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Daylight Saving Change Saved No Power
Brett writes "Results from energy companies are coming in, and the word is that moving Daylight Saving Time forward three weeks had no measurable impact on power consumption. The attempt by the US Congress to make it look like they were doing something about the energy crisis has been exposed as the waste it is. But the new DST is probably here to stay — letting the bill expire would mean re-patching a lot of systems again next year. So much for saving energy."
But, the DST change was one of the ONLY things they could agree on!!!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Look, I understand people that want to take a stab at the administration - Bush's administration has done far more harm than good, but come on - bashing like this summary is just not necessary. This was a widely supported idea beyond just the US - a number of countries followed suit in the idea. At the very least, it didn't HURT anything - so why bitch about it so much? Oh well, you had to patch your systems. It's over and done with. No need to try and make this into a "prime opportunity" to bash the administration for at least trying. There's plenty of other things to gripe about when it comes to this administration - learn to pick your fights, otherwise you just end up looking like a giant douche.... or a turd sandwich.
A community-oriented lyrics site
I thought feel-good legislation always worked. :-/
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Remember that this also moved DST changes back after October 31st. So the candy companies love this and it is "safer for the children", even if it does nothing for energy usage. It will stay most likely.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Reuters spoke with Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co. power, who said it plainly: "We haven't seen any measurable impact."
While I had no doubts in my mind that this wouldn't save a dime, I'm still pleased with the fact that because I work 9:30 to 6pm I see daylight on my drive home three weeks earlier than usual. For me, I'd prefer it's this way all year long but I don't have kids that ride a school bus (isn't that the main reason they claim we do this in the first place?)
I actually liked the experiment of this. For my house in particular, there was no energy savings because I'd already switched most of my lights out for CFLs. (most of the savings was supposed to come from lighting) Perhaps there were no savings because everyone else has switched to CFLs too? tee hee.
... we can just get rid of DST altogether, since it has been shown to not do dick except annoy people and cost companies money in IT time.
Keep it summer time year round if you ask me.
IANAL, but I play one on
Any "daylight saving" time is a waste of time and energy. It may have been a good idea back in Ben Franklin's day when people used candles and oil lamps, but now people leave the lights and electronics on whether it's day or night.
Personally, I'd MUCH prefer to just leave it on real time and forget this nonsense altogether. Can you imagine, never having to change your clock except when you move? But I guess that makes too much sense.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
If they aren't going to abolish DST all together, it better bloody well stay, I don't want to do a panic dance to deploy yet another set of (more complicated), Time Zone rules, and still get screwed by embeded devices and propriatery systems that just can't handle it.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
The ONLY people that care about DST from a work standpoint are us IT people, because of all the shit we had to go to re-patch our systems. Other than that, this is insignificant. Moving DST was insignificant in itself; I call it "Freedom Fries Legislation"
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
oh, wait, that's been tried before. didn't work then, either.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
three more weeks with enough sunlight after work to actually do something (run, bike, ...) is all that matters... heck, if they made DST 2 hours long and all year round it'd be awesome, rather than being dark at 4:30 in the winter at least it'd stay bright until 6:30, who cares if the sun comes up at 8am or 10am, daylight after work is a lot more important...
-- the cake is a lie
Just two quick examples of the COST of the change, due to lost productivity - I live in the Eastern US, and someone in Ireland missed a conference call with us because everyone on both sides of the Atlantic thought that Ireland was always 5 hours ahead (for some reason, people found it impossible to fathom that this wasnt the case if we changes our clock and they didn't, but whatever). Example number two - a contractor in brazil was going to take down our servers at 5:00 EDST but actually took them down at 4:00 since they didnt know about the time change.
$200/hr * 20 * 8 clients = enough cha ching to enjoy this crap.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm always counting the days til DST comes back. Later daylight makes me happy! Sure, some schoolkids have to wait for the bus in the dark - but I had to do that anyhow when I was younger, even when it wasn't DST! I wish we could have it this way all year long - winter is when we need it *worst*, with the sun setting by 4:30 in many places.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
First of all, this is a move by congress, no one is bashing "The Administration"
No harm, no foul, huh? How about the time it took to patch my file transfer program. I'm sure my employers don't appreciate the extra money spent. Not to mention tying up our IT staff trying to get time clocks/etc. fixed when the Windows patch f#$%ed up the time then fixed it again two days later. There's two days of pay for the IT staff, not to mention lost time where other things didn't get fixed.
And it's us who look like giant douches for complaining?!!
I remember a local news story the week of the 11th stating that there was actually an increase in gas use after the DST change because people were driving more now that it stay light out later.
ÕÕ
Water utilities claim there was no measureable impact to water consumption after their "hold your pee in for an hour before going to the bathroom" campaign wrapped up last weekend, in an effort to minimize water consumption and save the planet of resources. =P
I didn't really buy the energy savings part of it from the start.
The only thing I can think of is that the DST change is good for businesses because it makes it lighter longer three weeks earlier. I don't know if this is true or not but this may make people more inclined to go run an errand right after work rather than going straight home and waiting until the weekend.
Just a thought.
/whisper/ Thanks for the candy!
When I had to switch my clock back on Ubuntu (the timezone fix did not make it in the apt-get updates somehow), my makefile on my hour-long build project refused to build (citing misalignment of the timestamps of the files). So I had to delete all my files and fetch them all again after I put the clock back to the way it was before.
After that, I turned on my amp and surround sound system and watched a movie during lunch while blasting away the AC because I got so hot from all the work.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
...and I'm all for it!
This DST2007 thing has been a real pain in my ass. I know that the US government hates to admit failure, so we won't leave Iraq and we won't back off on DST2007... wish we would though. It has caused a lot of problems.
I have not yet understand the theory behind DST, ie. what is _supposed_ to be the actual benefit.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
The time change did not affect the amount of daylight, or the number of hours over which that daylight was distributed.
It may have affected hour your work schedule corresponded to the daylight hours, but that's a completely different thing.
i wish the "spring forward" and "fall back" thing would stop! i wish the world would just split the difference and leave the clocks alone! next fall move the clocks back 30 minutes and never move them forward or back again, this daylight savings time does not do anything beneficial...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Whoopeee! That's what you get with central planning.
No surprise it was a flop. Duh.
Can't wait for scoialized medicine!!!!
Wow, that was unbiased.
The new DST helped me out a lot. I like it when it's lighter out later, earlier in the year. I vote we stay on this time all year round. Switching around at all is dumb.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
But the new DST is probably here to stay -- letting the bill expire would mean re-patching a lot of systems again next year.
Because whether or not systems need to be re-patched is the primary concern of lawmakers. I can see the debate now:
Senator 1: "Let's just let the bill expire. Or we can fillibuster it if you fillibuster our 'Feed the Homeless' bill."
Senator 2: "Are you insane, man? Just think of all the system patches necessary to get things back the way they were. I'll not be part of any such scandal! I'll still fillibuster your Feed the Homeless bill though, but only because of the rider that provides free health care for anyone who can't otherwise afford it."
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I see that your campaign promise to do something about the price of gas is really kicking in now.
They ARE doing something. Those gas prices won't increase themselves, you know!
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
I can smell the sarcasm off this post, so it makes me wonder what the mods are doing with +Interesting.
ACs are running that werent last year.
You cant extrapolate "it doesnt help" from one months worth of data. I dont see how you can get any meaningful conclusions from it.
Unless you have an agenda, in which case you'll find support for it in an old can of Chef Boyardee.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
On the flip side though, all the exta sunshine makes crops grow better so it should make farmers happier!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
like having more sun in the evening to exercise outside after work. Normally its still dark. I like the change.
Nobody was 100% sure if it would save energy or not, so it was a good idea to try it and find out. At least we know now and nobody should push to adjust it again in the future. Sure, it may have caused some IT workers to spend some extra time on the job, but the hourly ones should appreciate that and perhaps the salaried ones got a little bonus or pat on the back. Other than that, it's really no harm done.
It's nice to see the government try something in an effort to help solve energy issues. Hopefully they'll continue that without all the bipartisan bickering (yeah right).
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
You know, there isn't really any increase in the total daylight per day. But if the change in schedule works for you anyway, that's great. I find such forced change annoying and patronizing.
