Slashdot Mirror
Russia Moves From Summer Time To Standard Time
jones_supa writes: Russia's legislature, often accused of metaphorically turning back the clock, has decided to do it literally – abandoning the policy of keeping the country on daylight-saving time all year. The 2011 move to impose permanent "summer time" in 2011 was one of the most memorable and least popular initiatives of Dmitry Medvedev's presidency. It forced tens of millions to travel to their jobs in pitch darkness during the winter. In the depths of December, the sun doesn't clear the horizon in Moscow until 10am. The State Duma, the lower house of parliament, voted 442-1 on Tuesday to return to standard time this autumn and stay there all year.
The article also discusses a ban on swearing in books, plays, and films that went into effect today in Russia.
Fuck that.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Russia has very short summer
They knew that people will be swearing when the new time will become official, as such they made two laws at the same time. Russians themselves are, actually, unhappy and in their view this is a pure restriction of the free speech.
in Russia, TIME TELLS YOU
happy trials
I donno, I guess they gambled on us finding this story appropriate. A throw of the Dice if you will...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I'm a software developer, and dealing with unpredictable timezone changes is not fun. This is definitely relevant to me.
So... How is this even tangentially related to being newsworthy for a tech site?
Like, seriously, WTF?!
It's newsworthy because we finally have proof that another countries legislature is at least, just as ridiculous as our own.
says the man who has never had to manage servers in different countries where time zone changes can totally screw with automated management scripts.
Whoops. DST.
Consider the inherent illogical move of banning words. Everybody has to know the words if you want to ban them. They have to know the banned word in order to not use it, thus someone has to use it, to teach them not to use it !? One assumes Russian will simply use the English words khuy (cock), pizda (cunt), yebat (to fuck) and blyad (whore) instead.
Surely the craziness of teaching people words they are not allowed to use to make sure they can adhere to the law and not use them will dawn on them.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
So... How is this even tangentially related to being newsworthy for a tech site? Like, seriously, WTF?!
It's not, really. I mean, some people here have to deal with maintaining time zone changes on servers and such, so it will be relevant to a few.
But it's mostly to draw out two major types of people who love to debate time issues on Slashdot: (1) people who want to have the perpetual debate about whether Daylight Time EVER makes sense (or whether it ever "saves" anything), and (2) the people who love to propose their favorite "NEW" alternative time and calendar initiatives that are generally very similar to ones that have been debated by weirdos for hundreds of years and have absolutely no chance of being widely adopted.
Just wait... that's the sort of discussion to expect whenever anyone brings up time standards.
This is how we do it in Saskatchewan. Permanent CST (Central Standard Time). And that's how we like it.
We also have tempurature ranges from -45ÂC to +45ÂC,and 9 months of winter, 3 months of potholes. :-)
Don't forget the third type: the ones who can't figure out why people get so worked up angry about an hour difference, and couldn't care either way.
Isn't that all handled these days in the tzdata file?
That's why you should never deal with dates/timezones yourself; use libraries and avoid lethal headaches. For instance, the good people taking care of tzdata are already working on it.
"It forced tens of millions to travel to their jobs in pitch darkness during the winter." This is called "living in northern latitudes", people have been doing it for millennia. It also forces millions to "suffer" through really long summer days. Those of us who live in NYC also call it the "running of the boobies' and you can pry it from our cold, dead hands.
What is more concerning is your switch from ranting about day light savings time to an aside about censoring, well, everything.
Shifting time an hour is the act of a mad-man but telling other people what they can say and how they can express themselves is an aside? You should get your priorities in order.
In Australia, the clocks are upside-down.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Even then its still a headache.
Just because someone else fixed the library, doesn't mean my servers and embedded devices have the update yet.
What are they doing reading an article about DST then?
Obligatory Onion link and XKCD link
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
And it takes zero effort to get updated tzdata on 'n' different platforms that a company might run? Including outdated ones (sad, but common).
I was involved in the project to manage fan out the last time US changed DST rules a few years back. It's a project.
At the time I would occasionally read the tzdata mailing list. I was amazed at how many countries kept changing the rules willy-nilly. No one in government has any understanding of computer systems. I assume these countries with frequent rule changes get used to half of their computerized systems showing the wrong time.
In Putin's Russia, time fucks you.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
and this is why UTC was invented.
We do use libraries, but as the other posters have mentioned, keeping these systems up to date is a nightmare. Relying on customers to keep their systems up to date too is even worse.
both!
We use UTC internally, but that doesn't stop customers from reporting bugs with wrong timestamps in the UI since they don't have the latest timezone rule patches installed.
Some things have their own time implementations. Other things are not updated without manual intervention.
Personally I see some merit in the Chinese option of having the entire place on Beijing time and adjusting work hours regionally instead - or just doing everything on UTC for the rest of us.
