Time Zone Database Has New Home After Lawsuit

networkBoy writes "ICANN has taken stewardship of the time zone database after its original operators were sued for copyright infringement by an astrology software company, saying they will 'deal with any legal matters as they arise'. From the article: 'Without this database and others like it, computers would display Greenwich Mean Time, or the time in London when it isn't on summer time. People would have to manually calculate local time when they schedule meetings or book flights.'"

Comments

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

so? Either it violated the patents or it didn't. If it did, then the problem is either with the patent system or the specific implementation. Deal with one or the other.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'so' part would be that the previous stewards of the database did not feel they had the necessary funding to find out whether it violated patents. It would cost something to just 'find out', and if the verdict was that it did it could cost yet more.

ICANN appears willing and able to spend the money to find out, which might be enough to send the astrology folks packing.

Re:So?

[Frosty Piss]

I'm sorry, patents? This issue involves copyrights .

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not semantics, it's two completely different areas of law. It's as different as condemning Mac desktops as being insecure virus magnets when you actually meant Windows desktops, and then when someone calls you out on it, pleading "oh, semantics police!" as a valid defence.

Re:So?

[king neckbeard]

No, the differences here are very important. Unoriginal data isn't eligible for copyright, but a method for handling data could be, at least in lower courts. Also, copyright has independent conception as a defense, while patents do not.

Re:So?

[tqk]

oh lord the semantics police are on their way as we speak, red and blue lights whirling around like confused birds.

Well, excuse us for wanting to be correct. Do you enjoy it there in your misty, clouded, can't really see anything, "HOLY SHIT A BUS!" universe?

You work with tech? Do you program? What's your compiler say when you're lazy like this? It's people like you that keep helldesks [sic] busy.

Re:So?

[causality]

It's not semantics, it's two completely different areas of law. It's as different as condemning Mac desktops as being insecure virus magnets when you actually meant Windows desktops, and then when someone calls you out on it, pleading "oh, semantics police!" as a valid defence.

Intellectual laziness always tries to assert its own validity.

It leads to strange behaviors. For example, the afflicted will usually prefer to make themselves look stupid by trying to convince you that an obvious glaring error is somehow not an error, rather than admit they made a mistake like human beings tend to do from time to time. I guess they think they're fooling anyone.

The sentiment seems to be, "how dare you expect me to know the most basic things about a subject prior to taking a position on it?! I mean really, who do you think you are?" In a way, it's amusing. In another way, it's really pathetic.

Re:So?

[ByOhTek]

Or make dollar signs light up in their eyes. I hope it's the latter, because that will hopefully do to them what similar crap did to SCO.

Re:So?

[MightyYar]

Well, excuse us for wanting to be correct.

There's nothing wrong with being correct, and there's nothing wrong with correcting people. However, when Frosty Piss posted his correction, he added nothing new to the conversation other than a correction. The discussion devolved into an argument over semantics.

Re:So?

[Hatta]

Also, copyright has independent conception as a defense, while patents do not.

If the same idea was concieved of independently, then the patent should be invalidated on grounds of obviousness.

Re:So?

[causality]

the fact that you turned this into a mac vs pc argument allows me to immediately dismiss this. I can only assume you knew how ridiculous this was, and thats why you posted AC

No, what's ridiculous is when the AC makes an analogy and you decide to fixate on the analogy itself in order to miss the point being made by it.

You must be desperate indeed to dismiss it if your rationale for doing so is that flimsy.

Re:So?

[Nutria]

it was the wrong word but the sentiment remains true. ... Just absorb the relevant information and move on.

It's this attitude which fosters the spread of idiocy.

Re:So?

[Nutria]

when Frosty Piss posted his correction, he added nothing new to the conversation other than a correction.

Blocking error prevents conversations from drifting into wrongness.

That's no big deal when it's kids yammering about who's ricer has the baddest flames painted on the side of his Honda, but important when talking about the law.

Re:So?

[shentino]

How can you copyright numbers?

This is just like a phonebook.

Re:So?

[causality]

the surgery to have the rod removed from your rectum is both affordable and covered under most insurance plans.

That's very mature of you. Nutria had it right.

You were merely ignorant before. Having received a correction and proving you are unable to handle that like an adult, you are now embracing willful stupidity.

It is blatantly obvious that saving face is more important to you than getting it right. The really amusing thing is, by being such a crybaby about it you are actually losing face much more than you otherwise would have.

You want to talk about levity? You're providing me with a lot of laughter right now. In fact, I'd wager you're the only one who doesn't find some humor in your desperate race to avoid admitting fault. Now wouldn't that be something, if the only one who takes this so seriously and wants so badly to bicker about it is the one who keeps demanding that everyone else lighten up. There are professional writers who struggle to so greatly portray irony.

Re:So?

[king neckbeard]

The key word there being 'should.' Unfortunately, reality doesn't reflect that.

Re:So?

[h4rr4r]

The surgery to give you a functional brain is expensive and generally considered elective.

Re:So?

[SmurfButcher Bob]

...unless some of the numbers are intentionally wrong, as markers. Then *those* are fiction, and (some would argue) eligible for copyright protection.

Remember the old practice of cartographers adding fictitious details that would be unique to their work - same deal, in theory. If a rival's map had those features, it would be a slam dunk infringement.

I have no clue if such elements were present in the TZ list, however.

Re:So?

[MightyYar]

Blocking error prevents conversations from drifting into wrongness.

I'm fine with that. But Frosty Piss didn't do that - he just made what seems like a pedantic remark. A useful correction would make at least a small effort to state why the correction was important.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing that is obvious is that a certain group of people on here (of which you are a member) does not know what the word obvious means. If an idea must be 'conceived' then by definition it is not obvious.

Re:So?

[AdamJS]

He pointed out that you're pushing a problematic misconception with a succinct post. Probably took less than a minute's consideration. "Deal with it". "y u mad" Is trolling a bannable offense on slashdot?

Re:So?

[tqk]

Blocking error prevents conversations from drifting into wrongness.

I'm fine with that. But Frosty Piss didn't do that - he just made what seems like a pedantic remark. A useful correction would make at least a small effort to state why the correction was important.

I think a useful reaction would be for the corrected one to notice they didn't understand the distinction between patents and trademarks, and to then hit a search engine for enlightenment. Instead, they shoot the messenger.

Anyone who's spent any time around here ought to know the difference between the two by now. FP handed him a clue, and was derided for it. Thanks a lot. Not.

Re:So?

[SpiralSpirit]

been on slashdot long?

Re:So?

[dougisfunny]

If some magical new type of network were conceived, zero latency wireless for the entire coverage of the solar system. That, would be something novel and patentable. And if it were called perhaps the hypernet. Someone would subsequently patent one click, or if voice activation worked, one word buying on a 'hypersite'.
Someone would have to 'conceive' of said thing, but it is obvious, regardless of that the patent would be granted.

Re:So?

[Z00L00K]

From what I understand it was a copyright violation where the "offender" had taken the timezone facts from a calendar made by the "offended" party.

But facts are facts and where you get them from would just be another question.

Re:So?

[Toonol]

You seem obsessed. I made a mistake. Most people would just move on.

You're making a mistake, in addition to the original. You're not moving on.

At this point, you're just an object lesson for other slashdot readers.

Re:So?

[MightyYar]

Anyone who's spent any time around here ought to know the difference between the two by now.

I'm going to have to call you out on that... anyone who has spent any time around here ought to know that a simple pedantic correction is going to lead to a flame war over pedantry. :)

Seriously, look at the thread after Frosty Piss's comment - the whole thread is poisoned. The only comments with any insight whatsoever are quickly reverted back to name calling.

Let me ask you, what point was he making, other than "you are wrong"? He didn't disagree or agree with the original post, and his correction made no contribution to the points raised in the original post (specifically, this is a symptom of a larger problem). Further, if you look at Frosty Piss's only other contribution to this story's comments, it is exactly the same correction.

Re:So?

[KingMotley]

The TZ list actually says they copied from them.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

...unless some of the numbers are intentionally wrong, as markers. Then *those* are fiction, and (some would argue) eligible for copyright protection.

I would think that common sense is that if you publicly present something as a fact then you're implicitly granting a licence to use it in ways in which facts are legally permitted to be used. Of course, common sense and the law don't always match....

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back to /b/.

Re:So?

[kholburn]

An digital music file is just a number. So yes, you can copyright numbers.

Re:So?

[St.Creed]

I agree.

It totally should have been a car analogy, like BMW versus Mercedes.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I thought it was the birth of text-messaging.

Re:So?

[Guy Harris]

The TZ list actually says they copied from them.