Actually, I think the problem is numerically bigger than what the 1-hour change tries to correct. It's more like 4 hours, considering a night's sleep from midnight to 8 am. So to maximize daylight during waking hours, you'd have to change the physical midnight to be about 4 am. Wouldn't that be great?
What I'm trying to say is that most humans have a very asymmetric schedule compared to physical hours of light and dark. If you try to force people out of the asymmetry, they will eventually drift back into a new kind of asymmetry. I also like it when the time on a clock bears some vague resemblance to physical events like midnight.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I'm glad the government waisted my time. I got to spend more time at work prior to March 17 applying patches on servers, etc. Thank you, US government, I was so bored at work with nothing else to do prior to the new DST and to hear that is was a waste, really makes me feel good, especially about you. :-)
The two extra minutes of daylight you had on March 11th were due to the Earth's orbit around the sun, not because Congress monkeyed with Daylight Saving Time.
Short days that get dark early are depressing. The early change made a big difference for me and I could not care less if it did not save any power.
-sirket
If I had mod points, I'd mod Informative!!
Seriously, this "useful" change was nothing but a waste of time, AND clocks. All those clocks/devices that automatically change according to the standardized time? Useless. Software patches? Quite impossible for most.
Looks like the waste management facilities will see a rise in borked electronics because of this - and that does precisely 0 for the environment, too.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
In fact, I fucking hate it. The sun is trying to kill me, and giving it any more opportunities to do that doesn't make me any happier.
It has been known for decades that gasoline consumption, in particular increases, with DST, and that commerce in general benefits from DST. The energy savings argument has always been, when considered across the entire spectrum of energy consumption, quite obviously spurious.
I work for a K-12 school district in California and this year, we probably used MORE energy turning on all the computers early to patch them before the staff came in. If there are ANY benefits to be seen, it's highly unlikely to see them in the first year of a transition. Lets see how things turn out next year...eh, who am I fooling :P
Power Savings Activated........disabling spel check
c:/>_
Congress was told that it helps to sell BBQs and golf games.
s /stories/2007/03/14/0314RKGcolumn.html: www.dailyadvance.com/featr/content/features/storie s/2007/03/14/0314RKGcolumn.html+DST+golf+congress& hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=ca
http://www.dailyadvance.com/featr/content/feature
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:uDWErfqM5nAJ
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
I used my saved energy as a carbon offset to burn additional energy.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
"exercise outside"
Wrong web site...
We're struggling with sun glare on the screen while firing up Counter Strike...
Sleep is for the Weak
It's like getting an extra hour in my evening. Especially when the weather warms up and it's nice outside. I can do more after work thanks to the longer daylight.
Plus, I'll be interested to see if the claim of fewer children getting hit by cars in Halloweeen holds up -- now that DST ends after Halloween and not before.
Not for those of us who have visual overstimulation induced migraines. This just means that they've stolen several hours of my precious DARKNESS in return for no monetary advantage.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
This is why Arizona doesn't participate in this stupidity.
Extra daylight in the FRIGGING DESERT is NOT helpful. People don't come out until after 7pm even in normal time. Want the cafes and outdoor busineses to stay closed until 1030pm, or do you want them to waste more water with those evaporative coolers (garden misters) trying to keep the locals from passing out outdoors? Until nightfall they're all sucking every last watt out of their homes barricaded inside on air-conditioned life-support! Cool evenings save energy. The sooner it arrives the better, and less energy and water is used as a result. And don't get me started on heat islands!
It's not 59-90f degrees everywhere in the USA ya know.
The time change did not affect the amount of daylight, or the number of hours over which that daylight was distributed.
/. But that's hardly surprising, now is it?
Apparently, it all had no effect on the level of pedantism present on
keeping everyone around on the weekends and evenings to fix all the 2007 DST issues.
Ya, and throwing pancakes and syrup across your borders will do what exactly?
Now excuse me while I go roll with laughter at the idea of the invasion of the flappy heads.
OSHA lead paint investigations saved no children. Used clothes donations saved no poor people in Africa. Ethanol saved no gasoline dependence. 401k saved no declining prospects for retirement. Increased polls saved no political degeneracy. Parent advocacies saved no teenage promiscuity. 24-hour Fitness saved no unrestricted appetite for beer, pizza, and chocolate.
Don't expect the society to heal individual ills.
3) Congress wasted time on this bill that could have been spent getting something important done, such as finally hammering out a definate government policy on Stem Cell research, abortions, or actually making a true impact on the energy issue we face.
See, that's the glass-half-empty talking. Just look on the bright side: When they were wasting their time turning out this ridiculous waste of time and paper, it meant that they weren't really screwing anything else up!
Please, Congress, do us all a favor: spend your time on things like creating new "National $FOO Week"s. What -- there aren't any free weeks left? Okay, I've got one: why don't you guys try to fix the date of Easter? I'm sure that won't take you too long.
The more idiotic, banal stuff that I know the Congresscritters are doing, the better it makes me feel, because at least I know they're staying out of trouble. It's when they go quiet for a while that I start to worry. The further away they stay from the "real issues," the happier I am. As absolutely fucked as the system we have is, don't you even think for a moment that with hard work and diligence, they couldn't make it at least ten times worse.
Congratulations, Congress, on your brilliant plan. By all means, keep up the great work.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Because the dems are the reason Iraq is going to hell and relations with Iran are declining rapidly, thus creating market instability, all while we're entering peak fuel consumption season?
What amazes me about the whole thing is that nobody bothered to look back to 1973 when Nixon did essentially the same thing. No energy was saved then, either.
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
I don't see how this is saying Bush sucks. It blamed congress for the change in Daylight savings time, and last I checked, congress is run by the Democrats.
No wonder the rest of the world hates you. Try considering a country other than your own for a change.
BTW, the pancakes and maple syrup will be blasted at you from the Chicken Cannon. After that we will taunt you. Then the guy with a C-8 sitting a thousand yards from you will put a hole in your head. Just because we won't win doesn't mean I won't take as many of you fuckers with me as I can.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
*I* could have told them it didn't save energy. I felt much more tired after the time change. :-P
I'm a lobbyist with the North American Automatically Time Changing Clock, Watch and Timepiece Manufacturers Association and we paid good money to have this bill passed so that we can sell more automatically changing clocks, watches and timepieces.
Record profits this year, my friend, record profits. You should have invested in manufacturers of automatically changing clocks, watches and timepieces.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Instead of just letting the bill expire, I propose changing to another set of dates for the spring and fall DST changes. Let's see, the spring DST change would occur on the third Tuesday after the second full moon of the year. The fall DST change would occur two weeks and three days after peak fall foliage occurs in northern Vermont.
That most of us could have told George W. Bush that adjusting daylight savings time would not solve the energy problem or result in any savings and this should come as no surprise. I believe many of us saw right through this. After all, there are still twenty four hours in a day and by making it darker in the morning, you need more light to get ready so any savings are automatically offset. Rather than saving energy, energy usage patterns simply shifted. You want to talk energy savings, let's look at lessening greenhouse gases to keep our summers cooler so we don't have to run our air conditioners at peak load. Let's look at the promotion of more energy efficient building materials. I could go on and on. Instead of bull shitting around the issue, let's tackle it head on.
If the only way to get a farmer up at 4am is to tell him is 5am, then he's beyond the help of the Congress. Especially a Congress that calculates that businesses having more daylight requiring an additional hour of running central air conditioning is saving energy! Unbelievabla!!
At least, if the law expires, my digital devices that "know" that DST is first Sunday of April to last Sunday of October will function correctly again.
"Do something!" (Col. Sanders on the intercom)
Whether it saved any energy or not, That's six more weeks in the year when it will be light out when I (and a lot of the rest of you) go home from work.
:)
IMO, that alone makes it a win and makes it worth the patching efforts.
And maybe, just maybe, it will teach people to not hardcode values like the start and end of DST, so that patches aren't required
The time change did not affect the amount of daylight, or the number of hours over which that daylight was distributed.
Check out the brain on Brad. OMG I THOUGHT CHANGING MY CLOCK TIME ACTUALLY ALTERED THE TILT OF THE EARTH!!1!!!111! Thank you DragonWriter!
Extra daylight in the FRIGGING DESERT is NOT helpful.
Hmmm....