In my state we had a vote on daylight saving. For was 49%, against was 51% and less than half a percent very faulty (informal) votes or non-attendance and that's with compulsory voting. In all other votes there's more people that turn in blank papers or ballots with things like "none of those bastards" written on them, but on daylight saving people seemed to care more about the issue.
Perhaps you live in Florida.
To avoid dark mornings in the winter, standard time is needed. Yet, it is not needed in the summer - mornings are bright in either standard or summer time. So there is a choice. Summer time gives those bright summer evenings, so the answer to the choice is clear for some.
Who was the one legislator that voted against going back to standard time?
Uhm... I really don't wanna break it to you this way, but ... My servers (in different time-zones) are centralized.
Give it time, we'll eventually hit a 36 hour day.
Om, nomnomnom...
Ok, I stand corrected. There's the one touching point...
Also, I hear they turn counter-clockwise.
Even then its still a headache.
Just because someone else fixed the library, doesn't mean my servers and embedded devices have the update yet.
Presumably by "the library" you mean "the tzdata files"; this involves no code changes. The whole point of the Olson timezone database and library was to remove any knowledge of specific daylight savings time rules from any code whatsoever, so that changes to the rules could be handled without having to change source code, recompile, and relink every program (this was back in 1987, when shared libraries were still somewhat rare on UN*X systems). Thank you, Clorox and company.
But there still needs to be an update, and that might require restarting processes that have already loaded the now-out-of-date rule information, so, yeah, it's not as if the timezone cabal can wave their hands and magically update all the systems out there.
So... How is this even tangentially related to being newsworthy for a tech site?
Like, seriously, WTF?!
It's newsworthy because we finally have proof that another countries legislature is at least, just as ridiculous as our own.
Note that the quoted statement can be made in a number of different countries; if you want proof that a lot of countries fuck around with daylight savings time rules, etc., just download the tzdata files and read.
What about the programmers writing the date/timezone libraries? It ain't turtles all the way down :)
They're content with a flashing 0:00 on their clock. That flashing means it is working, right? For telling the time, there is a consultant.
bickerdyke
That's the great idea about that russion system. 3 years of all-year-round DST/summer time, then all back to Standard/Winter-Time, and in a few years, they'll be going for a few years of summer time again. Like Westeros.
Summary ommits that during soviet times, russian time was also DST all year round, so this is not a new idea from 2011. That was just the latest iteration.
bickerdyke
So... How is this even tangentially related to being newsworthy for a tech site? Like, seriously, WTF?!
Hi. As the submitter, my reasoning was that timezones are quite nerdy topic. There has also been lots of daylight saving articles in Slashdot over the years. As far as I know, Slashdot hasn't ever been purely tech site.
Aw, scrap that. I actually submitted this only because I can totally annoy you with it, and because of all the possibilities for Soviet Russia jokes.
I have heard that those radio-controlled (DCF-77 in Europe) mechanical clocks always do the time adjustment clockwise, so when moving from summer time to winter time, you might hear a "kkkrrrrrrrrrr..." in an unconvenient moment, when the clock patiently goes all 23 hours forward.
But don't you think the ban on writing it down will strengthen the oral tradition that got those phrases into the language in the first place? It was probably all this unfettered desktop publishing that kept the phrase for "strike on the cunt with an 89mm floppy" out of the language until it was too late for it to have meaning. Now it's just pointless, and soon it will pass out of mind, like data stored on an 89mm floppy.
My car's clock live on UTC, mostly because I'm too lazy to adjust it. The problem is that when it's serviced the mechanic "helpfully" adjusts the time, which caused a fair amount of confusion the first time. Same goes for the clock in my flat - fortunately it doesn't get messed around by my garage.
Funny you mention tides and ambiguity - what really winds me up is when things like tide tables are published with no mention of a time zone, Pop quiz hot shot, you draw 2.2m, do you assume you're at HW+3, or HW+4 and hope that there's a roller skate on the keel.
What's to say that GigaplexNZ isn't actually working on tzdata?
Palming the problem off on someone maintaining a library is great until you find out that you are infact the library maintainer.
that is true
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
My car's clock live on UTC, mostly because I'm too lazy to adjust it.
It's quirky. But could also be a symptom of a benign kind of OCD. Then again, perhaps I'm projecting my prospect of live on you. In which case, please ignore cheerfully.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Lacy underwear is banned. http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02... You may laugh at a regulation like this, but it went into effect yesterday.
Bullshit. Humans have internal timers that are synced to the sun - think about that for a moment. Humans have until recently risen with the sun.
But if we do continue with your line of reasoning we should go back to local time, something that most part of the world had until forced to change - often because of the introduction of trains. Now that would be a huge problem for software!
that is true
My mechanical one does this. The digital ones just boringly change instantly
countries, states, regions changing their time zones has been the bane of developers for decades.