If you mean "the tz mailing list", there are messages that indicate that the Shanks atlases were among the documents consulted as references. Whether that's "copying" in a sense that renders it a violation of copyright is ultimately going to be up to the law to decide, I suspect.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a poster child, indeed. To be specific, "Mistakes" by Despair, Inc.

http://www.despair.com/mis24x30prin.html

Re:So?

[mcavic]

Facts are facts. It doesn't matter where they come from. The "offended party" in this case should go to hell.

Re:So?

[TheInternetGuy]

While this is in a sense true,

It is usually said that tabulated (scientific) data can not be copyrighted.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

been on slashdot long?

Given YOUR high 6 digit member number, you're new around here - and the type of asshole who eventually moves on.

I hear your 4chan buddies calling!

Re:So?

[nobaloney]

Noted that the poster should have written copyrights.

The fact is the copyrights would most likely be determined to be invalid, at least in the U.S., where there is plenty of precedent, and actual rules:

http://www.k-state.edu/academicpersonnel/intprop/webtutor/tsld007.htm

Note second and third bullet points.

Re:So?

[causality]

You seem obsessed. I made a mistake. Most people would just move on. You're making a mistake, in addition to the original. You're not moving on. At this point, you're just an object lesson for other slashdot readers.

With that, you saw what I was trying to bring out into the open. You saw it for yourself.

You've got to be kidding me....

[realsilly]

.... There are literally thousands of companies who have created time-zone databases in order to deal with the complexities that exists with all of this. So for umpteen years / decades this has not been an issue, but now in the wake of a gazillion copyright infringment lawsuits this company now claims ownership? Wow. This is just stupid.

Re:You've got to be kidding me....

[Anonymous Coward]

.... There are literally thousands of companies who have created time-zone databases in order to deal with the complexities that exists with all of this. So for umpteen years / decades this has not been an issue, but now in the wake of a gazillion copyright infringment lawsuits this company now claims ownership? Wow. This is just stupid.

For values of "thousands" equal to "maybe two." Pretty much everyone uses this one.

Re:You've got to be kidding me....

[VGPowerlord]

.... There are literally thousands of companies who have created time-zone databases in order to deal with the complexities that exists with all of this. So for umpteen years / decades this has not been an issue, but now in the wake of a gazillion copyright infringment lawsuits this company now claims ownership? Wow. This is just stupid.

For values of "thousands" equal to "maybe two." Pretty much everyone uses this one.

Except Microsoft.

Cue "everyone of value." comment in 5... 4... 3...

Re:You've got to be kidding me....

[petermgreen]

There are literally thousands of companies who have created time-zone databases in order to deal with the complexities that exists with all of this.

Do you have any evidence to back up this claim?

Re:You've got to be kidding me....

[St.Creed]

There are literally thousands of companies who have created time-zone databases in order to deal with the complexities that exists with all of this.

Do you have any evidence to back up this claim?

You must be new here...

Use a local clock?

[EvanED]

"Without this database and others like it, computers would display Greenwich Mean Time, or the time in London when it isn't on summer time. People would have to manually calculate local time when they schedule meetings or book flights.'"

Or, you know, manually specify the offset from GMT. Or set your clock to local time.

Re:Use a local clock?

[tverbeek]

Yeah, I set my computer's clock by looking at my watch.

Re:Use a local clock?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or set your clock to local time.

Oh, hmm..

<tinfoilhat>Isn't that how Windows works? I wonder if Microsoft are behind this lawsuit..</tinfoilhat>

Re:Use a local clock?

[robmv]

Not a very good example of the importance of that database. It includes historic values, not only the current offset, that historic information is extremely useful. If you only have the current offset, applications has no way to know for example: what day is 20*365*24*60*60 seconds ago? and no, the answer is not exactly 20 year ago (ignoring leap years) because timezone changes means that not all days are 24 hours

Re:Use a local clock?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which works so well when your government decides to change when/if daylight saving time goes into effect and then you must change everything manually twice when the "helpful" automatic time change features can't be adjusted.

Re:Use a local clock?

[vlm]

More likely use UTC for meetings, flights, etc. Its not a big deal and it solves a lot of problems.

Re:Use a local clock?

[grimmjeeper]

and no, the answer is not exactly 20 year ago (ignoring leap years) because timezone changes means that not all days are 24 hours

Time zones have nothing to do with how long a day is. Every time zone has 24 hour days. Unless you live in some weird alternate universe where some days are longer than others...

The changes in daylight savings time may impact exactly what time it is now but the only thing you have to deal with is whether you're currently in daylight savings time. Because within a year, switching to DST and back cancels itself out. A given year will have one day that acts like a 23 hour day and another that acts like a 25 hour day.

The only real thing that would make 20*365*24*60*60 (ignoring leap years) not exactly 20 years ago is if the standard for daylight savings time had changed between then and now. If daylight savings time was in effect then but not now (or not then but in effect now), you'd only be off by one hour.

Re:Use a local clock?

[Anonymous Coward]

and no, the answer is not exactly 20 year ago (ignoring leap years) because timezone changes means that not all days are 24 hours

Time zones have nothing to do with how long a day is. Every time zone has 24 hour days. Unless you live in some weird alternate universe where some days are longer than others...

The changes in daylight savings time may impact exactly what time it is now but the only thing you have to deal with is whether you're currently in daylight savings time. Because within a year, switching to DST and back cancels itself out. A given year will have one day that acts like a 23 hour day and another that acts like a 25 hour day.

The only real thing that would make 20*365*24*60*60 (ignoring leap years) not exactly 20 years ago is if the standard for daylight savings time had changed between then and now. If daylight savings time was in effect then but not now (or not then but in effect now), you'd only be off by one hour.

Timezones don't always switch back off of DST - see Russia, this year.

Re:Use a local clock?

[FoolishOwl]

Someone please mod up parent as informative.

Re:Use a local clock?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol it's only an hour, why should our computers be accurate, rite?

Re:Use a local clock?

[squizzar]

Actually in this universe not all days are the same length...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second

Re:Use a local clock?

[grimmjeeper]

That makes sense. But it still holds true that the time zones aren't responsible for this change in the length of a day.

Re:Use a local clock?

[ColdWetDog]

This. Please world. Make sense for just once? And kill "Daylight saving's time" while you're at it. Apple will be much happier.

Re:Use a local clock?

[Bengie]

Many authentication protocols use GMT to time stamp the tokens as to reduce the chance of replay attacks.

If it's 11:00 your time and 1:00 someone else's time, you need to convert them into a standard time. GMT being that time. If GMT was copyrighted, and you couldn't use it, then many authentication protocols would break.

Effectively, timezone calculations would be outlawed.

Re:Use a local clock?

[petermgreen]

Time zones have nothing to do with how long a day is.

The "TZ database" definition of a time zone is different from the definition of time zone used in many other contexts. It is defined as "any national region where local clocks have all agreed since 1970".

The relationship between local time in a given region and universal time can change for a number of reasons including regular daylight savings changes*, DST rule changes, changes depending on the governments view of the relative important of consistencey with local time vs consistency with neighbouring jurisdictions. Changes in who has jurisdiction over a given area and so on. Tracking these historical changes is nessacery if you want to accurately convert historic local time into universal time or universal time into historic local time.

* And these rules are NOT a simple case of "on day x of month y". In particular it is common to fix the change to a particular day of the week. For example the european rule is last sundays in march and october. The north american rule is second sunday in march and first sunday in november. Some places like israel have even more complex rules revolving around religious events.

Re:Use a local clock?

[grimmjeeper]

I see where the terminology confusion came about. A lack of precision in the original statement left it open to misinterpretation

Re:Use a local clock?

[Inf0phreak]

Mod Parent up. Leap seconds are a big part of why the timezone database needs to contain historic information.

Re:Use a local clock?

[robmv]

as other people have replied to you, Timezone changes have a relationship with day length, some changes are not DST based, In my country we switched a few years back from UTC-4 to UTC-4.5 (we were at UTC-4.5 in 1960 IIRC) those changes are sometimes politically motivated and unrelated to a yearly DST switch. The day the switch was done it was not a 24 hours day and that affect all date related calculation that cross that day

Re:Use a local clock?

[KingMotley]

Just for sake of completeness, not all timezone changes are in increments of an hour. There are multiple that do half hour, some do two hours, and I've seen quarter hours.

Re:Use a local clock?

[jbengt]

Setting timestamps to local time has been done (thanks Microsoft), and it sucks for networks like the internet that cross time zones.

Re:Use a local clock?

[tverbeek]

And this is related to my comment... how?

Re:Use a local clock?

[mcavic]

You'd have to specify the time zone rules, too. Yes, you could just set the clock manually, but this is the effing 21st century.

Re:Use a local clock?