People don't come out until after 7pm even in normal time. Want the cafes and outdoor busineses to stay closed until 1030pm, or do you want them to waste more water with those evaporative coolers (garden misters) trying to keep the locals from passing out outdoors? Until nightfall they're all sucking every last watt out of their homes barricaded inside on air-conditioned life-support!
Hmmm....
Cool evenings save energy. The sooner it arrives the better, and less energy and water is used as a result. And don't get me started on heat islands!
Hmmm....
It's not 59-90f degrees everywhere in the USA ya know.
Hmmm.... In that situation, I would reconsider my choice to live in an area that would be affected by global temperature increases. Oh, wait....
All these people who say "stay on DST all year round" must not have to get up early in the morning. Dark at 6:00 am sucks much more than dark at 6:00 pm. It makes it very difficult to get out of bed.
I think all of us can agree that in a perfect world, the rest of the goofballs out there would pay as much attention to this as we Slashdot readers have. I turn my lights on when I need to see in the dark. I go to my appointments on time, no matter what numbers the government or anyone else tells me that time is called. Also, what is the deal with time zones? I think this is the same issue. I feel the same when I wake up at 8am eastern time as when I wake up at 5am pacific time. Seriously, this is all stupid and old fashioned. I suggest that anyone who cares about this start using GMT exclusively in their dealings, especially if those dealings are as meaningless as mine.
For me this meant that the "part-peak" tariff ran from 6pm to 9pm, instead of from 5pm to 8pm for the past three weeks. This cost me two ways:
1) Electricity generated by my solar PV system between 5pm and 6pm spun the meter backwards counting off-peak kWh instead of part-peak kWh.
2) I use very little power from 5pm to 6pm (I'm generally not home from work), I definitely use more from 8pm to 9pm (I'm home, and it is dark so I have lights on). So moving the part-peak time an hour later meant that I bought more of the higher priced power than the cheaper off-peak power.
-Tony
Back in the day, when people's interactions were mostly local, time zones might have been harmless. But now, a large part of our population interacts across time zones every day. They're just a PITA -- time is an arbitrary number anyway, so who cares if the clock says 6pm or 6am when you wake up?
It would take a little getting used to, but I bet everyone would adjust quickly and never go back. Imagine having every computer (and every log, timestamp, calendar, etc.) in the world on GMT. Imagine scheduling conference calls and not having someone confuse which time zone it was scheduled for.
I live far north and to the western edge of a time zone. I just wish that extra daylight didn't come at the expense of driving to work in the dark at 8:00 AM.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
What if we just gave up standard time? Everyone likes the light. Few like the clock change hassle. Let's just stay in DST.
If you life depends on the sun, get up earlier.
The government's laws should be about encouraging businesses to set working hours to match the sun, not changing fundamental measurement systems to trick people into getting up earlier.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
tell me again why you don't write a patch that makes it trivially easy to incorporate changes in local zone time?
Companies used to mostly work 9-5 (or 8-5).
Now, our company works from 7am to 7pm (9 hour shifts w/ hour lunches).
Basically, if you get up early, you take a 7am shift- if you get up late, you take a 10am shift.
I don't see why they can't leave the clocks alone and places will just shift their hours if it matters.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Yes, because of the tens of millions of wokers in the US, all of them get to arbitrarily decide their schedules. Likewise schools arbitrarily let students come in whenever they want.
Besides which, how does a one hour naming shift "screw up" your schedule? I don't get that either. It's over in one day...
I dunno about your XBox, but my Wii consumes 1.3 Watts when in standby, provided that WiiConnect24 is disabled. It consumes about 10 Watts in standby with WiiConnect24. That was sufficient different to disable the feature. Though I still leave it plugged in when not in use.
Yes, I have one of those home power consumption monitors. All my home electricity is already from wind/solar, so I'm more concerned with saving money than saving the planet.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
In a networked, computerized world where accurate, continuous time- and record-keeping is of the essence, it has become one of the worst ideas ever to mess around with the clocks twice a year (in particular now that everyone has about a dozen of them in various devices), at different dates and points in time all around the globe. High time indeed, literally, to put an end to this tremendous waste of resources (and everyone's time) that is Daylight Saving Time.
The purpose of Government is to hire Government Employees.
Everything else is secondary.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
This goes to prove man is causing global warming. All congress has to do is eliminate daylight savings and we can get back to scaring everyone with global cooling.
1011 1010 1101 1100 0000 1111 1111 1110 1110
First off, not all AZ is wicked hot. However, when I lived in Glendale, the heat was exactly what I enjoyed. Now I'm living in the frigid land of the north where in the winter they go off DST and no one goes out doors because it's so cold and the sun ain't shining no more. After nightfall they're all sucking every last watt out of their homes barricaded inside a heated life-support. Warm evenings save energy.
It's not 50-60f degrees everywhere in the USA during Winter ya know.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
STANDARDTIME.COM SAYS: If we are saving energy let's go year round with Daylight Savings Time. If we are not saving energy let's drop Daylight Savings Time!
Enough of this daylight time, reset-the-clocks insanity. Just stop the madness.
Do you people have any clue what the concept of "noon" is supposed to be? In case you've forgotten, it's supposed to be the time of day when the sun is highest in the sky. It's supposed to be the time when there is as much daylight behind us as is in front of us.
For practical purposes, this isn't exact, but we've done a pretty good job with splitting the world up into 24 time zones so that it's somewhat close.
But not any more! No, now noon is just some arbitrary point during the day when we find it convenient to be. We want more time at the end of the day, so let's just move noon an hour ahead, right?
WRONG! I have a better idea. Instead of dinking around with clocks and redefining what something means that has been around since the beginning of recorded time, why don't we just have businesses shift their hours around?
Imagine how nice this would be. We never change our clocks. Twice a year, government changes its hours. The Post Office, for example, doesn't open at 8:00am during the summer, it opens at 7:00am, and it closes an hour earlier, too. Businesses that choose to do so follow suit and make sure its employees know when to show up. I suspect that almost all of them would, and probably most companies would have a policy that says something like, "When the government shifts its hours, we're shifting ours also."
Everyone's happy. People get their extra hour at the end of the day. No one has to write stupid software patches to account for when DST is. Atlanta, Georgia is always GMT-5, never GMT-4 like it is now. People don't think Arizonans are weird because half the year they're on Mountain time and half the year they're on Pacific. If government wants to change its hours a few weeks earlier next year, there's no issue at all, they can just announce it a few months in advance, and when the time comes, do it.
I'm sorry, but people who think that DST is a good thing are idiots. If you want to change your schedule, change your schedule. But leave my freakin' clock alone.
Hey, I don't want to be a douche here but your problem is not with Daylight savings. Your problem is with communication. And yes, sometimes a lack of communcation can be expensive.
:)
You aren't, by chance, in IT consulting are you?
Everybody knows that this was an unusually bright winter. I wonder why you never hear about the problem with Global Brightening?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Many towns don't even allow that now. They have curfews imposed to keep kids in after it's dark. I agree with you, it defeats the whole purpose of Halloween. But since when has "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!" logic ever been rational?
My UID is the product of 2 primes.
You know, if the frikken government would spend as much of their own energy and time telling people to NOT move to the stinkin' desert as they did messing with people's clocks, then we'd save huge amounts of electricity and water.
I'm a native of Arizona and have lived here over 50 years. I'm used to the heat but people who move here from somewhere else aren't. Their A/C units get set to 70 degrees, pools get filled daily and flushed every couple months to remove the salt accumulation caused by evaporation.
There are areas that are hospitable for humans to live that require very little additional heating or cooling but the desert isn't it. Trying to change their environment to allow them to be comfortable is stupid. If they can't stand the heat then stay out of the desert.
Sorry for the rant but it's a "hot" button for me.
Yes lots of systems were patched, many more devices could not be patched. If we are going to make a change then we should abolish DST altogether. Oh my, the sun sets and rises at different times during different seasons. Man could never cope without changing the clocks to a false time that feels a little better! If we aren't doing that, then it would make sense to change it back. All the systems that could be patched before can be patched back and the devices that could not be patched will be correct again.
Had to spend three weeks resetting the Time on my WinXP box - which would "reset" itself to the "correct" (incorrect) time every time Windows updated something - causing me to leave an hour late a few nites during that time.
