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BBC Clock Inaccurate - 100 Days To Fix?
mikejuk writes "The BBC home page has just lost its clock because the BBC Trust upheld a complaint that it was inaccurate. The clock would show the current time on the machine it was being viewed on and not an accurate time as determined by the BBC. However, the BBC have responded to the accusations of inaccuracy by simply removing the clock stating that it would take 100 staffing days to fix. It further says: 'Given the technical complexities of implementing an alternative central clock, and the fact that most users already have a clock on their computer screen, the BBC has taken the decision to remove the clock from the Homepage in an upcoming update.' They added, '...the system required to do this "would dramatically slow down the loading of the BBC homepage", something which he said was "an issue of great importance to the site's users".
Secondly, if the site moved to a format in which users across the world accessed the same homepage, irrespective of whichever country they were in, it would be "impossible to offer a single zonally-accurate clock."'"
I'm not sure I can trust a source which says "it has been stated that it would take 100 programmer hours to fix" then quotes a paragraph stating 100 staff days. Regardless it is harder than it looks: the BBC doesn't want to get into the business of running a time server, nor trying to automatically determine which time zone any particular visitor to the site happens to be in (by, what, IP address tracing?).
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
For a new Time Lord!
I'm not signing anything
It took one large Luxembourgish bank nine months to change SUPPORTED_OS = MAC into SUPPORTED_OS = Linux32 in a configuration file in a jar named LuxTrust_Gemalto_CryptoTI_Adapter_LIN32_1.4.jar (yes, they did indeed accidentally put the Mac config file into the Linux jar... it's that stupid...)
Another bank is celebrating the first year anniversary of this same bug right now as we speak :-) (unfixed yet, of course)
Reason for the slowness (in both cases): when fixing such a mixup, according to their procedures, the entire test suite (... which incidentally, didn't catch this bug in the first place...) needs to be re-run, and this takes weeks, and so they shy away from the expense.
So we end up in the paradoxical situation where the presence doesn't reduce the number of bugs seen in production, but actually increases it. Rather than catching bugs early, the test suite instead perpetuates existing bugs...
The situation is crazy and I have every sympathy with the Beeb. The clock design itself is very nostalgic for those of us of a certain age who have grown up with the BBC. They naturally created a simple clock that reflects the user's local time. A handful of morons who cannot set their computer's clock properly complained that the BBC's clock was inaccurate. The BBC cannot be expected to implement a global solution which cannot rely on the local host having any accurate time information and takes into account time zones, geographical location etc even if the issue of running an accurate server-synchronised clock is trivial. Also note that everything they do is heavily scrutinised by rabid right-wing politicians and licence-fee payers. My only gripe with the Beeb is that that it's acquiesced to these stupid complaints and withdrawn the clock rather than telling the complainants where to go.
Gaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh. I thought this was a website that was supposed to be populated with technical, computer literate people, even programmers.
The end user requirement: "Show the time"
They mean "Show the correct time for my current location"
This is easy: Every (ok, perhaps there's someone still using an old IBM PC computer where you have to set the clock at boot) browser is running on a machine that has a local clock. So we'll use it to display the time.
Some end users then start complaining that the time on the BBC website is wrong.
There's two obvious reasons for this: 1. The user has taken the iphone/ipad whatever on holiday and haven't updated the timezone or 2. Their local clock is just plain wrong.
OK. So we've now established that the end user is incapable of correctly determining and setting the correct time and timezone on their machine. So we, as a programmer, have to do this for them. Cookies, asking the user, etc obviously aren't going to work. If they cannot get their own clock right then they're not going to get the website configuration right either.
This is hard, hard, hard to solve. IMO it's impossible - what do you do about people coming through proxies in different timezones?
