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Daylight Saving Time Change On Sunday For N. America
An anonymous reader writes Just a reminder that DST starts this weekend for most of North America. The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea and want it to stop. If that was done, the main question would then probably be whether to go to Standard time year-round, or "summer" time year-round (more). For the latter, there is some evidence that it helps reduce crime (at least initially); for the former, more northern locations would have sunrise occur 08:30 or later, which would make the morning commute difficult. Some even argue that the U.S. should go to only two timezones. The DST change occurs at the end of March in the EU, so there will be a second round of confusion for trans-Atlantic conference calls then.
Except for those in Arizona, you insensitive clod!
> The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea....
Do you have a source for this?
a no nonsense patriot like Obama should pass a law against DST
The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea and want it to stop.
I know some people don't like it, but a majority? I really doubt it. Citation?
I don't generally complain about articles on Slashdot, but this is ridiculous. It reminds me of that Simpsons episode with the newspaper having the front-page headline "Christmas Occurs". I like reading about some not-strictly-tech stuff on Slashdot, but can we please not have articles to remind us of something that's marked on the calendar?
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Go to 30 minutes forward year-round.
Although I don't think Canadians are insensitive clods.
DST is not a bad idea. Who the hell is going to wake up at 4:00 a.m. in June? Who is going to do anything enjoyable or productive in the wee hours of the morning when they've still got a looming commute to work?
Stop all the damned whining and enjoy the sunlight while you're actually awake.
and leave it there permanently. Split the hour.
The older I get the longer it takes me to re-adjust my internal clock. Pick one or the other and stick to it.
I thought the problem was that half of all people still think that it's doing them some good.
Will moot all this. Prepare now!
E minor.
The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea and want it to stop.
Got a source for that other than your rectal database?
Except the Navajo Nation within Arizona, which goes observes Daylight Time, except the Hopi Nation within the Navajo Reservation which doesn't.
My biggest problem with shifting clocks is that some of my devices auto-adjust for DST but others do not and I don't know which are which. Things were easier when I just moved all my clocks before going to bed the night before.
Meaning we move the clock forward so that workers are tricked into thinking that they wake up at 7am when in reality they wake up at 6am? What will we do when 7am feels early, move the clock again so that it shows 8am?
All possible comments in this topic compressed in one line:
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/13/03/08/203231/is-daylight-saving-time-worth-saving
The easiest solution is to have one time worldwide. Essentially, use the military Zulu time (Greenwich Mean Time) for everything. Then there is no confusion about what time it is and international (and coast to coast) communication would be simplified.
And while we are at it, let's eliminate the 24 hr day and 60 minute hour which are based on Sumerian arithmetic. Let's use digital (base 10) time. The primary unit would be the Centon (1/100th of a planetary rotation) which would mean there would be 100 Centons in a day and each would be equal to about 15 of your puny Earthling minutes. Millons would then be equivalent to 1.5 minutes and the new second (.001 Centons) would be about the same as the existing second. Easy to deal with.
The issue of daylight would be dealt with locally. Shops and offices would open at whatever time they choose (just like they do now) but it would probably be the equivalent of the old 8AM or 9AM.
There. I've solved it for you, so no further discussion is necessary. :)
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Is this why we come to Slashdot? Because we don't know what ntp is, or how it works, so we don't really have to think about it a whole lot? I can't see how this qualifies as news for nerds. What a waste of a front-page article.
Bunch of babies complaining about changing the time. Chances are, you don't even have to do anything as it changes by itself on most devices, other than good old dumb clocks. Even the "latest" (like 10 year old now) alarm clock have a simply button you can press to switch between the two.
There is no issue, your computer figures out all the differences.
Was wondering why I feel so tired...
N.A. having only one time zone makes sense since it would allow network TV executives to have to think less and put up zero reminders that their awesome entertainment is shown at different times in different time zones. That's so confusing to everyone as thinking is hard. Instead of nine o'clock eastern, it would be simply nine o'clock. So simple even a caveman could do it.
Whatever system people use to measure the day, it makes no difference to when the sun rises or sets, or passes its meridian, for that matter. All such schemes are essentially arbitrary, the only important factor being whether a scheme can identify a point in time in some convenient and mutually intelligible way.