Good thing I had some large manual clocks to rely on.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That's right. The Sun burned up just as much fuel after daylight savings was introduced as it did before. Lawmakers are baffled.
At least I do not have to apply the DST changes on 5 different java versions from different vendors to all those hundreds of Unix machines :)
....
... at least the patches are done :) IT made money on giving support on that. The world did not become a better place, but IT had $$ for a few extra beers ...
I read somewhere, that the idea was based on a 30 year old study, which based evening and morning household use on toasters and TVs, and other appliances, that have little to do with today's machines' consumption, and I am sure it did not calculate with 1-2 pcs and 2-5 chargers on every desk at the workplace.
Most importantly they did not look at the fact how lighting changed and how many companies use nowadays motion sensors and fluorescent lighting, and build with more glass, that reduces ligh use even at darker hours
but hey
It would be better to switch back. Why? Because there are unfixed errors in a lot of software that are still causing problems. For the fixed bugs, well, those can be "unfixed" if they were fixed in the first place. It isn't too late to switch back.
My company, however, has over 350,000 employees world-wide. I hate to sound cliche, but your business needs to embrace IT infrastructure as an asset, not an expense! Unfortunately, I have no advice on how to convince them of this idea.
Blar.
"Congress passes law that claims to do something, but not only doesn't do what it sets out to do, it actually makes things worse."
Hmm...War on Drugs, minimum wage, DST change, need I go on?
I'd wager hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on patching computers and fixing code. So Fing stupid.
Yeah, the widening of the DST period at its other endpoint, in October, was only done to make daylight trick-or-treating possible. Search the congressional record for it. They changed it by one week just to get Halloween in there. American candy makers had been lobbying for the change for decades.
So stupid. I was never molested when trick-or-treating as a child because the predators couldn't see me in the dark.
I don't [like the extra daylight]. In fact, I fucking hate it. The sun is trying to kill me, and giving it any more opportunities to do that doesn't make me any happier.
I'm with you.
In the summer we already have extra sunlight. Why try to "save" more? What we're short of is night time - sunless recreation time. That puts a crimp on "night people" like me, and "daylight savings time" steals ANOTHER hour of the scarce resource.
It seems to me that the institution of permanent DST was the major factor in the demise of the drive in theaters, just for starters. (But DST is really handy for crooks because it results in far fewer people being alert when many of them ply their trades.)
So IMHO what we need to do is turn the clocks BACK during the summer, to get access to more of the scarce and valuable dark hours.
I call it "Nightlife Savings Time".
= = = =
Take Back the Night!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That's six more weeks in the year when it will be light out when I (and a lot of the rest of you) go home from work.
On the flip side, however, it means that there's six more weeks in the year when it is still dark when we go to work... the other side of the coin.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
...shit man, everything is about fear these days. Fear sells and we're all buying. Why do you think the gun people always use the protection aspect to sell their position? Not everyone enjoys firing a weapon for the sake of the skill, but everyone would like to feel a little more secure.
Blar.
I'm going to play devils advocate and ask some questions.. In this article did he quote any sources that can be verified? Why did he quote only 2 energy companies that said it had no impact. Are they the know-it-all's on the subject? Why does he quote the same references his own article references ? What was the impact? Is he saying there is absolutly no measureable impact? He says the DOE doesn't think it will make an impact. Is he referencing this article? http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/news_detail.cf m/news_id=10625
I'm not saying he is incorrect, I just think his article is very poorly researched.. ..just my 2 cents
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
Most people do have a very assymetrical schedule. My analysis is that most people don't want to get up before sunrise, even during most of the winter, but are happy to stay up after dark. Given that, the midnight-8 sleep schedule makes sense in the winter; but then people pin it to the clock, and don't adjust it in the summer when dawn comes earlier. So in that context, a seasonal adjustment of the clock, such as DST, makes sense.
Most people can't set their own hour independently of the rest of society due to jobs, etc. To make a seasonal adjustment in a sychronized manner, it's going to be forced. Though, actually, if you can set your schedule seperately from others, it's not forced; just get up the same time you always did (by the sun), and reserve DST adjustment for comunicating with others.
"I also like it when the time on a clock bears some vague resemblance to physical events like midnight."
I agree on some aesthetic level, but I don't see a practical benefit. I set my clock based on my time zone, not strick astonomy, in any case.
And if they factor in the time spent by coders (which turns into money for companies) I bet you we're in the red because of the change.
Good grief.
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
You have to measure the savings by looking at the sales of candles, the same way Ben Franklin did.
After all, if it was good enough for the Founding Fathers it's good enough for patriotic Americans, eh? Anybody that says otherwise is clearly a liberal who is soft on terrorism and hates America.
The time change did not affect the amount of daylight, or the number of hours over which that daylight was distributed.
/. (and esp. this article) are probably Americans. Also remember from a recent /. article, that 48% of Americans believe that Evolution is not only false, but not widely accepted by scientists. When you're dealing with a large population of people who literally believe the earth is 6,000 years old, it shouldn't be far-fetched that many them also might believe that changing their clocks' settings actually changes the total amount of daytime in a day.
Check out the brain on Brad. OMG I THOUGHT CHANGING MY CLOCK TIME ACTUALLY ALTERED THE TILT OF THE EARTH!!1!!!111! Thank you DragonWriter!
Brad's post was quite relevant and necessary, as silly and obvious as it may seem to some people here.
Remember, this DST change was done in the USA, and most of the readers here on
I didn't think it would change useage right now. But what about during the summer months. I have always thought that people getting home during the hotter part of the day would lead to increased useage from AC units. I have yet to see a study that used real world information to prove or dis-prove energy savings for Daylight Savings Time.
I wonder how much energy was consumed coming up with stupid bills like these and the war we have going on in the Middle East. I'm sure that energy could be used elsewhere...
"Oh, and if you're wondering why some of your colleagues showed up late for work yesterday, it's because many devices-even patched devices-shifted an hour ahead Sunday, when the change would have normally taken place."
That's what happened where I work, the systems were patched for the time change on the new date, things were going smoothly but then the time changed again on the usual date and then everything was an hour ahead, it was patched for that!
As for the saved power, I don't know but it cost a lot of sweat an aggravation where I work. People here, South Eastern Canada, did seem to like the change of having more light in the evening when they got off work.
There are areas that are hospitable for humans to live that require very little additional heating or cooling but the desert isn't it. Trying to change their environment to allow them to be comfortable is stupid. If they can't stand the heat then stay out of the desert.
You talk about this like there's a lot of better places to live. There aren't. Every place is a compromise in some way.
If you want truly good weather, there's only one place in the USA that really fits the bill: southern California. It's mild all year long, and doesn't rain much. Never too hot, never too cold. Only a few problems: 1) LA is already there, and it's a polluted, crime-infested hellhole. 2) San Diego is also there, and it's horrendously expensive. Oh I forgot, these places have huge earthquakes once in a while.
Every place else has major problems. Places like North Dakota are simply far too cold; people freeze to death and aren't found until the snow thaws every year. The northeast is cold as well, and has a lot of storms. The southeast is too hot and humid, and has horrific hurricanes on a regular basis. The midwest (Iowa, etc.) has huge tornados, plus there's no employers there and it's mostly used for farming (remember, only a stupid population uses all their arable land for their cities instead of reserving it for agriculture). Any other seemingly in-between places probably don't have good employers for many professions.
So for all the morons making fun of Arizonans for living in a desert, where exactly do you live that's so perfect? I'm sure I can name several things wrong with it as well. Here, the main problems are excessive summer heat, and a possible water shortage in the near future.
I don't see how this is saying Bush sucks. It blamed congress for the change in Daylight savings time, and last I checked, congress is run by the Democrats.
BZZZZT! You lose. Maybe you should wind back the clock and note who was in control of Congress when this bill was signed. Can you guess which party had control of both the House and the Senate at the time?
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
You're right, August 08, 2005. I had assumed this was some half-assed attempt by the republicans to appease the new Democratic congress. Looks like I was wrong. Now it looks like it was just a half-assed attempt by the republicans to actually save energy.
As an IT worker, my opinion the DST change was poorly brought-about and thought-up. It basically served a political agenda as well as a restricted economical one.
