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Ask Slashdot: Could We Deal With the End of Time Zones?
First time accepted submitter hairyfish writes "Do we still need time zones? Time zones are a relic of the past, when different parts of the world were isolated, and 12 p.m. was whenever the sun was directly above your specific location. Now, in the Internet age, time is just an arbitrary number, and time zones are just unnecessary complexity. Why can't we scrap time zones altogether, and all just use UTC across the board? So here on the eastern seaboard of Australia, lunchtime will now be at 2 a.m., In New York it will be 4 p.m., and in Moscow it will be 8 a.m. There'll be some pain with the initial changeover, but from then on it's all good. Got a meeting with colleagues on the other side of the world? 4 a.m. means 4 a.m. for everyone. Got a flight landing at 3 p.m.? 3 p.m. now means 3 p.m. for everyone. For DST, you simply change your schedule rather than the clock (i.e. work and school starts an hour earlier during DST months). No confusion ever again. For someone whose work involves travel or communication across time zones, this is the best idea I've ever heard. So why aren't we doing it?"
Is this the type of crap we can come to expect now that CmdrTaco is gone?
DST is a beast. Worse, the rules change over time!
Do we really want the date to change in the middle of the day? No, that is not practical. Most of the world still runs based on sleeping when the sun is down, so the time zone system still works.
Scrap AM & PM - most people can figure out a 24 hour clock. Time zones, on the other hand, make perfect sense.
So why aren't we doing it? Because it's a stupid idea. We still want noon to be when the sun is overhead, and midnight to be the middle of the night. Internet be damned, it's arbitrarily more convenient for most people, because most people don't travel all that often, and spend most of their time in their local time zone.
Morphing Software
Our computer clocks are all using UTC already
The displayed time is adjusted to local time for the benefit of us humans
We can say "the best time to feed the animals is at 4 PM" and that applies to everyone on the planet. With your scheme we would have to give a much longer-winded explanation.
The rest of the world had no problem...
telling us what the clock shall say
I, too, find it completely ridiculous that they actually TOLD people what their clock shall say. I heard about this one guy who didn't listen, they killed him, last I heard. Fucking fascist with their standards. I am interested to here what great insights the good roman_mir has to say on the subject.
Also,Qba'g guvax V qvqa'g frr jung lbh qvq gurer.
With time zones you can simply look up the time at a given location to know which part of the day it is, time corresponding to a part of the day is extremely useful, especially when you're moving through different countries or working with foreign people. It's much easier to change the time zone of your clock than to adjust to a day that starts at 16 o'clock. The different time zones give you more information, and given that most electronic devices can convert between them easily and display multiple at the same time, it's not really harmful.
DST is the beast that needs to die, because it makes it hard to represent the exact time me with the local time plus a simple offset. After DST dies, we should try to deal with unusual time zones that do not match the local solar mean time that you have in countries like Russia or offsets that have half an hour in them like you have in Iran.
If time zones make it difficult for you, work on the better integration of the tools dealing with them.
Yeah. Why bother trying to improve anything? If it isn't completely broken, don't try to fix it.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Uh, the clock is just a number, if you believe the day should start earlier, talk to your management. Your colleagues would most likely disagree, but if they don't, you might convince them. It makes most sense if 12:00 is exactly at noon and the time matches the sun, not your work preferences.
Wasn't time based on the rotation of the earth and the relative position of the sun in the sky? The hours of the day were tracked long before people started setting up multiple time zones...look at a sundial and there are numbers and those numbers were pretty much same. Time zones only date to the mid-1800's so they certainly aren't a "relic of the past".
Don't get me wrong, there certainly are advantages to using a standard time (and plenty of scientific, military, and technical applications use either UTC or GMT), but the average person will want to track time in relationship to their day as they experience it. And face it, the average person does very little traveling, very little interaction with people outside their time zone, and probably never interacts with someone in a significantly different time zone (i.e. on the other side of the world).
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
First thing that came to mind on reading this article was "1998 called, they want their suggestion back".
Back in 1998 when the Web was new and cool, Swatch were attempting to market a metric alternative to the 24 hour clock, which they excitingly referred to as 'Internet Time'. It divided the day into 1,000 'beats', and was based around the Central European timezone (GMT + 1) on the basis that Swatch's headquarters are in Biel. Unsurprisingly, the concept went down like a lead balloon.