[mcavic]

No, Windows synchronizes to GMT, and then make the adjustment. Otherwise you'd only be able to use a time server in your zone.

Re:Use a local clock?

[Anonymous Coward]

Collective nouns are singular.

Do It Yourself

[ChrisMaple]

So nobody else is capable of looking at a clock, comparing it to GMT, calculating the difference, and typing the result into a program that calculates the time from then until the daylight savings time change?

Re:Do It Yourself

[sunderland56]

You can certainly do this for your local time zone. If you're booking a flight elsewhere, you can't see the clocks in that time zone.

The database in question is just a list of what everybody around the world would type in.

Re:Do It Yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what the TZ database contains. It has city/country to timezone mapping, but it also has historical information. Timezones change, daylight savings time changes. The TZ database contains all that. That's why it is useful.

Re:Do It Yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

GMT offset is crap.

Re:Do It Yourself

[wmbetts]

For the vast majority of people that is sadly impossible.

Re:Do It Yourself

[tqk]

The database in question is just a list of what everybody around the world would type in.

... mixed in with a whole bunch of local politics. In Canada, Newfoundland is half an hour off the next time zone. Saskatchewan doesn't do DST. Etc., etc. Check into Brazil's troubles the last time DST was defined. It was a mess.

Re:Do It Yourself

[Hadlock]

I was traveling through South America for a month, hit most of the major countries. It's bigger than you think. Five countries in four weeks is a lot. Anyways, I was using Ubuntu (9.10 UNR) and Gmail on a netbook to handle most of my affairs while I was out of the country.

I'm not sure what it was exactly, either the system clock or on google's end, but when I crossed from Brazil in to Uruguay, my system clock, gmail and gcalendar got royally screwed up, to the point that I was 3 hours early to my international ferry, and despite being an hour "early" to the airport on my trip home, I barely made my flight by 10 minutes.

I doubt many people have much use for a calendar system that auto-updates the correct time depending on country/timezone you're in on a regular basis, but if your calendar says "4pm local time" and then changes it six times based on where you're viewing it, and screws up, it can be disastrous and very costly. I'm sure that's an outlier problem, but having a standardized database might give developers more time to work on kinks like what I experienced.

For the record, yes I own and wear a watch, but pilots don't always give you the local time when you land, and not always in English(!). Free wifi in airports is a blessing, but when your computer doesn't know what the actual time is, it can cause scheduling problems, especially when you're trying to catch a connecting/transfer flight.

Long story short, time zones screwed up my computer and took almost a week of use stateside before it sorted itself out again.

Re:Do It Yourself

[daem0n1x]

You are right. Why should we bother to use computers? Nobody else is capable of calculating the time of day looking at the sky and scratching numbers on a slate?

Re:Do It Yourself

[FoolishOwl]

This is the sort of routine task of calculation that we use computer programs to automate. Sure, it's not much trouble to do this trivial task once, on one computer. It's another matter to do this, and a few thousand other similarly trivial tasks on a few thousand servers in a datacenter daily.

Re:Do It Yourself

[swv3752]

What, your computer has a GPS? If not then how did it know where you were? If you were manually changing it, then the issue likely rests with you.

Re:Do It Yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing your hardware clock is set to "local time" and not GMT. Its trivial to deal with Hardware Time in GMT -> local time. It is asking for trouble to try Local Time in Zone 1 -> Local Time in Zone 2 so every time you crossed a border into another time zone you needed to update the hardware clock.

Re:Do It Yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1: Get a Watch
Step 2: Change the watch to the appropriate local time as you travel.
Step 3: ?????
Step 4: Profit!

Re:Do It Yourself

[Hadlock]

I'm thinking IP geolocation on google's end. My search results page ended up as google.com.br, google.com.ar, google.com.ur etc etc each time I logged in at a different location and then had to sign back in to gmail. My point was that google was overthinking the solution and ended up causing more problems than it solved.

Copyright, not patent; learn to read (N/T)

[JSBiff]

(N/T)

Re:Copyright, not patent; learn to read (N/T)

[networkBoy]

Funny, You made me go back and check that I didn't screw up the summary. Glad I didn't :)

All this time our clocks were based on *Astrology*

[Anonymous Coward]

I could understand if the word 'astronomy' were in there, but Astrology? That's like saying our current knowledge of Biology was based on the movie Bambi.

Re:Upon hearing this...

[Frosty Piss]

I immediately went out and filed a patent on "noon". Sorry folks, we're first to file now... you snooze you lose.

Good for you, but I already copyrighted it.

Easy Solution

[MarkvW]

Why can't a group of people just derive the same information from different (public domain) sources?

Re:Easy Solution

[h4rr4r]

They can, but then they need to have enough funding to prove that is what they did in court. It does not matter if you are non-infringing if you don't have the money to prove it. Welcome to American justice.

Re:Easy Solution

[smoot123]

You could but as it turns out, it's incredibly handy to have one comprehensive database that everyone uses (and codes to). There's really no value in multiple people doing the grunt work and probably getting it wrong.

Re:Easy Solution

[Tomato42]

Yeah, the whole problem wasn't using Astrology book for (one of) the sources for the keeper of the database, it was living in the "land of the free".

Re:Easy Solution

[Builder]

"land of the free" *

* Some terms and conditions may apply. Offer not available in all areas. Tyrants excepted. Apathy voids this offer.

Re:Easy Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Facts aren't copyrightable in the US, so if the same information can be derived from other sources because it is based on facts, then they don't need to do that. The problem is that the guy who was hosting it didn't want to deal with the legal issues even if it would be an easy win.

Really? We're going to trust ICANN with this?

[damn_registrars]

ICANN is the same group of idiots who decided in spite of numerous objections that selling gTLDs - and giving away all the rights and responsibilities for them - was a good idea. These guys don't have the best interest of anyone other than themselves in mind, and will probably sell this off to the highest bidder in a matter of months.

Home sweet timezone.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no place like home.

Lawsuit is totally baseless

[king neckbeard]

This lawsuit is a no-brainer. Time zone data would without a doubt be an unoriginal database, meaning that under Feist v. Rural, it isn't eligible for copyright in the US.

Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless

[msobkow]

Doesn't matter if it's baseless and would get tossed out of court -- eventually. The former database maintainer didn't have the budget to fight back.

If you want to blame someone, blame the "justice" system that allows frivolous lawsuits to be filed in the first place.

Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless

[Daniel_Staal]

Great. Now, how many million are you willing to spend on lawyers to say that in court?

Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless

[Jim Tyre]

Doesn't matter if it's baseless and would get tossed out of court -- eventually. The former database maintainer didn't have the budget to fight back.

If you want to blame someone, blame the "justice" system that allows frivolous lawsuits to be filed in the first place.

EFF is representing Arthur D. Olson (the former database maintainer).

Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless

[Anonymous Coward]

How do we know they are frivolous before they get filed?

Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless

[Darinbob]

A system that forbids even the filing of frivolous lawsuits would be unfair. It would raise the burden too high on legitimate lawsuits. "Disallow" means you give the court clerks the authority to glance over documents and just shred them if they decide they're frivolous. Leave that decision up to the judges instead.

Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless

[msobkow]

The current system is very unfair to a defendant without a budget to maintain a defense, so the current system isn't fair, either. The fact that it lets the corporate legal team stomp all over the individual for the vast majority of cases should be far more worrysome than not giving the legal trolls the option of using trumped up charges to rape people with out-of-court settlements.

See RIAA, MPAA, etc. for thousands of examples of such abuse.

Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless

[Bucky24]

Hmm, so maybe in addition to getting a court appointed defender when you get arrested, maybe you should get a court appointed IP lawyer when you get sued for copyright infringement if you cannot afford one....

Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless

[Tomato42]

businesses were sued out of existence before you know...

Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless

[Darinbob]

But I think we need something not quite as extreme as getting rid of all lawsuits. Because if you forbid all frivolous lawsuits from even being filed then you effectively ban legitimate ones as well. There is a middle ground that can be reached. Such as tossing out frivolous lawsuits after they're filed and having the filer play all court costs involved.

Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless

[utkonos]

I don't think that sounds like a bad idea. However, how would you get that paid for? At the other end of the spectrum, you can't easily fix IP laws because politicians are incapable of "fixing" laws. All you get is a worse mess than before the politicians got involved.

Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless

[Bucky24]

The same way that current pubic defenders are paid I suppose, taxpayer money. Though that makes the taxpayer liable for all the ridiculous lawsuits and that's not really a good thing.

Hmm how's this for a thought: Anyone suing for a copyright violation has to pay for the lawyers for the party they are suing... Though that opens the door to a lot of abuse potential too....

Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless

[utkonos]

How about the plaintiff pays all the legal fees until they win? If they win, the defendant pays everything. If they lose, they are stuck with the whole bill for their own case, plus everything for the defendant.

Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless

[Bucky24]

The potential for abuse I see is that a large company could simply steal a patent and the smaller person who held it wouldn't be able to afford legal fees for both, even if the larger company was at fault. (And this goes the other way for the previous option I suggested).

Maybe the lawyers just shouldn't be paid until the suit ends, then whoever loses pays up. However as some of these suits can go on for years that honestly wouldn't be fair to the lawyers themselves (they ARE human beings and need to eat and sleep, ect, regardless of popular opinion). Then again, it may be on the fault of the lawyers that the suits last so long in the first place....

Abolish time zones

[mykos]

Time zones are not necessary in today's world.

And while we're at it, let's switch to metric clocks.

Re:Abolish time zones

[impaledsunset]

What's wrong with time since the Unix epoch? I'm using that and I'm doing fine!

Re:Abolish time zones

[Spectre]

Time zones are not necessary in today's world.

And while we're at it, let's switch to metric clocks.

Sure, no problem. What is the current .beat?

Anybody old enough to remember Swatch Internet Time?

Re:Abolish time zones

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I prefer to have multiple and fractional base in my numbers.

Re:Abolish time zones

[Attila Dimedici]

So, in your world is 12:00 during the business day in Tokyo? How about Los Angeles? What about Harare?
The reason we need timezones is so that we can easily know whether or not a particular time is a reasonable time to be able to contact someone in a geographically distant location. If you are scheduling a teleconference with people from somewhere distant and I tell it will be 3:00 AM there at the time you are proposing, you know that, except in special edge cases, that is not a reasonable time to expect the workers at that distant location to be available for a teleconference.

Re:Abolish time zones

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll raise my hand after you got off my lawn! ;-)

Re:Abolish time zones

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree that time zones are stupid. Why would I care if the sun rises at 6:30 AM or at 22:30? The "time" is just a reference number. Can you imagine how much easier it would be if something like a sporting event (say Olympic Downhill Skiing or a World Cup Final) was on EVERYWHERE in the world at 19:00? So what if some people would just be getting up, others in the middle of their workday, whilst still others were heading to bed? It is just a number. And having it be the same globally has value. When is that American Football game? It's at 05:00. EVERYWHERE.

Needing it to be dark at 9:00 PM and light at 8:00 AM is just stupid.

Re:Abolish time zones

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Sure, no problem. What is the current .beat?

Anybody old enough to remember Swatch Internet Time?

Hey who are you calling old ? I bet you can still put a Beat clock applet next to your snazzy homepage hit counter if you want.

Re:Abolish time zones

[inode_buddha]

By any chance have you read http://www.timecube.com/

Re:Abolish time zones

[MacTO]

In the off chance that you are serious:

1) Most people still live by the sun. Some may be a few hours earlier than others (morning people) and some people may be a few hours later than people (night owls), but there is a definite correlation between when the sun is "up" and when people live their lives.

2) People find it easier to translate between time zones than they do between local norms. "Let's see, hour business hours are between 3.33 and 6.66 while their business hours are between 8.85 and 2.18. Which is a 5.52 offset. It's now 6.14, which makes it 11.66 in their time. No, that's not right. That's 1.66. No, that's the wrong way around ... screw this."

3) People hate change. Well, at least this type of change. I live in a country that switched to metric decades ago, and people still use imperial units for just about everything. Making life even more fun, different people use a different mix between metric and imperial. More often than not it seems to depend upon how they were introduced to the units, so you will run into weird combinations like measuring apples in pounds and olives in grams.

Re:Abolish time zones

[sunderland56]

So, in your world is 12:00 during the business day in Tokyo? How about Los Angeles? What about Harare?

Today you need to look up a database of time differences so you can tell what time it is now in Tokyo. If everyone used the same clock, you would need to look up what typical working hours are in Tokyo. Same work involved. Once you've called Tokyo a few times you would remember what their workday is. As an added bonus, there would be no confusion as to what *day* it is there, like there is now.

The reason we need timezones is so that we can easily know whether or not a particular time is a reasonable time to be able to contact someone in a geographically distant location.

If you base your decision on local time alone, you are going to be annoying a lot of programmers. 12:00 is far, far too early in the day to be calling, whether they are in Tokyo, LA, or elsewhere.

Re:Abolish time zones

[ColdWetDog]

What's wrong with time since the Unix epoch? I'm using that and I'm doing fine!

2038 called (it uses neutrinos). There is a bit of an issue.

Re:Abolish time zones

[bws111]

Having only one time solves a single problem - communication of time to a remote location. There is already a solution for that - use UTC or GMT. However, for everyday life it would really suck. Local time is better for most things because it is portable.

If I am New York and want to call California, I still need to know what is an appropriate time to do that - a single time zone does not help. As you said, I still need to do some sort of translation. However, what if I actually GO to California? With local time, I have to adjust my watch. Everything else remains familiar to me. Businesses still open at 9AM. Lunch is at noon. Dinner is at six. If it is a workday, meeting someone at 10PM is probably a little late. With a single time zone I would need to translate everything, and there would be absolutely no benefit to it.

Also, with a single time zone, every reference to time would require some sort of reference point so people know what you mean. If I am reading a book, and it says the time is 3AM, I know what that means. It is dark. Most people are asleep. The temperature is about as low as it will get for the day. With a single time zone, what does 03:00 mean?

Having a single time zone would provide an extremely small benefit to an extremely small part of the population (ie people who need to communicate times remotely and can't grasp GMT). For every one else, and every other situation, it would be a big negative.

Re:Abolish time zones

[Anonymous Coward]

Timecubes. Just sayin'.

Re:Abolish time zones

[Ichijo]

If I am New York and want to call California, I still need to know what is an appropriate time to do that - a single time zone does not help.

On the other hand, if someone in California says, "Call me at 10am," the way it is now you have two questions:

1. 10am California time or 10am New York time?

2. If California time, what is that in New York time?

Having a single time zone answers both questions simultaneously.

Businesses still open at 9AM. Lunch is at noon. Dinner is at six.

You don't need a watch to tell you that businesses open shortly after the sun rises, lunch is when the sun is directly overhead, and dinner is around sundown.

If I am reading a book, and it says the time is 3AM, I know what that means. It is dark.

Again, you don't need a watch to tell you that it's dark outside.

Re:Abolish time zones

[bws111]

Uh, yeah, that is what I said: the only thing it would be useful for is communicating times with a remote location, and we already have GMT for that.

I don't know where you are, but where I live businesses don't open 'shortly after the sun rises', they open at a specific time. Today the sun rose at about 7AM, a few months ago it rose at 5AM. Today businesses opened about 2 hours after the sun rose, a few months ago it was 4 hours.

I didn't say I need a watch to tell me it is dark outside. I said that if I read 'It is 3AM' in a book, I know what the author is referring to.

Re:Abolish time zones

[Tomato42]

It's so totally bollocks I aren't even sure what the author claims...

Re:Abolish time zones

[Guy Harris]

What's wrong with time since the Unix epoch? I'm using that and I'm doing fine!

2038 called (it uses neutrinos). There is a bit of an issue.

So add another 32 high-order bits of "since the Unix epoch":

$ cat foo.c
#include <time.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int
main(void)
{
printf("%zu\n", sizeof (time_t));
return 0;
}
$ gcc foo.c
$ ./a.out
8

Yeah, if I compile it 32-bit, that has a Y2.038K issue:

$ gcc -arch i386 foo.c
$ ./a.out
4

but hopefully by 2038 vendors will have dropped support for 32-bit code if for no other reason than to help get rid of Y2.038K bugs.

Re:Abolish time zones

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, but your second point is ridiculous. Not having to do time zone conversions eliminates your problem entirely, and you’re actually highlighting the biggest weakness of time zones.

If your business hours are 0800-1700 and you want to do business with Tokyo, you need to know when during YOUR day you can call them (say it’s between 1300 and 2200). It doesn’t matter what time they call it in Tokyo—in fact, when they give their time locally, you have to look it up to figure out what that means to you, and failure to specify time zones leads to confusion. If there were no time zones, everyone would have a common reference, not need to do any conversions to “local” time, not need to mess with DST, and be able to track times (and therefore dates) across distances extremely easily.

The tradeoff is that you would have to look up sunrise/sunset times because they would not be coordinated, and daylight hours would drift throughout the year without compensation—but in the modern world, that affects far fewer people than time zone conversions.

The reason that it won’t work is that it means 1200 noon is only noon for one small slice of the planet, and people would have to adapt to living and working at “strange” hours. That would be unpopular and therefore unworkable. Using a solar reference for time is historically and traditionally entrenched.

