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Daylight Saving Time Change On Sunday For N. America

Posted by timothy on from the time-keeps-on-slippin'-slippin'-slippin' dept.

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.

15 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Except Arizona by cashman73 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Except for those in Arizona, you insensitive clod!

  2. The majority? by markalot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    > The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea....

    Do you have a source for this?

    1. Re:The majority? by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Informative

      > The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea....

      Do you have a source for this?

      Listening to perople bitch about it this time of year is a good one. But this also works... http://www.timeanddate.com/tim... See "Losing U.S. popularity - According to a Rasmussen Report from 2013, only 37 % of Americans see the purpose of DST compared to 45 % the year before."

    2. Re:The majority? by paiute · · Score: 5, Funny

      we get to have this discussion on slashdot at least twice a year!

      Good thing, too - t's the only way I remember to set my clocks.

      --
      If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
  3. Exception to the exception to the exception by jabberw0k · · Score: 4, Informative

    Except the Navajo Nation within Arizona, which goes observes Daylight Time, except the Hopi Nation within the Navajo Reservation which doesn't.

    1. Re:Exception to the exception to the exception by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Hopi know that cutting one end off a blanket and sewing it on the other end doesn't create a longer blanket.

    2. Re:Exception to the exception to the exception by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      except in my house in the hopi nation, which does. except for my sons room in my home, which doesnt. i dont know if his caged gerbil observes it.

  4. Re:Oh really? by houstonbofh · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.timeanddate.com/tim...
    "Losing U.S. popularity - According to a Rasmussen Report from 2013, only 37 % of Americans see the purpose of DST compared to 45 % the year before."

  5. Re:I don't generally complain about articles... by PsychoSlashDot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One flick of your mouse scroll-wheel finger. That's what it takes for you to disregard an article that you don't care about. An article which - while having been conducted before - opens discussion of human timekeeping practices, which do impact IT issues.

    Not everything in the universe is specifically for you.

    --
    "Oh no... he found the .sig setting."
  6. No time zones, no DST, centons by duckintheface · · Score: 5, Informative

    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. :)

    --
    "He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
    1. Re:No time zones, no DST, centons by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The easiest solution is to have one time worldwide.

      Does that really make it easier? Seems like it just exchanges one problem for another. You might know what "time" it is everywhere, but you don't know when they're working, sleeping, etc.
      "What time is it in China? Oh right, 3pm, same as us. Wait, when do they sleep? Can I call there now?"
      "What, we're having dinner at 2am? And tomorrow we travel to India for an afternoon meeting. When will that be? 9:30? WTF?"

    2. Re:No time zones, no DST, centons by Macrat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Does that really make it easier? Seems like it just exchanges one problem for another. You might know what "time" it is everywhere, but you don't know when they're working, sleeping, etc."

      You don't know that now.

      You just assume that everyone is on your schedule.

    3. Re:No time zones, no DST, centons by gizmo71 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The issue of daylight would be dealt with locally.

      The issue of date on the other hand becomes a whole lot more awkward. You either have the date change at 00:00 everywhere, which means that for much of the world it changes during the day (it's my birthday! but only until lunchtime!), or in the middle of the night locally, meaning that now I know what time it is anywhere in the world but no idea what date it is.

      That would seem to be a harder problem than simply agreeing times in UTC, which we could do today, and people just doing the conversion to/from their local time as necessary.

      And don't even get me started on people who thing that GMT is the same as UK time all year long...

    4. Re:No time zones, no DST, centons by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They deal with crops.

      Right. And crops care what time we call it when the sun comes up, right?

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  7. Re:I don't generally complain about articles... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Considering how important time is for a computer and people writing code for them, the hassle of dealing with timezones, daylight savings time, and even the occasional leap second is something that most programmers need to know to varying degrees at some point. If you don't care about hour-scale precision, I suppose it won't matter much, but if you do, it's quite a twisty maze to figure out what the time would have been called locally in a particular year and location. That's why there are whole libraries written to deal with it.

    For example, it was a challenge for programmers when the rules for DST switchover changed a few years ago (2007). Plenty of code was badly written to handle it because the rules were hard-coded. I still have a few old, impossible-to-update machines around that are always off by an hour 4 times a year unless manually set. Those machines don't know about the new DST switchover date, so they ignore it in spring, then they switch on the date of the old DST switchover (manually reset again), and then the whole thing happens again in the fall the other way around.

    It's a lesson in bad coding and how to do it wrong, and every time the rules change it's yet another annoyance, which is why some people are saying "screw the whole thing". Which will be another thing to change in the code :-(

    If we ever do invent time travel, I figure it's going to be routine for people to show up from the future for important historical events and discover they're an hour off.