However, as a regular-workday employee (8-4), after getting over the technical headaches and early wake-up time, I quite enjoyed my extra little bit of sunlight after work. Personally, I'd rather that DST gets abolished altogether, the best way to do so being to just leave the damn clock where it is now.
I don't think the majority of the population is quite that stupid. What seems more likely to me is that people don't stop to think about it either way.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Indeed... and most of the framework for implementing such a change is ready-to-go, since a major DST change has already been done once.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Sounds to me that the designers of your clock were about a short-sighted as those who decided that using two digits to define a year was sound implementation.
If you look at the WWVB signal description NIST encodes a DST signal within the time information. Thus, if the clock you own had been designed properly to derive DST from the radio signal, rather than using an internal calendar, it would have changed just fine (provided that it had a good signal at the time).
The clocks that I have that monitor WWVB (i.e. Atomic clocks) changed when they should have.
I despise DST. It's one of the most asinine concepts someone has ever pitched to me. I can't stand the terminology that surrounds discussions of DST, such as "...we have more daylight...". Scientists have proven to me that the amount of daylight in a given period is not affected by the clocks. Clocks are not time machines, they do not alter the space-time continuum. Clocks measure, they don't change it.
If DST is such a great idea, maybe we should start skipping months instead of hours. When Summer arrives, we'll just call it "Fall" to save on air conditioning costs.
Yes, but it will remain that way for largely practical reasons. Having high schools let out earlier than elementary schools means that the older kids will be home to look after their younger siblings. The busing costs for school districts would skyrocket if all school levels ran simultaneously. The bus drivers first take the high school kids, then the middle school kids, then the elementary school kids. A school district would need a whole lot more buses running simultaneously to get everyone aged 5-18 to school at the same time. My high school and elementary/middle schools were actually two different districts, because I went to a regional high school. They had a bus-sharing scheme like this one worked out among all the districts.
As many have said, I like the extra daylight. It would be nice if it saves energy, but the extra daylight is more important to me.
Now if they would only legislate it so the sun didn't set at all.
I do not get this. My wife makes the same sort of comments. I tell her to put the baby to bed at 9pm if it's still too light at 8pm and she says the baby will be cranky because she is staying up too late.
I used to try to explain. Now I just nod.
This DST2007 thing has been a real pain in my ass.
There is a lot of firmware that has not been patched or acknowledged due to low priority.
I have a Linksys wireless router. Due to the difficulty getting kids offline to get ready for bed, I use the scheduler in the router to drop the connection. No nagging, begging for 5 minutes more 30 minutes later, etc.
A week before the time change, I downloaded the latest firmware update and installed it.
The changelog made no mention of the DST change so I checked the router Monday morning. It did not update. I have turned off DST in the router and changed the time zone one zone to the East to put it manualy into Daylight Savings. In the fall, I will have to remember to manualy move it back to the correct time zone.
Un-patching this router is simply a matter of setting the time zone back and turning DST on.
How much un-patched firmware is there?
The truth shall set you free!
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Given all the laws they could have passed, this did some pretty minor damage. I'd rather them waste 6 months of the year debating DST than see what they actually put our for education, helth care, or welfare reforms. With laws, sometimes the only way to win is to not play.
Learn to love Alaska
I'm curious if perhaps the the reason we saw no energy savings, was because of all the extra time, money, and energy used up by the IT departments to either prepair for, or recover from the DST change? In the end, it was really a net-zero change. ;-)
But more seriously, I wonder how much time and money was wasted with patching code and coddling systems, as well as dealing with failed patches? I suspect that's the real waste of energy in this situation.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Personally, all joking aside, I was very happy to get more evening light earlier in the year.
think having to patch computers would ahve any bearing on changing it back? Was it because of the huge 'bearing' it had on the decesion in the first place?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...or "TIMEBLA"...
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
The biggest problem I've had with daylight savings was train scheduling. I used to take the LIRR home when I worked in Manhattan and lived on Long Island. There was a 1:20AM train, a 2:20AM, a 3:50AM, and a 5:20AM train. Daylight savings would always confuse their schedules.
In the spring time, you set your clock ahead. So 1AM jumps to 2AM. So what happens to the 1:20AM train? Now what would make sense, of course, is to just bag the 1:20AM train and run the 2:20AM, 3:50AM, and 5:20AM trains at their normal times. But one year I remember they ran a 2:20AM, 2:50AM, and then the 5:20AM train.
In the fall, you set your clock back. So 2AM jumps back to 1AM. And the whole thing gets very confusing. They won't run two 1:20AM trains. So they run one 1:20AM train but don't run another 1:20AM train. Of course, you never know whether they'll run the 1:20AM EST or the 1:20AM EDT train so there's going to be a two hour delay no matter what.
Usually the LIRR employees didn't know what was going to happen because when I came in, it was a different shift and they weren't going to be affected. Every year they seemed to try one thing or another. So even if, for example, they ran the train at 1:20AM EST last year, you couldn't count it being the same rule the next year. So twice a year, getting home was a real adventure.
Of course, now I'm out in sunny Southern California and I drive everywhere.
You are far too generous. When in doubt, assume stupidity.
No joke -- all of the clean-air legislation has started to clear out decades worth of accumulated crud (aerosols) in the atmosphere. That results in more sunlight hitting the surface and intensifies the greenhouse effect. In fact, air pollution caused by the industrial processes that release greenhouse gases may have been limiting the warming impact of those greenhouse gases for a long time. Now that the air is getting clearer, the impact of those greenhouse gases may be exacerbated. This effect is also regional since different parts of the world have differing clean air standards.
n nEmanuelEos06.pdf
Here's the original article on this subject, from June 2006:
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/Ma
--- JurassicPizza
.
I somehow doubt congress is paying the lest attention to the blood, sweat, and tears of IT teams across the country. Doubless they'll resend it, and we'll have another patch party next year. YEAH!!!! MORE OVER TIME!!!
Hey, wait a minute... I'm on salary... Oh, dirty words, dirty words!!
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
...is the phrase that springs to mind:
But the new DST is probably here to stay -- letting the bill expire would mean re-patching a lot of systems again next year. So much for saving energy.
You got exactly the same amount of light that you would have gotten anyway. You just think there was more because you didn't sleep in as late as you usually would have.
Personally, I think anybody who needs the government to trick them into getting up early is a moron, but morons' opinions may differ...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I never get up when it's dark regardless of DST. As others have suggested, businesses should change their hours of operation so that it's not dark when employees start in the morning, not change all the clocks.
If you have a local magnetic anomility, setting a C-band dish can be difficult as a magnetic compass may get your polar mount off enough to cause tracking problems. A sunny day and knowledge of local noon makes finding true North/South very simple. It's the direction of the shadow of the plumb bob line at local noon.
The truth shall set you free!
Just count your blessings. The GOP has been trying to turn the clocks back to the Dark Ages ever since they gained the majority in Congress.
Have gnu, will travel.
Let me get this straight: you bought a vehicle with a top that could be removed--paid extra money for that feature no less--so that you could put the top up because it was dark?!
"Darn, I can't drive with the top down because it's dark. I mean, I can't very well let all that darkness into my car. It'll ruin the upholstery."
I'm sorry. Please turn in your convertible at the door on the way out.
This summary is extraordinarily inflammatory. It's a very very very sad reflection on the community that an early poster was modded Flamebait for pointing out that "bashing like this summary is just not necessary" and making a South Park reference.
This summary was written by someone with an axe to grind against the new Congress. Probably a Republican, but that doesn't matter. The point is that it's partisan hackery and has no place on Slashdot.
It's also short on facts, since there isn't any way to know if the change caused a decrease in energy consumption or not -- all you can know is whether *MAKING* the DST change made a *NET* decrease in energy consumption. That is, since IT professionals patching systems until 10pm has through leaving operational systems on five hours longer for a week, etc. causes an increase in energy consumption, the net change this year could be significantly less than the overall change. You're not taking into account the overhead.
alternatively...we can just get rid of DST altogether, since it has been shown to not do dick except annoy people and cost companies money in IT time.
Getting rid of it altogether requires far less IT effort than moving it. Most systems can just be configured to run on standard rather than auto-daylight time. The rest you can just strip it out - much easier than putting it in or tweaking it every time the legislature gets another hive of bees in their bonnets.