It’s no harder or more complicated than our current system, it’s just different.

Re:Abolish time zones

[SilentChasm]

You don't have to be that old. Phantasy Star Online used it. I kinda wish something like that had taken off, as time zones are quite annoying, especially when they keep changing them and you have to make sure every program is working with the new info. Beat might have had a better chance if it was based on UTC instead of some weird offset.

Or you know, we could just use UTC everywhere, solving the problem without having to get used to new units like a beat.

Re:Abolish time zones

[Anonymous Coward]

You just defeated your own point that "portable" solar time is more consistent:

"I don't know where you are, but where I live businesses don't open 'shortly after the sun rises', they open at a specific time. Today the sun rose at about 7AM, a few months ago it rose at 5AM. Today businesses opened about 2 hours after the sun rose, a few months ago it was 4 hours."

Local time is more comfortable, you claim. Yet local time is variable. 3:00AM isn't necessarily dark near the poles. Noon isn't necessarily when the sun is overhead. Stores don't necessarily open at 9 AM. Dinner isn't necessarily at 6 PM. All of that is relative and cultural, and in most places in the world, cultural changes change faster than time zones. The "comfort" of "portable" solar time is overstated and overgeneralized.

As for your argument about traveling to a new area and being thrown off, it's easy: you learn the offset for the day in your location. Still one adjustment, but with far less math and therefore fewer opportunities for error. There's nothing difficult about business hours generally shifting--either you'd look up precise time information (hours of a store) or go based on feeling (eat when you're hungry). You say a common time zone solves one problem only (communicating over a distance)--but lacking time zones actually only poses one problem, and it's one that is far less meaningful in real lives (working with an offset generic schedule when traveling). People will still be jetlagged and want to eat at strange hours, regardless of the labels on the clock.

Here's the thing, though. Far, far, FAR more communication over long distance happens than physical relocation. If your premise is convenience, a single time zone has the clear benefit for communication, scheduling, and travel arrangements.

Re:Upon hearing this...

[Anonymous Coward]

When will this stupid first-to-file talking point die? It's an incorrect distraction from the real issues of the patent system.

or...

[shadowrat]

we can all just switch to stardate now!

Re:or...

[DeadDecoy]

Just a quick question out of ignorance, how does the stardate communicate relative time frames?

Re:or...

[shadowrat]

My understanding was it is absolute. same stardate at the same time on Kronos, earth, and Vulcan.

Re:or...

[causality]

Just a quick question out of ignorance, how does the stardate communicate relative time frames?

Very carefully.

Re:or...

[roc97007]

In Leonard Hofstadter's voice "please don't ask that please don't ask that oh crap, you asked that. We'll never make it to the movie now."

Re:or...

[lwsimon]

What about at Warp 8.4 midway between Wolf-359 and Earth?

Re:or...

[lennier]

Just a quick question out of ignorance, how does the stardate communicate relative time frames?

Well, based on Einstein's theory of General Relativity, it starts out on firm scientific ground by assuming as an absolute fundamental limit that no material object can travel faster than light, so since a starship moves between Federation outposts with an effective velocity thousands of times faster than C it's obvious that oh my is that the time? I'd love to stay and explain this, really I would, but I've got an urgent appointment with J J Abrams in about three parsecs. But in short: dilithium crystals, multistate equivocators, and Heisenberg compensators. Thank you.

Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Can everyone just update the Wikipedia entry for your city with timezone information? It would be nice if it were in an easy to recognize format along with LAT/LONG position so this can all be scraped into a database via software.

Re:Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Can everyone just update the Wikipedia entry for your city with timezone information?

Sure, if you want your official offset to be "GMT+UR TIME IS A FAGGY FAGGY FAG LOL" for half of every day and wrong the other half.

Re:Wikipedia

[S.O.B.]

That's fine for converting current times but for comparing an historical time to the current time you need to know if there have been any timezone changes. That's what this whole thing is about.

Re:Wikipedia

[tokul]

Can everyone just update the Wikipedia entry for your city with timezone information?

You will need whole wiki page for timezone changes in Israel or Iran/Persia.

Re:Wikipedia

[fnj]

It would seem that rather obvious point is beyond the intellect of many to realize.

Re:Wikipedia

[Carnildo]

The database is more than just "what time is it in New York City?". It's also useful for answering questions like "On June 15, 1988 at 13:00 UTC, what time was showing on the clocks in Riyadh?".

(That particular question is why the zoneinfo entry for Saudi Arabia is almost ten times the size of any other entry.)

Re:Wikipedia

[S.O.B.]

Sad but true.

Re:Really? We're going to trust ICANN with this?

[DamonHD]

Hmm, I don't think that the (non-US) governments whose countries use those gTLDs were really keen for them to be controlled from the US...

Rgds

Damon

Re:Upon hearing this...

[6Yankee]

Sorry folks, we're first to file now... you snooze you lose.

Especially now I've patented hitting the snooze button!

Slightly off-topic but...

[GeneralEmergency]

.

When are we going to start burning all the Astrologists as Witches?

This lawsuit would seem to be ample provocation.

.

Re:Slightly off-topic but...

[daem0n1x]

Right now we're too busy burning economists. Astrologists will have to wait their turn, right after TV evangelists.

Re:Slightly off-topic but...

[dkleinsc]

Hey, many of the witches I know would be quite offended if you started comparing them to astrologers!

Re:Slightly off-topic but...

[Forbman]

Can we put patent troll lawyers and most MBAs at the front of the line first?

Re:Slightly off-topic but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only those who couldn't accurately predict that anyone would be coming for them. Those who can't are frauds, those who can are either lucky or really can predict the future - either way, do you really want to mess with them? (Pratchett example: Agnes Nutter, in "Good Omens" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Omens )

Re:Slightly off-topic but...

[fnj]

Hopefully never more in a world in which I live.

You know what's instructive? To contemplate the roll of human beings who Christians have burned at the stake, drowned, beheaded, tortured, and otherwise grievously harmed, then repeat the exercise for other religions, then finally point me to a case where astrologers have done that to anyone.

Re:Slightly off-topic but...

[jpyeron]

Here is where I think a creative counter suit would be nice. Counter sue for all of the patent/copyright troll's holdings to be released into the public domain.

Re:Slightly off-topic but...

[LongearedBat]

Today witches practice astrology over the internet, trolls practice law, fairies dance at nightclubs. Everyone moves with the times.

non-time

[Anonymous Coward]

"computers would display Greenwich Mean Time, or the time in London when it isn't on summer time"

??

GMT is always GMT regardless of whether BST (british sumer time, GMT +1) is in effect or not.

no need to write silly things like "the time in London when it isn't on summer time"

that's as useful as giving a weather report talking about the "the stuff that falls from the sky but isn't wet (at least until it melts)"

Just get rid of timezones.

[thomasw_lrd]

We should just phase out timezones period. It would be a little complicated at first, but you would soon get used to it.

For instance in Central Timezone USA. We are offset -6. So instead of getting up at 6 every morning, I would get up at 00:00. So on and so forth. I realize it works out quite nicely for me, but I don't see it being a big problem for anyone else either.

Re:Just get rid of timezones.

[element-o.p.]

Personally, I kind of like this idea. Having to perform the math to convert between time zones is trivial but tedious, especially if you find yourself needing to do it multiple times a day. I can certainly see the value in having a global system where I don't have to worry about whether or not my watch, cell phone, etc. is displaying local time or time back home when I am trying to catch an airplane while traveling, for example.

Having said that, I can also see value in not having to wonder if 23:58 is in the middle of the night, the middle of the business day or during dinner when calling a family member or business associate who is in a different time zone. In other words, I doubt that having a single time zone will make life that much simpler, since we would still have to calculate whether or not it is an appropriate time to call our contacts who do not live in the same time zone we do.

Re:Just get rid of timezones.

[bws111]

Life is going to continue happening on local time. It does not matter what the time number is, but lunch is still going to be when the sun is overhead, etc. So instead of having to worry about whether your devices are showing the correct time in-flight (something very few people would care about), you have to translate every single reference to time where you are. What time do businesses open? When is lunch? When is it time to go home? This does not seem easier to me.

Furthermore, every single reference to time in all published works would instantly be meaningless. The clock struck twelve? What does that mean, it's time to wake up?

The only problem that a single time zone would help with is communication of time to remote places, and we already have UTC/GMT for that.

Re:Just get rid of timezones.

[thomasw_lrd]

I hadn't thought of the time reference in books. That would be confusing to those that came later on.

Good point.

Re:Just get rid of timezones.

[thomasw_lrd]

The thing is that most businesses overseas from America already operate on our time. For instance, have you ever called a tech support line only to speak to Achmed?