Anyways I'm all for daylight savings year round as I've got news for the *wah* makes morning commute teh hard. Sun doesn't rise until after 8a in the winter most of the time here anyways and I for one would rather have a slim chance of some sunlight when I get home as the other side of this is that winter is usually pretty cloudy and dreary here anyways and on some days so heavy an overcast it never looks better than twilight all day long.
Here in Minnesota, we have large stores like Mills Fleet Farm and Wal-Mart that have extended hours, if not open 24 hours, and stock items that typical farmers need for maintaining Livestock and doing various repairs. This can also be supplemented with Amazon orders that can be delivered directly to your home. There is an ever decreasing need for DST changes just to support farmers. Also, we have had the electric light for more than 100 years now. I think it's time to change. Farmers will be able to adapt. If they can't, then maybe they should be replaced with robots.
An hour earlier than what?
Humans have been phase-locked to the mean solar day for just over 200 out of the last 6 million years.
1883: Railroads create the first time zones
Not even the sun is phase-locked to mean solar time. There's this little detail called the Equation of time whose discovery dates back to the Babylonians, which governs annual variation in apparent solar time. Apparent solar time just happens to be the primary zeitgeber on circadian rhythmicity in all mammals (that I've heard of) and a great deal more.
Majority of what population? People living north of the 49th? I doubt it.
Majority of people who wish pi was equal to 3 and that the earth's orbit were circular? Almost certainly, even though I don't think these two simplicity boners are conceptually compatible.
It sounds like what you want is Swatch Internet Time http://www.pcpro.co.uk/computi...
Its still wintertime with two feet of snow on the ground. DST isn't supposed occur in the winter. DST now spans 8 months of the year. It is now an bloated horological pig that is dominating the entire calendar. It's like Christmas taking over November and October. The expanded DST is one the gifts of GW Bush's incompetence and stupidity that keeps on giving.
It doesn't matter which we go with, let's just pick one and stick with it year round. The natural cycles make it so that sunrise and sunset change dramatically from December to June. They can't legislate away the tilt of the Earth so let's start by accepting nature and science and do away with this nonsense of changing the clocks.
permanently spring 3 hours ahead
so we wake up and have dismal darkness in the morning (6AM=3AM). lunch means the sun came up just an hour or two ago (12PM=9AM)
but here's the winning point: when we go home (6PM=3PM) we have glorious sunlight all evening with our friends and family
until we go to sleep at midnight (12AM=9PM), the sun setting with us
but really, i just wish the usa would finally go metric like the rest of the modern fucking world
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I try to make sure that the only clocks I have are connected to the internet other automatically adjusted sources - computer, cell phone, DVR, "atomic" radio clock, etc. If it's not connected to the internet or some other source for updating time zone data (because, not only do we need to change the time twice a year, we need to change when we do it, too, and differently depending on location), then I try to buy one that doesn't have a clock so I don't need to bother.
The only clock I still need to adjust that I don't just ignore is my car radio. Do new cars have internet-connected clock/radios?
Despite this great convenience of automatically adjusting clocks, DST is still stupid.
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I love the late day sun in the Summer. In Winter, dark is dark, who cares.
My main gripe about the changes back and forth are when they occur. Early March is too early to Spring Forward, even down here in the south, and early November is too late to Fall Back. I am old enough to remember when we DID go DST all year. I think it was in 1973 during the first oil embargo, and the idea was to save energy. Not really sure how, or if, that worked at all. I do know that in central Ohio, where I was at the time, it stayed dark until pretty late in the morning, and everyone was talking about the kids at the bus stop at Zero Dark Thirty.
There have been studies that show an increase in traffic accidents during a period after the transition, and other studies that we are more refreshed if we wake up to a slowly increasing level of light in the morning. I know I do.
Now, since this is a SAVINGS plan we really need to get some interest on the savings. We could save all that daylight during the summer when we have plenty and get it back in the winter when we need it!
One whole hour, how do you manage?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
We are so far east in the Eastern time zone that when we go to Standard Time, we get to see no sun whatsoever in the winter if you work a daytime job.
We really should be in the Atlantic time zone, along with the Maritime Provinces but that makes too much sense.