Staying with DST means a major ongoing hassle for any new scheduling application. Do you have any IDEA what a pain it is to program those with DST changes? *I* do: I had to do it for a client. What do you do with the 25 hour day - especially the hour that happens twice? What do you do with the 23 hour day?
I hear the railroads handle it like this:
- In the spring all the trains are suddenly an hour late, and try to make up the time over the next day.
- In the fall they actually STOP them and let them SIT for an hour.
I hear the worst day for commuter traffic deaths is the first Monday of DST. (It's rush hour with ALL the drivers jet-lagged simultaneously.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Won't someone Do Something(tm)! There Ought to be a Law(tm)! Think of the Children(tm)!"
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of sleeping in too. But the important part of my comment was the "needing the government to trick you" bit, not the "getting up early" bit.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
People who oppose DST don't realize that it's just an attempt to recapture what people used to do automatically: Get up when the sun rises. The greater your latitude, the more variation there is in sunrise times between the solstices. We've settled on an hour as a good compromise that works for most people.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
This bill was as much about making it an hour brighter on Halloween, so that more candy would be sold, than it was about saving power...
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
Don't worry, you're only off by more people than the entire population of, say, Germany...
t ml
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.h
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
... the the US government trying to control our lives and social engineer everything. DST should be totally removed. Hawaii and Arizona don't observe it! I could have told them it would not have saved power. My lights are on in the morning now! Mark my words, one day the US government will fail and I can tell all those dumb ass mother fuckers who think voting democrat or republican REALLY matters that I was right all along.
I am calling DST the Y2K7 Bug.
I got a friend who tried to patch an Exchange Server and had nothing but headaches from trying to patch it. Microsoft made it so complex that it required a small book to read in order to figure out. Simple patches like that should be easier to use and not require reading more than two pages of information.
My Tivo messed up my viewing schedule and it refused to download that 6.2 update and stayed on the 6.1 update.
So who do we send the bill to for all of the lost time and productivity it took to solve this DST/Y2K7 Issue?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
... completely ignoring the "functioning in society" bit.
People who complain about the gubmint are often just complaining about having to deal with other people.
Sure, if I never had to talk to anyone or do anything, I'd get up at dawn and go to bed at sunset too.
But I'd also be living in a cave, and be dead by now.
They already knew this, i just havnt figured out the angle of why they *really* pushed this garbage on is.
Especially for those of us who didn't bother with it at all, until recentlty.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Animals dont care either, they still get up when the sun rises...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's about getting peoples buy more stuff in stores. You get off your work earlier where there's still sun shining. So what do you do? You go somewhere. Shopping, restaurant, etc. That's what DST is really for.
I calculate my entire schedule in seconds-since-midnight-UTC-january 1st, 1970
It took a little while to get the hang of it, but I'm glad to report; DST schemes have NO effect on it.
While the rest of the world carry on debates about what to call this or that moment, time_t marches on...
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Yeah, the democrates have been in office for 4 months and just look at Iraq! republuicans never would have let that happen.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I couldn't handle reading 300 posts, but I did search the whole topic for the word "peak" and nobody at 2+ used it. So here it is: we had a local news article in Calgary about the lack of change in TOTAL consumption,( just as many lights on in the AM as off in PM) but that it was good because it shaved the PEAK CONSUMPTION.
People use the most energy right after they get home from work, basically; TV, computers (like me right now), cooking and other household operations.
Removing added lighting needs AT THAT TIME reduces the maximum generating capacity you need available to meet the peak demand. Which means they build a new power plant for your area in 2014 instead of 2012, or whatever. The time-cost of money means real savings on your power bill - even at constant total kWh consumed.
Because it took more than 1 hour per computer you had to manually patch or mess with in order to correct the time issues, and thus.... no less energy consumed. I can't believe we still are using something as dumb as changing the hour on the clocks to try and conserve energy.
Relocating to San Francisco / Palo Alto... Hire me?
what about the extra hour of daylight??? Congress said they were making more daylight...the energy companies are just wrong.
Yea, I'm pretty sure all the fixes setup a system where DST can be easily set from the NTP connection. So changing DST every year won't be a problem for the devices that are properly programmed (my sanity on the other hand..)
Actually, it saved the supposed power of the do nothing on energy Republican Congress. Even though I'm a Democrat, I doubt the current Congress will do any better.
So what if you're calling Sven at 3:30 on Bob-gives-a-fuck-what-day?
You still need some way of knowing if he's likely in bed, at work, or the pub.
That is, you need to know the *local(~solar)time*
Were that I say, pancakes?
Or maybe it is more about useful hours of daylight after work. I don't care if it is dark when i getup as I will turn on the same amount of lights regardless. My bathroom gets no useful daylight so I need it on. My closet is dark regardless of the time of day. Regardless of when the sunsets, I get off work at 5, in part because I need to be at work for or clients. It takes the governmetn to give me an extra hour of daylight after work when it is useable.
Personally, I'd be happiest of they never changed the clocks.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
I don't mind that...
Ah, but I need the government to trick my boss into thinking the time for me to come in to work has changed. That's how I get my extra daylight. :)
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
The GP wasn't talking about all businesses changing their clocks. Changing clocks does make these things hard to manage. Take DST for example. It changes from time to time, requiring software patches. Doing international business becomes more difficult when one has to keep track of arbitrary timezone changes around the world.
You seem to be stuck on the concept that the time of day is purely a reflection of your working hours. Are you really stupid, or do you think the world revolves around you? Your definition of noon stems from where people pretty much live in office hives with no connection with the natural world or of any reality outside economics.
In other words, it's 'quaint'
Again the GP suggested changing business hours, as "open from 8:00 to 5:30", not clocks.
I don't therefore I'm not.
The rest of the world should follow Arizona's example. Don't touch your clocks. I grew up here in AZ, and for the life of me I can't understand why people want to mess with their clocks. If you want more daylight, get up earlier, or stay up later, whatever floats your boat. I'm usually a fan of the Founding Fathers, but Ben Franklin was off his rocker when he dreamed this one up.
It makes sense because business knows how far apart in time any two locations are. Vancouver to New York is 3 hours apart. Montreal to Chicago is 1 hour apart. Halifax to Seattle is 4 hours apart. Once you know the time differences, you can cope with them.
But, if Canada didn't change with the States for DST, then for three weeks in the spring (and, what, 3 weeks in the fall?) that difference in time would be changed. For three weeks, the difference between the Eastern Time Zone in Canada and the Pacific Time Zone in the USA would be FOUR hours instead of the normal three hours. The confusion during this time would have been tremendous.
Think particularly of the manufacturing sector and "just in time" deliveries that include a border crossing. For three weeks, it's one o'clock in Detroit and noon in Sarnia. It's 5:00pm in Niagara Falls, ON and 6:00pm in Niagara Falls, NY!
No, we had no choice in the matter. It sucks, but it would have sucked harder to not have followed.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
Actually, since the whole DST thing has just been proven to be pointless, the most logical thing would be to eliminate it altogether. That way, both patched and unpatched systems would not need to be changed.
One more argument for EVERYBODY the world over to move to UTC.
Yes, you'd have to figure out when you eat and go to sleep and it would be different depending on where you were in the world. Once you figured it out it would not be that bad.
People would bitch and moan, but they would get over it.
Instead we play goofy games with clocks to "fool" people.
In a world with UDT if a biz wants to stay open longer. Guess what? They would SHIFT THEIR HOURS!
Gentlemen! Gentlemen!
We've gotta protect our phonybaloney jobs! Something must be done immediately! Immediately!
Rather than bother with the patch, we simply took this opportunity as a sign that we ought to change our system clocks to GMT. Many benefits:
:P But Congress works in mysteerious ways... (we have to try to assume, because admitting they're dumb just sucks for everyone :P )
* Systems that dual-boot windows and linux no longer make oopses with DST transitions
* our company does more and more projects across different timezones across the country and internationally, and it gets real confusing real fast to have everything in Eastern, Pacific, Arizona (they don't observe DST), Melbourne, and the UK.
* we're an aviation company, so most of us are already used to it
* most of our computers are on closed networks anyway
So Congress is really doing us a favor by driving us towards a global economy with a common accessible timebase already established for maritime and aviation uses. Even if that's not what they intended
I thougth that this DST change was to get people "outside" enjoying the sun for a few more weeks a year, thereby spending more money for outdoor sports equipment.