If you have family in a different part of the world, you are already calculating the time difference one way or the other.
Hmm, it's 10 pm here so in Australia, mum and dad are just waking up, guess I'll call them now so I can sleep.

This is no easier or harder with no time zone data, in fact it might be easier because you don't have the extra stepof calculating the time. Hmm, it's 1000 hours now, so mum and dad are just now waking up in Australia, guess I'll call them now so I can go to sleep.

Re:Just get rid of timezones.

[element-o.p.]

Life is going to continue happening on local time. It does not matter what the time number is, but lunch is still going to be when the sun is overhead, etc. So instead of having to worry about whether your devices are showing the correct time in-flight (something very few people would care about)...

I think you missed my point.

In flight, I generally couldn't care less about what time zone I'm in; you're right. However, when I am at the airport with a boarding pass that says my flight departs at 11:30, and my watch says 10:15, do I have fifteen minutes or an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the gate (or more, depending upon how many time zones I've crossed)? I also had an experience once where I traveled from Texas to Arizona, where I spent an hour wandering around a college campus until I found a security guard (who thought I was nuts for expecting campus offices to be open at 6:00 am). I had unknowingly traveled from Central daylight savings time to Mountain standard time, making me two hours early for an 8:00 am prospective student orientation. Those are the kind of inconveniences a single, universal time zone would solve. I'm not arguing that everybody around the world would eat lunch when the clock shows noon; rather that we would all have a common number on our clock, no matter where in the world we lived, and as I noted, that would cause other difficulties that may or may not be as bad as the difficulties we already have.

Re:Just get rid of timezones.

[smellotron]

However, when I am at the airport with a boarding pass that says my flight departs at 11:30, and my watch says 10:15, do I have fifteen minutes or an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the gate (or more, depending upon how many time zones I've crossed)?

Ignore your watch. Use the force... or look at the clocks in the airport. I've never seen a boarding pass that didn't use local time, and I've never seen an airport that didn't have a gratuitous amount of clocks.

I had unknowingly traveled from Central daylight savings time to Mountain standard time, making me two hours early for an 8:00 am prospective student orientation.

I bet you'll never forget that little quirk about Arizona! If you travel to the Midwest, be aware that Indiana is all sorts of messed up relative to the surrounding states. But still, it's not anywhere close to being a sufficient reason to effect the sweeping change that the local fauna is advocating in this thread.

Re:Upon hearing this...

[the eric conspiracy]

Hah Hah I am suing you for patent fraud because you didn't disclose prior art in your filing.

It is a big difference.

[www.sorehands.com]

It is a big difference, and not just semantics.

If the database was a valid patent claim, then using any type of timezone database could be blocked, forcing everyone to use GMT.

Where it is copyright, they might be able to require people to buy their version of the database. But, copyright cannot be applied to purely factual data, ie. Los Angeles being in the Pacific Timezone which is GMT-9 or GMT -8.

Re:It is a big difference.

[h4rr4r]

Since all three ideas were independently reached and no one copied the other they can all have copyright on such comments. See if you knew the difference between copyright and patents you would not keep embarrassing yourself like this.

Re:It is a big difference.

[Anonymous Coward]

Today's idiocy has been brought to you by the letters SpiralSpirit and IsARetard.

Re:It is a big difference.

[Lord Crc]

If the database was a valid patent claim, then using any type of timezone database could be blocked, forcing everyone to use GMT.

I'm thinking that wouldn't be such a bad thing...

Re:Upon hearing this...

[CanHasDIY]

I immediately went out and filed a patent on "noon". Sorry folks, we're first to file now... you snooze you lose.

Good for you, but I already copyrighted it.

You both fail;
I Trademark'd that shit years ago!

I keed, I keed!

Dave Mills is God.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or set your clock to local time.

Which works fine in Mom's basement, but not so good on Internet server clusters accessed from all over the world.

Having experienced life before NTP and timezone DBs, I gotta say they absolutely rock. Thanks, Dave!

Re:Ego?

[causality]

do you always act like you program? do you go around at parties, telling people they're walking around in a misty clouded universe that only you can see through? Does the effort of holding the stick in your rectum cause you to be this annoying all the time? its people like you that need to lighten up.

You can't tell the difference between a party and a discussion about intellectual property law? Oh wait, you can but that would be inconvenient for you.

It's not a matter of "always acting like you program". It's a matter of having the slightest bit of discipline to handle the most basic things correctly. If you want a party analogy, it's like making sure you show up at the right address. What you're doing is showing up at the wrong address, knocking on the door, having it answered by a 90-year-old grandma, and handwaving away her objections that there is no party in her home and acting butthurt when she asks you to leave.

All of this is easier than just taking a correction and thanking the person for setting you straight?

My only question

[Eil]

Will I finally be able to buy my own vanity timezone for $200,000?

Re:My only question

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Will I finally be able to buy my own vanity timezone for $200,000?

Who cares? I just want to know where the .XXX timezone is so I can move there!

Re:My only question

[kat_skan]

STOP. Dibs on Hammertime.

Re:My only question

[MarkGriz]

With ICANN in charge, that's a good bet.

Really really dumb idea

[Todd Knarr]

The problem is that we've got clocks. They've got noon and midnight on them. We've also got the sun. It rises at dawn, sets at sunset, and mid-way through the day it's straight overhead. And silly humans, we expect our clocks and the sun to be sorta-kinda in sync. We expect that mid-way through the sun's cycle, when it's straight overhead at what we call noon, our clocks are also going to be mid-way through their cycle and will be reading noon. We expect midnight on the clocks to be in the middle of the night. And we expect dawn and sunset to be in the morning and evening by our clocks.

Any solution proposed needs to accomplish the same synchronization. Not for any technical reasons, but because people expect it. It's not an implementation detail, it's a system requirement. Your "solution" tries to cross that requirement off as invalid or irrelevant, which means it immediately gets dismissed as "fails to meet requirements".

Re:Really really dumb idea

[bussdriver]

24 hour clocks. That is the 1st step. Everybody can count to 24 now and digital clocks are in the majority.

Not that many use analog clocks anyhow. I was shocked to hear of college students who didn't know how to read an analog clock! they don't teach that in school anymore... I remembered when I learned it but still... I would have figured it out without having it in school... I was surprised by how many managed to not learn it; just shows how uncommon analog clocks are.

So the sun would rise at 0 for me, in the summer. Since the seasons greatly alter my sun time and daylight savings BS creates an instant hour shift twice a year I don't think having different points on the clock mean different things would matter--- ONLY if you moved to another place. Somebody who travels frequently would probably adapt and like the universal time; jet lag would still be a problem. As far as work-- my lunch break is mid-day and on my day off that time still feels like mid-day doesn't matter what the sun is doing or what number is repetitiously pounded into my brain each work day.

Re:Really really dumb idea

[thomasw_lrd]

Those aren't really requirements, they are just something that we have been conditioned to accept. It would take a generation to fully implement, but it would make life so much easier for a lot of people. Imagine having to set up meetings with people internationally, instead of trying to computer what time it would be for them based on your time, you could simply say we have a meeting tomorrow at 0100 hours. No more missed connections, and no more trouble of the person on the other end of the phone. It would also make international travel easier. What time does my flight land, 1500 hours. No more trying to coordinate times even on domestic flights.

You see this solution makes everyone's life easier in the long run. Even if you don't do any of the above right now, it's more than likely going to happen in the future with the offshoring of jobs, and everything else that is happening right now. We no longer live in a society that can live and work in one timezone throughout our entire lives.

Re:Really really dumb idea

[smellotron]

Those aren't really requirements, they are just something that we have been conditioned to accept.

They are requirements precisely because everyone has been "conditioned" to understand local time. I am a huge proponent of GMT or (localtime,timezone) tuples where appropriate, but this all boils down to compression of information. The vast majority of time references in communication are local (either same timezone or fixed offset, e.g. US Central vs. Eastern for TV programming). Switching everything to GMT optimizes global communication at the expensive of local communication. Ultimately, the reason for this cost is because it is different, but that reason cannot be hand-waved away.

So where is GMT appropriate? Well, pretty much any storage medium should use GMT internally. Calendar services should understand "user requested 12:30pm $TZ which means 1318959000.000000000". User inputs should generally be assume to be (time,timezone) tuples, where the timezone is either implied or expressly configured (e.g. "I live in America/New_York'). But I sure as shit am not going to invite my wife to meet me for lunch as 23:00:00 GMT, I am going to say "noon". I bet she'll figure it out.

An analogous problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

We sure can have metric time. And we can keep some reference to when the Sun rises.