FWIW, you'd have to think about different timezones anyway. No amount of universally-shared timezones are going to change the physical reality, so they may as well reflect it.
Think about this: People this stupid have the right to vote.
The US is doomed.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you want to get up an hour early in the summer, get your ass out of bed!
Why should the rest of us screw up our sleep rhythms because you don't want to reset your alarm clock?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Submitter gets it wrong anyway. From TFS: "Time zones are a relic of the past, when different parts of the world were isolated, and 12 p.m. was whenever the sun was directly above your specific location."
Um, no. Time zones were *created* to deal with the problem of local noon being whenever the sun was directly above your specific location. That's what the world used for thousands of years, until rapid transit and communications made that impractical. With the coming of railroads, for the first time, people were frequently outrunning the sun. Time zones became a necessity. You can't have a rail time table if everybody's clock is different.
Also, I think the proposal is just moving the problem around. Currently we have to think, "Okay, they're 3 hours ahead of me, so 9 AM here is 12 PM there." With this proposal, we'd have to think, "Okay, they're 3 hours ahead of me, so when I'm starting work they're going to lunch".
And nobody's stopping anyone from doing everything on UTC. I know at least one person who sets his schedule that way.
DST -- as others have said -- that we can do without.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Wow, nice subtle troll. I believe the French and Belgians would beg to differ with you.
Belgian cartographer Gerardus Mercator published the first modern atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, in 1570. He showed the Prime Meridian running through Antwerp. The Royal Observatory in Greenwich wasn't commissioned until 1675 -- 105 years later.
The Paris Observatory was commissioned in 1667 and completed in 1671, a good 4 years before the British even started on theirs.
The Greenwich line is used because when the vote was taken in 1884, over two-thirds of all ships and tonnage used it as the reference meridian on their maps. That is, British economic dominance was at its peak and most of the ships already used it. Oh, and it pissed off the French, which was always a plus to the Brits back then.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Either way, you have to know where you are to determine when stuff happens.
For example, I'm on the east coast. I travel to California, set my clock back 3 hours (or for a cell phone it adjusts its self possibly.. some phones do some don't). I still know stores open at 8 or 10 am.. lunch is at 12, done working at 5.. stores close at 9.. etc.
Now with the op's idea.. I have to constantly remember the stores open at 5am or 7am, lunch is at 9am, done working at 2pm, stores close at 6pm.. how is that *any easier*? Instead of changing one factor and the rest fall in place, you're now keep that one the "the same" and having to remember to adjust *all* of the rest that are typically a given constant.
And if you can't figure out UTC +/- then you have other issues.
What's wrong with saying 4 deciliters?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If the US is doomed, then let it die. The entire point of our founders was that even "people this stupid" have the right to govern themselves. If you really don't believe that, then let the system kill itself off.
Ah - Tea Party airhead - right?
Nope, just somebody who's never gonna give you up and never gonna let you down. (Hint, hint.)
And here's an actual fact: the U.S. government continually broadcasts the correct time no matter where you are (in the U.S., of course). They (I believe one source is the U.S. Navy) do it by broadcasting a radio signal that, when received by the appropriately-equipt clock/watch, will set that device to the correct time based on an atomic clock maintained by the U.S. government.
All you need to do to take advantage of this service is, when you next go clock/wristwatch shopping, make sure to ask if they have a product that features this capability (they should, even Walmart sells 'em). Most of the clocks in my house have this feature (wall clock, clocks in my computers -- the computers get the Navy time over the Internet, not via radio). Even my wristwatch (Casio) has a little radio receiver in it tuned to the government's time broadcast. Not only does this keep your watch accurate, it takes care of all of the DST stuff too. It's kind of fun to watch the wall clock get the "change DST" signal and "spin" its hands to the correct time (my wall clock can't "spin" backwards, so it has to make 11 complete revolutions in the fall). Hey, I'm easily entertained, what can I tell you?
I can set my wall clock, my computer clocks and even my wristwatch to ignore the DST signal (as someone pointed out, some states in the U.S. -- Arizona is one, I believe -- don't abide by the DST convention). In addition, there doesn't seem to be any huge premium charged for this feature. The radio-equipt clock on my wall only cost $20USD and my radio-equipt Casio wristwatch cost just $38USD.