Something that may be of interest: In Sydney last weekend we all turned our lights out for an hour... check out http://earthhour.smh.com.au/index.php?option=com_c ontent&task=view&id=59 for the stats.
According to Energy Australia, for the hour between 7.30pm and 8.30pm on 31 March 2007, there was a 10.2% reduction in electricity consumption across the Sydney CBD. This is calculated as follows: Sydney CBD temperature during Earth Hour was 19.8c. Typical energy consumption at this temperature between 7.30 and 8.30 is 228,180 KWh. Actual electricity consumption in the Sydney CBD at this time was 204,900 KWh. Energy Australia analysed data over 4 years to get the typical consumption on a Saturday night in the CBD during March and April. This takes into account daylight savings and weather.
http://earthhour.smh.com.au/ for more info.
After adjusting for the time of year, depending on how accurate you want to be (+-3deg)
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
Sorry to hear about your bad luck. I bought two of those "Atomic clocks" that recieve the atomic time signal from the southern US. Both of them changed time correctly. I was amazed! Next time get one of those, they rock!
I demand that every of member of Congress who voted for this idiotic bill hand in their resignation or hand over their heads.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
This new DST change is quite annoying. I have some clock devices in my house that cannot be updated. They have hard coded points at which they adjust for DST, my clock radio for instance. So heres what happens, DST arrives, I have to set it manually, old DST arrives, I set it manually again (after forgeting) old DST ends adjust manually again, new DST ends, yup another adjustment... What a fucking pain in the ass. Can I get the government to buy me a new clock radio?
Just out of curiosity, was the 3 week difference taken into account ?
It would be kinda funny if the savings was 3 weeks worth of power & nobody caught it because of a bug in DST on computers.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
No matter how you look at it there are 24 hours in one day, and during the day people are going to use electricity. Shifting time doesn't change the effects of global warming or manage how companies use electricity. Electricity conservation is manifested in efficiency when low dissipation of power exists.
After adjusting for the time of year, depending on how accurate you want to be (+-3deg)
Please tell me about the +-3 degrees where local noon is not the halfway time between local sunrise and local sunset.
If you use an atomic clock, I am familiar with local noon drift against UTC due to our eliptical orbit, but I thought local sunrise and sunset varied in sync with local noon. If this is not the case, I've been doing it wrong and not noticing.
The truth shall set you free!
... There are always 10-20% of people who misunderstood, are naturally disagreeable, are stupid, have some social agenda- who knows, maybe genetically random behavior has a certain reward-That percentage seems really high to me, but I don't see a lot of different walks of life. Anyways, there was a joke to make about that:
The problem with the gene pool is that there's no lifeguard!
Uh, where I came from in a rural area, buses were sent off to different routes, to pick up each family's worth of kids. I had a 45-minute bus ride into school, and about a 30-minute ride home. Everybody got on at the same time, and off at around the same time (the different schools were short distance away). 30 buses made 1 route in the morning and 1 route in the evening. There were 6 buses for kids who had afterschool activities that zigzag'ed across standard routes to drop the kids off in the evening. I think I understand where you're coming from, but that probably only works where students live relatively close to their school. I lived 14 miles away 'as the crow flies', so it wouldn't have worked for us. There'd be more diesel burned just getting on the outer edge to pick up 20 kids than it's worth. JMHO.
Am I the only one that actually *likes* DST? As the antithesis of a morning person, I look forward every year to the one hour jump forward. I actually wish we could have permanent DST - nothing is more depressing than leaving work in the dark at 5pm (little to no natural sunlight for the entire day other than window light) where as I couldn't give a shit about the ride to work. What am I missing?
...it did throw people's focus off the war in Iraq.
www.purevolume.com/martyd
What about the other businesses? Can you start making noise earlier? What about the kids? Do they start school earlier or not?
BTW, International business will always have different local times, no matter if you scrap DST or not. Get used to it. Or use GMT for everything.
I would say that people's measurement of time should revolve around people. And yes, if a change is advantageous, it can be done.
We live by the clock cause that's the way modern society is structured, not because we're morons in office hives.
If we all lived for the day, and didn't have to-do piles and schedules and meetings and working hours, if we were woken by roosters and sunbeams, then maybe we wouldn't need DST.
But if you so much as use an alarm clock, you've already subordinated yourself to the mass of modern society.
Before we had DST, people noticed that a lot of time was wasted. When it was introduced, people became more productive. You can see the positive effect DST has on the job market every year.
You're not going to change human habits and laziness, but by simply changing the clock twice a year you have a huge benefit to society.
Because my computer updated, and my school didn't care.
I'm sure this is not uncommon around the world.
P.S. Fuck you MS and Ubuntu and Fuck you America...
That is all.
Well, now that the deed is done, let me be the first (or 12th, or whatever) to say: who cares? I'm personally quite pleased with the results of DLS: it's made the usable time in the day perceiveably longer, at least in the evening. This is really nice, since it's the time of the year when it's just starting to get nice outdoors again, and I can go do things!
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The problem is that changing the working hours for one business has knock-on effects. If I start work an hour earlier, I may find that now I start work before my kids go to school in the morning. I may find that the shop where I buy my morning milk and newspaper hasn't opened yet. I may be unable to do any work for the first hour of the day because my suppliers/customers haven't started work yet.
While I'll readily agree that daylight savings time is a hack, it is quite effective in getting most of the population to operate an hour earlier at the same time, thus giving people that extra hour of daylight after work while ensuring that everyone else is operating on the same relative schedule.
I'd be happy though if we just did away with timezones completely. The numbering of the hours of the day is completely arbitrary anyway, so why can't people in LA just get up at 14:00 and start work at 16:00? Even if this was done exclusively in the US it'd avoid the need for multi-timezone TV networks to advertise their show start times as "8/10c".
The earth is indeed split into 24 lunes, which all have hour boundaries, however there are 39 timezones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_zones
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
I live in Indiana, and until recently we had no DST; by and large, people agreed with your opinion. (They probably still do.) We only went on DST because it was one excuse that businesses would list as a difficulty in expanding/moving to here. (Oddly, no one seems to worry about this with Hawaii and Arizona, but then Indiana doesn't have that "corporate junket" quality that those two states do.) The argument came down to this: the only way that DST makes sense is if everyone else is doing it, and unfortunately, that is the world in which we live.
When I worked at NASA a few years ago, I mentioned one day that in Indiana, we didn't observe Daylight Savings Time. I got incredulous looks and the standard question: Why on earth do you guys not do Daylight Savings Time? To which I replied: Why do you guys observe it in the first place? I got blank stares and replies of "Duuuuuuuuuuuuuh....." And this, mind you, was at NASA, where we dealt with issues about time observance and measurement as a matter of course.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
In this case, the Lobbyist's (retail industry from what I understand) courted both sides of the aisle and it was not as divisive an issue as IRAQ, Abortion, HealthCare, etc. To boot, it allows them to use the word 'Bipartisan' some more (e.g. "We passed a bipartisan bill intended (as far as you all know) to save energy, but we're having trouble coming up with any statistics to validate that").
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
is because of the barbeque lobby. Their line of reasoning is that if it's dark when people come home, they won't grill their food outside, but if it's light out they will.
It is estimated that it cost US businesses about a Billion dollars to implement this DST change. If congress would have instead mandated a billion dollars worth of conservation efforts (such as more energy efficient lighting, better building insulation, etc.,) it would have saved 10 times the energy that the bill was supposed to save as conservation helps ALL the time, not just for an hour a day, 3 weeks of the year. It really doesn't take a whole lot of intelligence to figure this one out...
I don't agree, I like getting to sleep in when ever I travel west :)
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
You are truly wise in the way of the husband.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
They said "Vote for us and we'll lower gas prices" And the sheeple fell for it. QED
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Let's think about this. It resulted in no actual, meaningful decrease in energy use. It pissed off absolutely everyone in the country with any kind of electronic device that keeps time. And if you have an 'old' electronic device (Palm 3 among scads of others in my case) there was no patch or update for you anyway. Then factor all the people in who didn't patch because they're Joe User consumer types and don't know how or care. Then factor in all those poor slobs running Win2k server who had to pay however many thousands of dollars for the patch, but couldn't justify the expense.