Analogous situations:

The Kelvin scale and the Celsius (ugh, Fahrenheit) human-adapted scale
Frequency in Hz and human-adapted octaves
Weight/volume SI units and practical units like a spoon, a cup etc.

The world won't end if someone uses auxiliary units depending on context; this is totally different from publishing a "scientific" paper in feet because they're traditional in, say, Aviation.

One has to understand though that "local time" is completely useless when your audience is global. Practical auxiliary units need to be practical: you don't need to explain what is a cup. Were you to talk to a Japanese, you might use instead "chawan".

Likewise, using a "foot" might be practical inside a small region which understands what it means. But what about the rest of the world? Are you going to explain "feet" to every generation out there?

People could start mocking you... Just saying... ;-P

What time is it now?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no fucking way an "astrology" software spewing company going to troll dictate time zone information to me. Ain't ever going to happen you false mother fuckers.

Some already half-do

[I_Wrote_This]

>> "...computers would display Greenwich Mean Time,"
My Windows systems already half do this. They get the time correct on Daylight Savings time, but insist on calling it GMT, which it isn't.

Re:Some already half-do

[smellotron]

My Windows systems already half do this. They get the time correct on Daylight Savings time, but insist on calling it GMT, which it isn't.

If you're referring to British time, you should note that the timezone database in question also does this. You can check in Linux (bash) with the command TZ=Europe/London date -d 2011-01-01 and likewise 2011-07-01. Seems to switch between GMT and BST. Sucks to your assmar, I guess.

Re:Some already half-do

[I_Wrote_This]

That's the point - MS Windows refers to the timezone as GMT - which it is not. GMT is always GMT. Europe/London (or GB) is BST in the summer (or, since this is the UK, the "summer months").
You, like MS, don't seem able to make the distinction.

Re:Some already half-do

[smellotron]

MS Windows refers to the timezone as GMT - which it is not. GMT is always GMT...
You, like MS, don't seem able to make the distinction.

No, I am making the distinction perfectly well, but perhaps I was not clear. A logical timezone from the database in question is identified as something like "Europe/London" or "GB" (this happens to be a filename, wheee). When you convert an epoch to a local time, you end up with a "named" GMT offset for that local time, and the timezone database has picked "GMT" as the name for half of the year, and "BST" as the name for the other half of the year.

That is, from the timezone database's perspective, GMT is always GMT, and Europe/London is sometimes GMT. And BST is always one hour offset from GMT, but for half of the year BST simply doesn't exist.

Re:Some already half-do

[I_Wrote_This]

No, I am making the distinction perfectly well, but perhaps I was not clear

You are not listening.
On Windows the timezone is listed as GMT+0 (as it is listed as GMT-5 for the New York).
Neither is correct. Hence my comment.

A logical timezone from the database in question is identified as something like "Europe/London" or "GB" (this happens to be a filename, wheee)

But not on Windows. vide ultra

And BST is always one hour offset from GMT, but for half of the year BST simply doesn't exist.

It always exists - it's just not active. There is a difference. "Wed Oct 19 23:26:25 BST 2011" is still valid, even when you read it on Christmas Day.

Re:Really? We're going to trust ICANN with this?

[game kid]

These guys don't have the best interest of anyone other than themselves in mind, and will probably sell this off to the highest bidder in a matter of months.

On the bright side, at least we'll get to see GoDaddy commercials where Danica Patrick makes seductive innuendo about ISO 8601.

"Want to put your +11:00 in my 2011-10-17T17:21:00, baby?" *continues with random double entendres and IndyCar lingo*

Re:All this time our clocks were based on *Astrolo

[Crudely_Indecent]

Modern astronomy is based on ancient astrology. Everything has to start somewhere. In the case of computer clocks, it isn't so much that our clocks are based on astrology, it's that timekeeping began by studying the stars - and in antiquity, that meant astrology.

Modern astronomy still uses some of the ancient astrological terms.

Re:Ego?

[causality]

I can tell the difference between when I need to be an asshole at work vs choosing to be an asshole to everyone I meet. You're not having a discussion at work, no project depends on this, and one guy using the wrong word doesn't hurt anyone. Try and lighten up. Replace the word patent with copyright and re-read the comment. does it still make sense? then absorb it and move on. Does it not make sense? then it isn't worth getting into. http://lolpie.com/images/archive/content/1/3/lol-why-u-mad-tho-U9bbc.jpg

Correcting your mistake is not an asshole thing to do. You made a mistake. That's just a fact. It's not a matter of levity or gravity.

Being too proud to admit you should have gotten this right is an asshole thing to do. Just think for a second about why you're encountering so much resistance in this thread. Your lil' ego was bruised and apparently you don't handle that gracefully. You seem to be the only one who doesn't see that.

If "lightening up" is what you want so badly, start with yourself. "Lightening up" would mean you saying, from the very start, "hey thanks for catching my mistake" instead of crying about what a big meanie head everyone is. By demanding everyone else do what you failed to do, you're just a garden-variety hypocrite.

Or you can decide we're all just assholes and we're all conspiring to give you a hard time, that way you don't have to admit any flaw within yourself. You can protect your precious ego that way, at the cost of deluding yourself.

Re:Really? We're going to trust ICANN with this?

[ragefan]

Hmm, I don't think that the (non-US) governments whose countries use those gTLDs were really keen for them to be controlled from the US...

What you are referring to are ccTLDs, which are different from gTLDs. gTLDs are the non-country domains, such as .com, .net, .mobi or .aero.

Re:Upon hearing this...

[Beorytis]

I immediately went out and filed a patent on "noon". Sorry folks, we're first to file now... you snooze you lose.

Good for you, but I already copyrighted it.

You both fail; I Trademark'd that shit years ago!

But for all those years you failed to refer to it as Noon®, so the trademark was considered abandoned. Now it's mine.

Re:Really? We're going to trust ICANN with this?

[Yvanhoe]

I also have a problem on that, they could be dumb enough to prevent the database to be used by GPL software...

Re:Ego?

[causality]

Good old Aesop describes you rather well:

Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked, 'Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes.' People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves.

Any grapes the fox cannot reach must be sour. Any Internet forum in which you can't get your shit together must be populated by angry people.

That's your mistake. For catching it, you're very welcome.

Woohoo timezones are copyrightable!

[youn]

that's a new one... kinky, I like that... coming up next, specific types of breathing copyrighted too :)

Re:Woohoo timezones are copyrightable!

[Tomato42]

Don't forget about colours, "Barbie pink" it was I think...

Re:Woohoo timezones are copyrightable!

[Anonymous Coward]

While I'm at it I will patent a method for allowing women to achieve orgasm through oral stimulation.

Re:All this time our clocks were based on *Astrolo

[Anonymous Coward]

Not on astrology, but on astrology software company's astronomical atlas data.

Re:Ego?

[hazah]

Augh... you are actually quite frustrating. Granted I shouldn't have even followed this thread to this point, but it seems that the others are right. You were simply called out on your mistake, and then you denied it. They called you out for your denial, and now you're saying "take it easy". I'm not going to tell you what to do. Just that you seem exactly as your described. I'm assuming that if you're still responding you're somewhat motivated to clarify... The problem is that what you're saying validates others, not yourself.

Re:Ego?

[hazah]

I think my own comment was a bit on the fruitless side too. Cheers.

Re:Ego?

[Anonymous Coward]

Riiiiight.. that's what happened.

ICANN TZ URL

[SEWilco]

The URL at ICANN seems to be http://www.iana.org/time-zones

Re:ICANN TZ URL

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully at some point in the future the lawyers will OK an acknowledgement to Mr Olsen on that page.

Re:Upon hearing this...

[CanHasDIY]

I immediately went out and filed a patent on "noon". Sorry folks, we're first to file now... you snooze you lose.

Good for you, but I already copyrighted it.

You both fail; I Trademark'd that shit years ago!

But for all those years you failed to refer to it as Noon®, so the trademark was considered abandoned. Now it's mine.

That's for the lawyers to get rich deciding!

Oh yeah?

[fnj]

You know that, do you? I rather doubt it myself. The authors of the book on which much of the data in the database is based did a lot of research in the course of authoring it. There is data for many, and not a few obscure, locales at various times in history. You can't just call up the Time Czar and say "gimme all the information," you know. The linux time engine is not just for the present moment. It deals with historical time with its many local quirks too, AFAIK back to some time late in 1901 (1970-01-01 minus 2^31 seconds) - at least on a lot of systems time_t is a signed 32-bit count of seconds. There is certainly data for that period in the timezone database. I really suggest examining the files in tzdata.tar.gz. It certainly opened my eyes.