So you like fragile systems? If one have problems with something as simple as daylight saving time the codebase is sure to have a lot of other timing problems that require a lot more effort to manage.
Nope the concept of a weekend off will disappear though.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The State Duma, the lower house of parliament, voted 442-1 on Tuesday to return to standard time this autumn and stay there all year.
Great move! And I guess that means it will take another three years before it sinks in that DST does still make sense in summer, when instead of being woken up by daylight two or three hours before the workday begins, you can have that extra summer daylight at the end of the day, when you can actually enjoy it in peace.
The mainstream media is distracting you from what's really going on is Russia.
Anyhow, before condemning their new laws, have a look that what the FCC says.
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/obsc...
ayottesoftware.com
In other news, the one holdout was also revealed to be the one dentist who didn't recommend sugarless gum (for patients who chew gum).
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
In Soviet Russia censorship loses time???? .....No!
In Soviet Russia....er..um.....In Capitalist Slashdot submitters troll you?
Nah......It just doesn't work!
In Capitalist /. expected "Russian Reversal" meme reversal, trolls troll submitter?
Frankly I'm not convinced about "all the possibilities" dude....
The 2005 changes to daylight saving time policy in the USA had a small effect on energy-consumption. Presumably there will be some effect in Russia, too.
At least this particular bit of ridiculousness is being undone.
Which is more than I can say of the US government.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Sounds like something from the 1800's and the Indian wars in the USA.
Only the government would believe that you can cut a foot from the top of the blanket, sew it to the bottom of the blanket, and have a longer blanket.
http://lolzombie.com/wp-conten...
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Yeah. Indeed all of them go 11 hours, because there was a mistake in my message: I forgot that the face of an analog clock is 12 hours instead of 24. Now, additionally we have to keep in mind that while the clock adjusts the time, the real time goes on forward at the same time, so we actually would have tweak it a bit more than 11 hours if we want to be spot on.
So from now on they’ll have the luxury of seeing a glimpse of the sun when they drive to work, yet they’ll have to resort to pitch black darkness when they get back. In summer, the sun will rise at 4 in the morning and it will be dark before nine in the evening. It won’t be long till there is a popular backlash against it – people will demand their DST back because they want their beauty sleep unimpeded by the overly early sunrise, and they want their evenings to be light longer.
At least that’s precisely what happened in my country when the government abolished DST for a couple of years. Plus there were ramifications regarding time differences with adjacent countries that had previously been in the same timezone. All in all, the experience that looked nice on paper (and I was initially for it) turned out horribly wrong. Even DST all year round (in effect moving the timezone one zone eastwards) is a saner approach, as long as humans are involved.
time moves YOU. Oh, wait...
What tides are published without location?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
err. tide tables.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But you still have to push the updated data files to the device. With embedded devies that's not necessarily simple.
And even if tzdata is updated, sometimes you need to tell programs to read the updated data, which isn't just a simple restart. One example is MySQL where you have to run mysql_tzinfo_to_sql to load the zoneinfo files into the internal equivalent (it's stored internally in database tables).
Yes, as I said in the post to which you replied:
Same goes for the clock in my fla.
I'm in the UK and I keep my PCs on GMT (or UTC) all year round - I can't see any point in fooling yourself that it's an hour later than it really is. I adjust times on the fly for work and social purposes. One of my PCs runs a weather station and if that automatically changed time then I'd end up with duplicate or lost observations - not good.
This far north you're always going to have a lack of daylight in winter and too much of it in summer, tinkering with clocks won't change that (in London daylight ranges from just under 8 hours in late December to just over 16 hours in late June, but even at midnight GMT at this time of year there's a faint glow on the northern horizon on a clear night).
Side note: I always used to suffer from a lack of sleep in the summer. Once I stuck to UTC it stopped all that and I now sleep soundly year-round. Of course, as far as everyone else is concerned I'm just going to bed an hour later and getting up an hour later in summer...
For people who understand how pointless it is to perpetually have clocks set one hour off, it should promote Russophilia.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Job well done! I'd like to get back at you some day ; )
The problem is that tide tables in the UK are [as a rule] published with times explicitly in UTC. However, tides are occasionally published on the sailing instructions (regatta race information) without any mention of timezone, so do you assume that they're using local time (most likely), or UTC. It's easy to check, but it annoys me when it's done by a big event organiser such as Cowes Week - three letters are all you need to make everything completely unambiguous.
The Russians could just go to ReactOS, and not have to worry about this one
Time should be recalibrated so that it's all in powers of 2. 64 seconds will be a minute, 64 minutes would be an hour, 32 hours a day, and so on. Readjust how long a second is so that the above adds up to a day.
So Humans who live around the Arctic Circle - Lapland, North slopes of Alaska, Northern Canada, et al - they sleep for 6 months continuous and stay awake the other 6, right?