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North Korea Is Switching To a New Time Zone
jones_supa writes: North Korea has announced that it is winding its clocks back by half a hour to create a new "Pyongyang Time" — breaking from a time standard imposed by what it called "wicked Japanese imperialists" more than a century ago. The change will put the standard time in North Korea at UTC +8:30. North Korea said that the time change, approved on Wednesday by its rubber-stamp parliament and officially announced on Friday, would come into effect from August 15, which this year marks the 70th anniversary of the Korean peninsula's liberation from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule.
No one cares
I'd think to ensure accuracy, they'd wind back their clocks 60 years.
Ask me how the Heisenberg Principle may or may not have saved my life.
Darn, now I need to update all my timezone related code to handle all my North Korean customers correctly...
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Koreans, even North Koreans, have very legitimate historical reasons to tell Japan to FUCK OFF.
And everyone knows the best way to piss off a Japanese person is to be 1/2 an hour out of their timezone
The Unified Korea actually set a Timezone of +8:30 GMT back in 1910. In 1912 when Japan took over, it was reset to Japanese +8:00 GMT. After liberation, South Korea briefly for a year or two went back to +8:30 for a few years in the 50's I believe, but reverted to Japanese +8:00 for economic reasons.
Koreans, even North Koreans, have very legitimate historical reasons to tell Japan to FUCK OFF.
That is true, but how does THIS have anything to do with what Japan did to them before WW2? How's it harm Japan if NK want's to change their wristwatches? Yea, I'm sure that has half of Tokyo shaking in their boots....
This is not much more than symbolic, but NK has been reduced to making symbolic gestures for decades. (Hey, isn't that little'Un with is middle finger in the air again?) I'm laughing over here in North America, and I'm sure about all that's shaking in Japan is heads..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Now all they need is some electricity to power them up.
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
Second dumbest thing. Don't forget daylight savings.
North Korea has clocks?
That's where it geographically should be (Greenwich meridian) and it isn't for political reasons. It's not just what you said, but also reasons such as differentiating from the UK.France's time was GMT+0 and it was changed by occupying Nazis. When the war ended, there was a decision to change it back but it was canceled.
Spain is in the "wrong" time-zone as well due to Franco's decision during WW2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
it would take about a week for us to get used to UTC, which would be a great time to get rid of AM and PM while we are at it. So, lunch is at 1700 and sunrise is at 1200, who cares?
And Newfoundland. The Labrador part of the province is at UTC-4, while the Newfoundland half is UTC-3.5.
And you wonder why Canadians always treat Newfies as different.
Incidentally, yes, that province was the source for both dog breeds, and apparently, the names got switched around - what we know as the Labrador Retriever was originally the Newfoundland, and vice-versa. Then again, easier to say a Lab than Newfie, I suppose.
ha! You just cleared up one of the great mysteries of my life! I remember sitting in paris watching the Eiffel tower begin twinkling at dusk. It was some ungodly late hour and I thought, "Man, how can it still be so light out? Paris must be way farther north than i originally thought."
mystery solved.
So if he wants to call a company in Germany, and wonder if it is the middle of the night for them, he would simply have to figure out the sunrise and sunset times in UTC for a geographic region, and then estimate normal business hours?
Thats sounds much more complicated than looking up a time zone, and comparing apples to apples.
do I have to get an ugly $2.00 haircut and gain 20 lbs in the gut ...?
Admit it, you were probably going to do that anyway, Great Leader or no.
> Base 12 is arbitrary
Not really.
It is chosen because it is divisible by 1,2,3 and 4.
You want also divisible by 5. 60. There are reasons why 12 and 60 have been common for time and measurements. So you can describe fractions of something without fractions (or decimal).
10, on the other hand, is less interesting, except that you can count to ten easily on your fingers. (The reason why it was chosen).
In Napolions times, Germany was divided into half a hundred principals, Dukedoms, and small Kingdoms. Everyone having its own time zone. As the principal of the realm liked it to have his personal 'noon' at 12:00 when the sun was at the highest point above his palace.
And even after Germany was united into an empire, most regions kept their 'private' time. Often just 10 or 11:30 minutes of from the neighbour.
The unified german time was forced upon the regions by railway companies. It simply makes no sense that a train starts 12:00 local time and arrives at 11:55 local time.
So yes, the reason why Europe basically only has three time zones is to make trade and travel more easy
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yea, just don't try to connect up to a NTP server or build a strat 1 server from a GPS receiver when you fudge the hardware clock... You are going to be on your own. And that's going to make things like navigation and advancing technology all that much harder there.
Little'Un just made life harder for his people by doing this, but he doesn't care. Folks have to remember ONE very important fact. Little'Un does what he does for consumption INSIDE of North Korea and that's it. The world will deride him for doing stupid things, but what matters is how the North Korean's perceive it. You can bet they all praise "Dear Leader" for his strong defiance of the Imperialist Japan and most will actually believe what they are saying. Few will realize that he's really showing his impotence, his lack of power and how the rest of the world is making fun of him and the ones that DO realize this won't say anything different because they know it means death for them and their extended families.
So while we laugh because we find it funny, in reality this is really very sad for the people it most concerns..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101