The BBC have made exactly the right decision - the old solution was the correct one. PEBKAC. TPTB have decided that the correct solution wasn't good enough. So don't waste any more time or money trying to hack together something just to satisfy end user requirements that are fundamentally broken. End users can use the clock on their machine anyway and they won't complain to the BBC if it's wrong (presumably they complain to Microsoft instead)
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
100 person days have been spent reading and commenting on the ./ article. (101 now)
Wow what a nothing issue. It's not accurate because it's tied to the machine I view it from??? Then it's the fault of the end user. The BBC have taken the correct approach to this issue they've decided we're too stupid to have a clock!! The scary thing is I suspect that in general they are correct.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
The BBC domestic services only use GMT/BST (Greenwich Mean Time in winter, British Summer Time in summer). One time zone. Although they can be received in other countries in other timezones - for example BBC1 and BBC2 domestic TV channels are provided on cable in the Netherlands - no reference is made to those other timezones.
The BBC's overseas services primarily use GMT but are broadcast regionally (e.g. "Middle East", "West Africa") where they may optionally mention secondary timezones on-air. For example, the BBC World Service's South Asia radio broadcasts may say "It's eleven hours GMT, fifteen-thirty hours in Delhi."
The BBC has no European radio service any more. European relays of the BBC World Service, including the relay on Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) radio inside the UK, use the African stream. This primarily uses GMT but occasionally additionally references a secondary timezone in a major African city such as Johannesburg or Lagos. There is a specific African breakfast news programme on the BBC World Service's African stream, presented jointly from London and Johannesburg, tailored around the morning hours across several African timezones.
Live presenters on the BBC World Service may also announce the time as simply "minutes past the hour" without referencing which hour they're referring to, for example "It's twenty minutes past the hour". These are particularly prevalent for African streams. These "minutes past" timechecks are avoided in regions with timezones that are offset by 30 minutes, such as India.
BBC overseas TV timezones fit into two categories; regional and worldwide. Worldwide services such as the BBC World news channel or BBC Entertainment do not usually reference the time as spoken word, but instead represent the time using on-screen graphics. The graphics will show GMT plus a selection of 3-5 timezones appropriate to the region the stream is broadcast to. For example, the European stream of BBC World will use GMT, Central European time and Moscow time. These are typically shown as full-screen text announcements for future programming (e.g. "Hard Talk, Mon-Fri at 08:30 GMT, 10:30 CEST, 12:30 Moscow" for the European stream). Where programming is shared between regions, they may either use opt-outs for regional time displays or use a more general subset of timezones (e.g. GMT, EST, India; very rarely, GMT is omitted in favour of CET).
Regional overseas TV services such as BBC America or BBC Arabic will use whatever timezones that region uses and will cope with it just like local domestic services. They will not generally use GMT.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Wow what a nothing issue. It's not accurate because it's tied to the machine I view it from??? Then it's the fault of the end user. The BBC have taken the correct approach to this issue they've decided we're too stupid to have a clock!! The scary thing is I suspect that in general they are correct.
The point is that they've done this in response to formal complaints... which means that yes, in some cases the users *are* too stupid to have a clock, and not only that, those same stupid people are willing to kick up a fuss about it and raise complaints.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
You misunderstand the issue. The site WAS pulling the time from the local computer. People were complaining because the BBC site then showed the time wrong if their local clock was wrong. As it's impossible to accurately geolocate everyone (proxies, missing geo-ip info, NAT, etc) they were left with limited choices - 1) keep getting the complaints, 2) offer a variety of clocks or a dropdown list to choose your timezone (because, people who can't set their clock are going to know their timezone?), 3) offer a clock set to GMT only (against, most people don't know their own timezone so this would be fairly useless) or 4) pull the clock.
The BBC decided the best course of action was to pull the clock and then the petty, stupid complaints about it would stop. Now they're going to start getting the complaints about "I always go to the BBC website to find out what the time on my computer is, but you've removed the clock.."
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Given that the vast majority of computers already display their time on the screen; it is reasonable to assume the only the purpose of an additional clock on the BBC website is to validate its accuracy.
n.b. a large proportion of the population grew up setting their watches to the BBC's pips, it is also natural to consider them an authority on the subject.
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