Prepared for Next Year's Time Change?

wohlford puts forth this query: "Next year, daylight saving time will be extended another four weeks. Slashdot has covered the time change proposal and its estimated impact, already. Since then it has been signed into law. Looking around on the Net I don't see anyone taking this seriously. Will this become the next tech doomsday or just another joke like Y2K?"

Comments

I vote for no-DST and use GMT

[Loconut1389]

Personally, I hate daylight savings time and see no need for it. Just get up earlier or later as needed. Further, I don't see why we can't just all use GMT. So you get up at 08:00 and I get up at 21:00, big deal.

Re:I vote for no-DST and use GMT

[aduzik]

Quick: the current time is 00:30 -- is it morning, midday, or night where I live? If I open my business at 12:00 and close at 22:00, what kind of business do I most likely own: a coffee shop/lunch place, a retail store or a restaurant? If I open at 16:00 and close at 02:00, can you make a sign that (in a non-confusing way) makes it obvious to my customers that, while I open on Monday and stay open continuously until Tuesday, that I'm actually only open for ten hours?

Now what if I tell you it's 6:30 PM local time? I don't even have to tell you where I live, do I? You would know that it's about dinnertime here, regardless of where "here" is.

I live in the states, but the time is 00:30 UTC everywhere right now. If I call my grandma in Australia, is she going to say, "ugh! Why did you call me at 00:30?" or is she going to say, "oh, you picked a perfect time to call." (My grandma does, in fact, talk like that, by the way.)

The point of time zones and "local time" is that it provides *context*. Wednesday is going to turn into Thursday (or already has) in the middle of the night -- for everybody. With UTC, it would be Thursday here in most of the US already. So while it may be a pain to have to adjust for local time in other localities, at least you'll know about what time of day it is there. Unless you happen to live in Greenwich, or maybe one or two time zones in either direction, using UTC would be nothing but a pain in the ass. Do you really think it would make sense for me to leave for work on Sunday "evening" and get home on Monday "morning" -- to say nothing about how lame New Year's Eve parties would be in most of the world. (In Eastern Europe and Asia, you'd enjoy a celebratory cup of joe first thing in the morning. How fun.)

Y2K a joke?!?!

[NaugaHunter]

Go to hell. A lot of people put a lot of work into resolving a real problem. We'd sure as hell have heard about it if we hadn't.

One of those damned if you do, damned if you don't things I guess.