So what was the "problem" again?
P.S. I can't believe Firefox's spell checker couldn't spell "equipt." I know the more commonly used word ("equipped") has the same meaning and Firefox could spell that version. But, c'mon, gang: "equipt" is two-characters shorter!
One "Aw, Shit!" is worth 100 "Ata boys!"
What's wrong with saying 4 deciliters?
or using what's done in most metric countries, namely use 250ml or 500ml ?
Actually, the Federal government has every right to regulate its own agencies, which is all the time-keeping regulations do. They have no authority to tell you how to set your own clocks, nor do they even have any such laws. You have CHOSEN to use the same time convention, for reasons of convenience. Go ahead, set your clocks to whatever time you want, hell you can even invent your own clocks. I guarantee you they will not levy any fines, charge you with any crimes, nor make any other attempt to coerce you into adopting their system of keeping time.
Don't be an idiot.
Lacking a link is typical of "Ask Slashdot" stories. I'd offer you coffee, but it's a bit late in the day in ${TIMEZONE} to be using the "just woke up" excuse, even for Slashdotters.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
We're not doing it because it's retarded. Somehow the submitter thinks this will help people who travel for business. Excuse me?
When you land, you've got to say to yourself: "Ok...at home, I started work at 3AM, which was after the sun came up, so here, I have to get to work at....wait....what time does the sun rise here? 5PM? WTF?"
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
So, what you're saying is that the U.S. government controls your clocks by beaming invisible rays into them?
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Exactly so.
Living in the great state of Arizona, we've chosen to ignore the Federal Government's pronouncements on time, and their constant meddling with when time should change.
And the worms ate into his brain.
What I'm curious about is how precisely this is any simpler than our current system. You do get the advantage of specifying a time that's globally valid, but for things that matter you still have to worry about what times are appropriate to expect a response from somebody in Georgia and depending upon which one the answer is likely to be different.
The real problem is that when you're traveling you'd then have to learn what times everything is done or convert those times to ones your familiar with, rather than the current system where most of those times are the same, just happen earlier or later with respect to your home.
The current system we have works in the instances where one needs that sort of coordination we've got GMT and UTC available.
Bingo. When you go to a different place, you don't want to be somewhere where the sun rises at 11 PM and sets at 12 AM. You want a normal day, and the timezone tells you what the range of that day is. Timezones don't interfere with travel, they facilitate travel.
Look, can we just start ignoring libertarians? I mean, when someone is wrong once, you shrug. When they're wrong ten times, you raise an eyebrow. But when they're wrong hundreds of times, they need to be added to the twit filter. These people are the new bolsheviks, who also promised that the state would vanish under their leadership. Never trusted the communists, don't trust the libertarians. Same shit, different bucket.
Exactly. Suppose you're sitting in your New York office, and you want to call a colleague in an office in California, and you have to determine if now is a good time to call or not.
The way it is now, you look at your clock, see it's 10AM, and then mentally calculate the timezone difference: EDT is 3 hours offset from PDT. So it's 7AM in California, and now is probably too early to call your colleague, as he's probably still at home or on the way to work (or maybe still sleeping, depending on when he gets in).
Under a timezone-less scheme, you'd have a harder time, because there's no time zones to help you quickly calculate offsets. Instead, you'll think to yourself, "well, back when we had time zones, California was 3 hours apart from us, so it's like it's 7AM over there, so this is too early." But what happens in 20+ years when a younger generation comes along that doesn't remember the old time zone system? How exactly are they supposed to know that California is (roughly) three hours behind the east coast, and that it's now customary in California to start work at 5AM and leave at 2PM (unless they frequently communicate with people from there and remember this fact)? Do they have to start up some web application to tell them this? I suppose this would be one solution, but it seems pretty ridiculous when we already have a system now that doesn't require a constant internet connection or a nearby computer to tell us such a simple bit of information.
With time zones, all I have to remember is the GMT offsets of every place I'm interested in, and it's trivial for me to calculate local times for those places, which means I know what time most places start business and close business. Without time zones, I'll have to do a lookup for everything. Maybe if we get to the point where we all have constant internet connections wired into our brains, then they'll truly be obsolete, but not before then.