This is a simple matter of Congress' petty ego, and now it's obvious to the whole word. "Well, we had to begrudgingly admit that we really were wrong, just playing bullshit feel-good politics and not actually doing any real work, but the Federal government is infallible and therefore we're going to stick our thumbs up our asses and pretend that there's no going back. And as usual you slobs will get the shaft, not us. By the way, re-elect all of us in '08."
Feh.
If you said "I'm going to swing this wrecking ball at the wall you're standing in front of in 2 weeks." then you should reasonably expect me not to be standing in front of said wall when that time comes.
I was able to eliminate any problems like those of the OP by simply sending an email out that reminded everyone of my foreign contacts of the change.
How about one data point at least before we throw our hands into the air? I mean we're not even through the first execution of the new DST yet! Did you forget about Novemeber? I'd be more inclined to bitch and moan after some more data...
I'd just like to say, on behalf of myself and many other Hoosiers, that all that time our state didn't observe DST was really nice. We enjoyed it. Here's to you, Arizona and Hawai'i.
J
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
Someone did think of children - their own. Daylight savings time does not save energy, quite the contrary. One of the largest INCREASES is in gasoline consumption. The reason for the DST extension is simple - increase in shopping - hence those who own businesses & oil make more - and so do their children benefit.
Add to the fray the changing from winter to summer mix (and back at the end of DST) and you have a recipe for charging more for oil. Anyone have gasoline over $3 a gallon where they are right now? And all this BEFORE the Iran conflict with England. The oil companies switch mixtures and "clean" their tanks in the process, every March and every fall. March prices rise through April due to "less supply" but the same demand. The reality is the gasoline goes through at the same rate. It's all supply/demand *on paper.*
September brings Labor Day and "increased travel" for that holiday in the US, but prices CONTINUE to rise after that, due to switching the mix again. Add to that more shopping (more daylight DOES mean more shopping) and lo and behold it's all about the money. What else can we expect from a government that lets the President veto bills from the House and Senate because he wants to keep the Iraq war going, when less than 19% of the US supports the war? Definfitely fed up - but this move is STRICTLY over money.
Congress really didn't spend all that much time on this provision. It was a minor vote to add this to the Energy Bill in a committee. The bill as a whole was then voted on in Congress without much further thought to the DST provision. This whole mess was actually brought about with very little deliberation.
When I submitted the first Slashdot story on the topic, I was hoping that it might elicit some kind of outcry from the community that might have stopped this provision before the Energy bill as a whole got approved. I had way too much faith in this place.
Because we knew about it since 1995 or earlier and had at least five years to fix it. Time enough to make the Y2K changes to make sure everything worked.
How much notice was given on the DST change? Five years or less? I think the former.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
"Ah, but I need the government to trick my boss into thinking the time for me to come in to work has changed. That's how I get my extra daylight. :)"
One man's 'funny' is another man's 'insightful'. Every business I've worked at had its start/end times set to work with the start/end times of the businesses it worked with. You'd think reality would prevent somebody with mod points from +1'ing somebody for loudly proclaiming that DST doesn't actually cause more sunlight to hit this side of the planet.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
That way, we'd accrue the benefits 365.25 days of the year!!!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
You have been using
I want the future where "resurrection" is a medical specialty.
as a tag line. Perhaps you have not read the first chapter of "Distress" by Greg Egan.
He presents a version of resurrection that few of us would wish on ourselves, our friends, or even our enemies.
--
Complex numbers are magical - the real and the imaginary mixed together.
Boy that would make life in the north great! To work at 10:00, home at 2:00. WooHooo, the four hour day. Ok, 9:00 to 3:00 in England, but sounds really good for Finland.
JE
Being an IT worker? Well, patching a whackload of systems/servers with updated DST settings comes to mind. This of course only includes those systems that could be patched, not the ones that had hardwired settings and/or required firmware updates that aren't yet available.
Isnt the whole point of DST to shift our schedules so we have more light after work, once there's enough light in the morning to get the economy started? we certainly dont need sun at 530am (but being in canada we get it even with dst!) when most people are asleep.
So if thats the reasoning, then DST should be formulated on how many daylight hours there are. Assuming symmetry around Dec 21 (rough equinox date, i know if shifts 6-24 hrs around
that), then changing to ST in end of first week of Nov when we have something like 10 hrs of daylight here (Toronto, rough guess), means we should shift to DST at 10hrs of
light/day (at my lattitude) whenever that occurs symmetrically after Dec 21. Nov 6 -> Dec 21 is ~ 45 days, we should therefore change to DST on Dec 21 + 45 days = Feb 6!
(Rough estimate.)
"Change your schedule, not my clock"
Your clock is your clock and you may set it to whatever you like. Your schedule is your schedule and you can keep it however you like.
The people of the United States, through the admittedly imperfect mechanism of collective action we call government, have decided to change the setting on those clocks that belong to us through that government, acording to a scheme we call DST. It is beleived by some that this is the easiest way to effect the seasonal change in scedule you seem to ackowledege is desirable, and particularly the easiest for others who wish coordinate changes to their schedules.
None the less, nobody is touching your freakin' clock. If you have some wacky idea that the time your clock indicates is somehow sacredly ordained, and not merely an artificial construct for convenience in coordinating activities with others, by all means set it to mean solar time for your exact location, or whatever else you like.
Max Littlemore wrote and included with a post:
I often work the grave shift, so although DST doesn't directly affect my workday by the clock (I start and end my workday at the same time). But DST does make sleeping harder since I have even less dark time when DST is in effect.
To me, the solution to the whole DST issue concerning software is to move away from having a central update for all users. Instead, why not have the software designed so that when you boot it up for the first time each year it asks you the day and time that DST starts and ends. This way when DST changes it can be easily handled by software. Since DST has been changed before, it can change again.
On my Palm IIIc, I just turned DST off, changed the time. Now it's like any other clocked device in the house, I have to change it twice a year, no different, no patch needed.
NTP is done via UTC (aka GMT+0), and the device itself calculates the local time from that. UTC sadly won't help the timezone problems...
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
It's the optimist in me. Although now that you bring it up, I'm reminded of the truism that half the population has an IQ under 100. And that's freaking scary.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
I don't see how that helps with what must have been the biggest problem with the DST change: meeting schedules.
Let's say you have a 9 AM meeting every Friday, so you set it up as a recurring meeting. You're in PST8PDT so you set it for that time, which is translated to 1700 GMT. Your scheduling software (still unpatched as of the time you set up the meeting) thinks DST starts April 1, so it adjusts the time, for those occurrences after April 1, to 1600 GMT. But starting in the week of March 11, 1700 GMT is now 10 AM PDT, so when the patch is made, your meeting shows up at 10 AM for three weeks, which is the wrong time.
To make matters worse, by the time you find out, you find that somebody has already nabbed the conference room for that 9 AM slot. Or IT instructs you not to make the change manually, as "we are working on it". The latter happened in my case, and only on March 12 did they find that my system needed Service Pack 2 to recognize the change. I'm still getting annoying messages every time I boot, saying some program was unable to write to address 0, apparently a side effect of the SP2 upgrade.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Sorry.. Obviously this isn't "standard" NTP. But from what I understand many domain solutions now how the main server communicate DST change information..
I've wanted us shifted an hour or two forward year-round for a long time now. It's great to move the sun out of the mornings, when it's just pesky (and helps my preschooler wake up too early) and into the evenings, when I can enjoy it with outdoor activities instead of getting fat in front of my keyboard or TV :)
The local noon drift against UTC was what I was talking about. If you set your
very accurate clock (or even a quartz clock) against local noon in November, it will
not read noon at local noon in February. it will be more than 30 minutes off.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
I hit submit too soon. I also wanted to mention I was talking about mean solar noon.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
The local noon drift against UTC was what I was talking about. If you set your
very accurate clock (or even a quartz clock) against local noon in November, it will
not read noon at local noon in February. it will be more than 30 minutes off.
Thanks, I'm still accurate by using local noon as the time midway between local sunrise and local sunset.
At local noon, the sun shadow is directly on a N/S line.
The truth shall set you free!