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Ask Slashdot: Where Do You Stand on Daylight Saving Time?
New submitter gbcox links to this article about how the switch between Standard Time and Daylight Saving Time can be dangerous, but writes Personally, I favor year 'round DST — I like the extra sunlight in the evening... but regardless, I just wish we'd pick one and stop futzing with the time twice a year. As it is right now, we only have about 4 months of standard time as it is... is it really worth the effort to switch the clocks for only four months? I think not. Where do you stand? If you have a strong opinion, it would be nice if you start your subject line in comments with "For it!" or "Against it!" If you think that the yearly clock-shifting is a good idea, when do you think each shift should occur? For those not keeping score, tonight is the switchover time for most Americans.
We don't celebrate DST in Tucson, but all my distant suppliers etc. do, so I have to adjust my mental clock to deal with their different offsets.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Statistics show that the heart attack rate shows a small but significant peak following the weekend DST is activated. You're fucking with the biorhythm of people in ways that are only rivaled by forcing them to travel from east to west coast twice a year and having to adjust the time accordingly. And for what? "More sunlight hours" in the Summer (because, yes, the NORMAL time is the time you have in WINTER!)? So more time that I have to deal with screen glare, yeah, that's what I want!
4 out of 5 people are "night" people, i.e. people who have less trouble adapting to staying up later than they have to getting up early. And why the fuck are we catering to the 20%?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A Plan To Fix Daylight Savings Time By Creating Two National Time Zones
I hear a lot of complaining about daylight savings time, but I really don't hear much in the way of support in favor of it. That inclines me to believe that people really don't support it, but because it's not completely horrible the movement to abolish it hasn't managed to gain that much traction.
I don't live where DST is used, so I can't really say either way how I feel about it.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Messing with sleep is reason enough. If you get people out of step they're more likely to:
-make mistakes
-work less/put less effort into work
-be angry/experience negative emotions
And the list goes on. All of those lead to significant economic losses in aggregate.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
I care about it even less now that I don't have to change my own clocks. I barely notice it now.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Eh, I just set everything to UTC and don't worry about weird things, like cron jobs between midnight and 1am running twice or not at all every once in a while.
Of course, my last major employer has everything set to PST/PDT, since that's where their major data center is, even though they have rather large branches in every major timezones. And because of some stupid thing in Oracle 10/11 of all things, all of the new data centers in other time zones /also/ are running in PST/PDT, because it's the only way to get Oracle's XDCR to work.
Which means their new international data center in China will not only be on PST/PDT, but will enjoy 4 DST transitions per year, since China switches their clocks a few weeks off from North America.
I greatly appreciate extra hours outside in the evening, and the ability to leave work while it's still light outside as a counter to winter doldrums. I would support moving permanently to DST except that means kids have to wait for the bus in the dark for a few months, which no one supports.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I hear a lot of complaining about daylight savings time, but I really don't hear much in the way of support in favor of it.
That's because people tend to be loud if they don't like something but tend not to say much if they either like it or don't care. After all - what's the point of cheering for DST since that is what we already have? Yea for the status quo?
Personally I wish we would go to Daylight Saving Time year around. I want as much time with sunlight after work as possible. When we shift back to standard time I go to work when it's dark and come home when it is dark. With DST I would at least get an hour or so of daylight in the winter.
Then start school later on the dark days. Why is there such an opposition to businesses changing hours with the seasons, rather than changing the clocks?
Learn to love Alaska
I would love to see the opposite, there is way too much daylight in the summer, but very little night sky for someone trapped in first shift like I. In the winter it would be nice to have at least an hour of sunlight when you get home for snowblowing.
In the summer it would be nice to have some dark before bed. I have been forced to sleep a few hours after work so I can get some time in the dark each day.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
All daylight savings does for me is make it so that I drive to work with the rising sun in my eyes and drive home with the setting sun in my eyes. I'd rather it just be dark than put up with that for a good chunk of the year.
I don't care what the offset is from GMT, just leaveitthehellalone. If businesses need winter hours, they can have those.
The problem is it doesn't work that way. Businesses are timed to suit the population and within regulations, populations live to suit businesses. You can't say just let everyone do a free for all because a typical shop can't open from 7-3 and have the same customers as the 8-4 range.
I don't care because I can start and stop work whenever I want. In summer I go to work at 6 and in winter at 7:30-8ish to maximise my day. But not everyone has that option. If I were working for a shop that forces a 9-5 working day I would have very strong feelings about daylight savings time. Given that in the summer we have 2 hours of sunlight which are effectively unusable due to noise restrictions in early hours of the morning, and lack of sun after work.
Here in Saskatchewan, we do not observe Daylight Saving Time. The entire province is really smack dab center between two timezones. A number of years ago our provincial government decided to do away with DST. We are now, effectively, permanently in Central Standard Time.
As a business owner, who deals with clients across North America, I have a lot of people try to correct me when I say our timezone is CST, and they believe it should be CDT. Some people simply cannot comprehend that we don't observe DST.
As an aside, the only argument we have about the time around here is whether we are stuck on CST or MDT.