--
BMO
as long as it is dark when I go to work and dark or barely starting to get light when I leave work I don't care (work third shift so 12-8 am in darkness is fine by me). Just annoying to try to go to sleep when the sun is out.
And personally I prefer that the hour hand (analogue is the only way, baby) graphically represents the position of the sun at my present location. I kinda thought that is what the timepiece is supposed to indicate, location, in space as well as time.
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This shouldn't be a posted story, it should be a Poll question, and we'd comment on the Poll as per usual.
I'd prefer 'DST' all year 'round. A little extra daylight at the end of the day is a good thing.
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I agree with the article proposing a year long DST. I really look forward to setting my clock an hour ahead and getting an extra hour of daylight in the afternoon. I love the really late sunsets in summer. I'm not a morning person, and the dark mornings don't have much of an effect on my emotional state. And really, even without DST in the winter, most off us in the midwest wake up and go to work in the dark. Sunrise is just really late, and it sucks coming back home in the dark.
I think DST is a crime against nature, a testament to human arrogance, and largely motivated by greed. Adding to the confusion are the "lines" on the map designating the various time zones. They often are determined by economic zones (we just have to be in the same zone as New York City) and are often not reflective of the natural day/night rhythm of local geography. Stop the madness!
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
The solution is actually pretty simple: use Google. To understand what time it is in a different city, use
time in London
To schedule a multi-timezone meeting, have the leader declare, e.g., "the meeting will be at 7AM London time", and allow each participant to figure out when that will be for themselves using queries such as
time in New York when 7am in London
Our company has been using this method to organize our international meetings with participants from five distinct timezones for some years now. Works like a charm.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Seeing how nobody can here agree what to do and whether to stay back or leap forward, we should meet half way.
Move the clocks 30 mins forward tonight and leave them there, permanently.
Everyone's happy. Democracy wins. Terrorists lose. Yada, yada, yada.
How about we just split the difference Sunday morning and leave it alone from now on? DST irritates nearly everyone here in the US. Lets just call it quits. Darn Ben Franklin and his stupid idea. Cows and farmers really don't care what time it says on a clock.
Never mind just America, let's work to scrap DST worldwide. DST (or daylight saving time) is a great source of confusion. It complicates administration, as well as making life tough for programmers and every day people who need to make sure their clocks are reset twice a year.
However, if we scrapped DST (along with 15 or 30 minute offsets), we would only have 24 time zones - one for each hour! This is a reduction from the hundreds we currently have in use around the world. Each location would simply be assigned to an offset from UTC (0-24).
For many reasons, it'd be nice if everyone used UTC as their only time, but in the mean time, twenty four consistent, simple and clear zones should be enough for everybody.
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We got to where we are because when its light out, people get up. When its dark, they stop doing what they do in the day and go to bed. In northern regions, they had 'daylight savings' because they wanted to make more use of the available daylight when it was there. Regions closer to the equator don't notice the days getting longer or shorter as much, and so don't feel the urge to change quite as much. Where I live, the shortest days of the year are about 7 1/4 hours long (yes, I know a 'day' has 24 hours, but my *more common definition* of day is the daytime when there is daylight and is between sunrise and sunset. The longest days where I live are about 16.75 hours long. Having two time zones in a space as wide as North America means that people living at the extremes will be getting up when it still looks like night time, and going to bed when it looks like daytime (almost like they are on the night shift). Because the coastal regions tend to have large populations, they will want to dictate how the time zones work best for them. Since the time coasts are now 5 hours apart, it will lead to people wanting time zones that only work for them, and instead of the middle having 1 hour different between east and west, it will result in the middle having time zones 5 hours apart. Two time zones might work for business, but not for anybody else. Whoever came up with this idea was an accountant who could count, saw a roll of toilet paper, thought of efficiency and said "it has two sides, turn it over and use it twice." And two time zones for North America is just as good as that.
DST assumes you're working outside and will have some benefit from the sunlight. I'm up roughly 16 out of every 24 hours, even though the sunlight here varies from 4,5 hours to 20.5 hours of the day. What it usually means is that in the winter I work through all the natural light hours in the office during the day and stay up during the pitch dark hours of the evening in artificial light. Why? I'd much rather work in artificial light at the office and have the opportunity to choose between being in or out during the natural light. Office and retail workers are now the majority, agriculture, construction and transport workers the minority. It's leisure time that should be daylight time, not business hours.