The builders of that time database were not idiots to go to astrological sources for some of their information. Whether you believe in it or not, astrologers don't just pull things out of their hat. It shouldn't surprise anyone, considering their methodology, that one of their prime concerns is time (together with calculations of the positions of celestial objects). They have done a lot of work in these areas which is extremely useful.

The source code itself states "Except where otherwise noted, Shanks & Pottenger is the source for entries through 1991, and IATA SSIM is the source for entries afterwards." It also claims "This file is in the public domain" with no restriction on its use.

I would suggest before closing one's mind, we should ask a question which AFAIK no one has asked yet. What do the authors want? Do they want a trillion dollars, do they want a limitation on purposes for which the database can be used, or do they want simple recognition and attribution? Not just now, but before the dispute arose. The source does does not appear to be marked GPL, so there is room to accommodate and negotiate.

Re:Oh yeah?

[king neckbeard]

You seem to be arguing that the authors can have a copyright on it because they worked so hard on it. It doesn't matter if they put a billion manhours into it, because US copyright is based on originality, not the sweat of the brow doctrine. That's why I mentioned Feist v. Rural.

Re:Oh yeah?

[fnj]

You are correct that "sweat of the brow" is not the determinant. I was pointing out that calling time zone data "without a doubt unoriginal" is anything but a "no-brainer." Feist v. Rural concerned copying a telephone directory. The ruling by O'Connor stated that information is not copyrightable, but collections of information may be. The required degree of creativity to gain protection for collections of information is not high; just higher than a telephone directory. The choice of what data to include and exclude, and the order and style with which the information is presented can make the required spark of creativity. So while the sweat of the brow in compiling a telephone directory does not confer blanket copyright protection, the research involved in finding the true facts of time data, identifying the incorrect items, and presenting the rules could be an entirely different matter.

Every telephone subscriber has a telephone number. There is no dispute what that number is. It is a simple one-to-one relationship. Time zones are a different matter. Quick, what collection of sources do you call to find time zone information? What geography determines the time zones? It's not a simple matter of countries, districts, or towns. It's complicated. When does daylight savings time start and stop? It's different for each location. Not every location in zone X starts and stops daylight savings on the same day. Some locations in zone X do not even observe daylight savings at all. All these particulars change repeatedly over the years, in indiosyncratic ways. Do the rules in the timezone database correspond closely with the way the book presents the data? I don't know, but I do know that it's not an open-and-shut "by" for the database.

Re:Oh yeah?

[SilentChasm]

So while the sweat of the brow in compiling a telephone directory does not confer blanket copyright protection, the research involved in finding the true facts of time data, identifying the incorrect items, and presenting the rules could be an entirely different matter.

As far as I can tell from a layman's perspective, the only thing copyrightable in that should be the presentation. It's the only thing I can think of that gets creative at all. Determining if facts are true seems like "sweat of the brow". The TZ data likely has a completely different presentation thus it shouldn't infringe.

Re:Oh yeah?

[king neckbeard]

Again, you are pointing to a lot of work, but nothing creative. Complicated and creative are completely independent of each other. That they have to go to a lot of sources and note a lot of differences doesn't make it creative. Creative would be arranging the names of the cities so they spell out CAPRICORN, AQUARIUS, or something along those lines. If you want a creative database, try this (although there are other copyrighted elements here as well) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNUDDaEOvuY

However, in both the examples, the database would be pretty much useless in the given format.

Amazing...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing, a company that makes astrology software in control of the timezone db!!! That's like having Global Warming deniers in charge of energy production....

Hello? Hello?

You cannot copyright facts

[pwileyii]

From the US Copyright office "Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation." It seems to me like the time in a certain place in the world is a fact.

Re:You cannot copyright facts

[Bucky24]

Or at the very least an idea...

Re:You cannot copyright facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. You cannot copyright facts. Or at least that is what US copyright law says.

But unfortunately people who want to make more money by monopolising information are trying to bend the interpretation of the law. This is what these people are trying. I hope they do not succeed.

Re:Really? We're going to trust ICANN with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy fuck, do you think before you post?

Protip: gTLD != ccTLD.

Let me type that slower, in case you are so fucking dense you need time to catch up: gTLD != ccTLD.

ICANN HAS TIMEZONES?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry.

element-o.p. (939033) is a bedwetter

[Anonymous Coward]

tl;dr for element-o.p. (939033)'s post: "Wah, timezones are too hard for me, as a low-functioning human, so the whole world should adapt, and while the world is at it could you shut down all water fountains so I don't piss myself?"

Now lets dissect his stupidity further.

In flight, I generally couldn't care less about what time zone I'm in; you're right. However, when I am at the airport with a boarding pass that says my flight departs at 11:30, and my watch says 10:15, do I have fifteen minutes or an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the gate (or more, depending upon how many time zones I've crossed)?

High-functioning adults -- of which you aren't one -- would either have enough of an awareness of what timezone they are in to figure that out for themselves, or they look at the dozens of displays that are around an airport, some of which are sure to show the time somewhere on them.

In contrast, you grab your blankie and suck your thumb in the middle of the terminal.

I also had an experience once where I traveled from Texas to Arizona, where I spent an hour wandering around a college campus until I found a security guard (who thought I was nuts for expecting campus offices to be open at 6:00 am). I had unknowingly traveled from Central daylight savings time to Mountain standard time, making me two hours early for an 8:00 am prospective student orientation.

High-functioning adults -- of which you aren't one -- would have known that Texas and Arizona are in different time zones and taken pains to figure out the time difference. If they hadn't known that from rote, high-functioning adults would have still reasoned that traveling nearly 1000 miles west (on a spheroid nearly 24,000 miles in diameter) would result in a time change and researched the matter accordingly.

In contrast, you piss yourself, piss on the security guard, then go on to earn a liberal arts degree.

Those are the kind of inconveniences a single, universal time zone would solve.

High-functioning adults would recognize that a single, universal time zone would cause other problems. That is why time zones are accepted. For those who can't cope with that (such as children and the mentally retarded), they are usually shielded from such details by their guardians.

Action Plan for element-o.p. (939033)

Please use your browser's print function to print this posting, and immediately bring it to your mommy/daddy/nurse/doctor/whoever keeps you from shitting all over yourself. They need to see that you are being let out unattended and a stop needs to be put to that immediately.

Re:Really? We're going to trust ICANN with this?

[DamonHD]

Quite right, got my wires crossed, and I should know better.

Rgds

Damon

Re:Really? We're going to trust ICANN with this?

[DamonHD]

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Yes I do think, and indeed was involved in discussions at the IFWP for example. But I got this one wrong, don't know why.

At least I use my real name and don't resort to childish personal attacks.

Damon

beat - swatch internet time

[locopuyo]

No worries, the internet switched to beats (swatch internet time) in 1998.

Re:Really? We're going to trust ICANN with this?

[Tacvek]

ICANN is not taking over maintenance of the timezone database. The plan has been for a long time to maintain it under the IANA.

While technically the IANA is part of ICANN, they are still quite distinct. I have nothing but respect for the IANA, while I have nothing but disdain for ICANN (the policy organization). The difference? ICANN's board is not able to meddle with IANA, or the IAB (Internet Architecture Board) would designate a new IANA. Without the IANA, ICANN could only set, but not enforce policy, and the US Government would terminate the contract with ICANN. The result would be the death of ICANN.

The timezone database will continue to be maintained by an IETF designated expert, not by an ICANN policy committee. The internet draft (draft-lear-iana-timezone-database-04) has been approved for publication as an RFC, and the IANA has now implemented its side as per the standard RFC publication process. The IANA time-zone page remains unofficial until the RFC is published, but its already a done deal.

Re:Really? We're going to trust ICANN with this?

[Tacvek]

I should also note that the database is currently being maintained by Robert Elz, in the absence of a formally appointed TZ Coordinator. IANA has effectively accepted him as interim TZ Coordinator[1] by they way of adopting the release he made on October 10 as the initial IANA published tzdata file.

[1] Until a formal TZ Coordinator is chosen by mailing list consensus and confirmed by the IESG, as per the as yet unpublished RFC.

They used to hang charlatans and astrologers

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did they stop?

ICANN...

[Anonymous Coward]

ICANN has timezone.

Re:Really? We're going to trust ICANN with this?

[jc79]

Rage much, AC? Get out of the basement and go for a walk. Look at the trees, the sky. Smile at people you pass. Breathe. Realise that there is more to life than someone on the internet making a simple error (which they have realised, apologised for, and corrected). Did anyone die because of that mistake? Is the world still turning?

Now go back and apologise to the person you spewed internet hate fluid at. It will make you a better person, and less likely to be patronised by others who find your actions similar to those of a 4-year old who has learned some naughty words.

Re:Upon hearing this...

[Beorytis]

Looks like we were all too slow: NOON.