied to us, the cost will go down.
Most Americans are going to have trouble filling their 10MPG SUV in a couple years, if you want to talk about absurd points. And those are only the Americans who can afford an SUV, there are millions more with no car at all.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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"
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?
What would disrupt Wall Street and global economics? Doing away with DST? Or changing DST? Or not changing DST? I didn't argue for any of those things. I just said that the fact that our government cares at all about DST is amazing. Like I said, moving the clocks one way or the other has no effect on the number of light hours in a day. If that's not obvious, then you are the moron.
It may have been true, back when DST was first introduced, that just about all businesses operated on a 8-5 work day, but that's hardly the case today. And there are many, many other arguments against DST. Here's a good starting point: http://www.standardtime.com/
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!
When Canada was first being more-or-less forcibly converted to the Metric system, it was illegal for businesses to post signs, mail flyers, or sell stuff labelled in both Imperial and Metric sizes.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!