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if the claims that it reduces crime or suicide or whatever is true, then the problem isn't the time at which we get up on the clock, but the time we get up to get to work.
Why is it that you don't change the daily working hours? 9-5 job puts the working midday at 1pm. Post Meridian. "Summer time" puts 1pm at the solar noon. A solution to me seems to be make the working day 8-4. Then the middle of the working day is at solar noon.
Why is that never considered an option over everyone changing their clocks on Sunday?
Yes, I think it's a bad idea and want it to stop. I personally don't care which time we stick with, but to answer the question, why not split the difference? Spring forward a half hour and then leave the damn clocks alone.
I am reminded how Elijah Baley was reduced to tears and asking whether the sun would be out when he landed on Solaria. The Naked Sun
I don't find the geek's willingness to divorce himself from the natural cycle of day and night and the change of seasons particularly healthy --- nor do I share his obsession with reducing everything to base 10.
Maybe it made sense last century, but not anymore.
With modern efficient lighting (CFL and LED) there is no significant 'savings' of electricity.
Hours of work are no longer limited to 8:30a to 4:30p
I work night shift you insensitive clods
Let's start DST on a Sunday in March determined by (year % 4) + 1. Of course starting on a Sunday is also predictable, so we might go with day in March determined by (year % 31) + 1. Or maybe just go with a Julian day of the year - (year % 365) + 1. Or we could go with the Sunday closest to a full moon in March, but what if there's a "blue moon" that month? Anyway, this doesn't have to be boring, we could make it nearly impossible for the average person to predict!
Having the change occur during the 19 day month of fasting, when we can't change the time we have meals (ie before sunrise and after sunset.
And image that you have the right location, and you discover upon arrival that you missed Planet Earth some 100,000 km in its orbit around the sun and you see it around the size of a fist at an arm's length as you suffocate...
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China does just fine on a single time zone. In fact maybe we should get the whole world on UTC and just adapt locally.
Spring forward 30 minutes and leave it there. It's called a compromise. Problem solved.
The idea of daylight saving is to allow people to make the most of the daylight outside work hours. Since it's difficult for most people to negotiate their working hours individually with their employer, it's much better to regulate it at a government level, and force employers to adhere to it.
I'm an early bird. Every day, I wake up around 3:50am - 4am (no alarm required). Today, as most people will sleep in, I'll be one of the first lucky ones to reach the ski hills!!! Weeeeee!
In the middle ages they could work with one hour before sunrise on a daily base, without using clocks and internet. Today with its prepackaged, normalized time 40%+ of the people get lost by two changes a year.
Governments love changing it. Programmers hate keeping up with it. Software rarely doesn't get tripped up by it. Freedom loving adults don't need it. But aspiring social engineers love it. As for the sun, it follows its own schedule.
Guess the subject doesn't get old...
daylight savings time site:Slashdot.org
There are already two timezones in the US, Eastern and everything else.
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The site which describes the two time zone solution in detail is: http://www.standardtime.com/ I think it would be a great solution and even have written letters to my senators and congressman about it. Of course, I got crickets. We're only on Standard Time for about 4 months a year now... at the very least just leave everything at DST year around. I especially dislike the fact that in the dead of winter the sun sets in SoCal at about 16:30... seriously?
Majority of who exactly? Basement dwelling obese neckbeards?
I still believe that DST should not exist any more and time zones should not exist any more and everyone should just use UTC time on a 24 hour clock. This would make many business transactions simpler, it would simplify a lot of IT and CS related things that have to account for time zones and I do not think it would really mess any thing up. Sure there will be confusion for a while and some people resisting change because they don't like change but it would make a lot of sense especially for world of being connected to people all over the world all the time.
Springing forward, like we just did, isn't so bad (except for losing a damn hour on the weekend and not in the middle of a meeting at work). Even though there's a missing hour, time is still going forward. But when we fall back, that's when things get strange. I might be looking at two files, sorted by datetime, and wondering why the fk the 1:00 AM file is "later" than the 1:45 AM file. And there could be multiple 1 AM files that were updated an hour apart.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
"Some even argue that the U.S. should go to only two timezones."
Yeah, dumb and dumber!