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Lithuania Calls On EU To Stop Adjusting Clocks For Daylight Savings (theguardian.com)
AmiMoJo shares a report from The Guardian: Lithuania has said that it would push the European Union to abolish its law on daylight saving time, claiming that most people find it annoying to have to adjust their clocks twice a year. An opinion poll published this year showed that 79% of people in the nation of 2.8 million were against the annual ritual of adjusting clocks forward by one hour in the spring and then back an hour in the autumn. Proponents of daylight saving time, adopted at the beginning of the 20th century, say the longer evening daylight hours in the summer help save energy and bolster productivity. The European Commission said it was "currently examining the summertime question based on all available evidence."
Daylight Saving Time is a great idea. Ditching it in the winter is the problem. Just keep it year round and eliminate the stupid changing.
Slashdot readers are pretty educated, if only because we know that's where Lithium batteries come from.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Remember the Java DST bug?
How about the SWIFT hiccup when the time change got applied backwards.
Or how much it costs to update ever single time zone file on every computer in the world.
I am not advocating for or against DST - I'm advocating for pick you're poison and stick with it. Changing it and mucking around with it is expensive, consumes time I should be spending solving other problems, and is annoying.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
It's harmonised to make trade easier. All countries charge on the same day, although they still have their own timezones.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Here's my proposed compromise: Keep the "fall back", but get rid of the "spring forward". Sure, it might take some getting used to, but I'm sure we'd manage it sometime over the next 24 years or so.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
Gee, why not go on quadruple savings time then? You can have the sun out until 1AM!!
Or you could simply admit that DST is just a silly attempt at self-deception to get ourselves to do things earlier. If we want to do things in the sun after work, we need to go to work early and get out of work early. Lying to ourselves about the time is one of the most ridiculous ways imaginable to try to do this.
12 noon should be left as close as possible to true solar noon.
In future years, the idea that the government mandated that people lie to themselves about the time will seem as bizarre as the strangest medieval legal customs seem to us today.
If you think slashdot readers are especially stupid (a not unreasonable observation) you have not had much contact with the broader population.
> Just please stop bringing up this discussion every couple of months.
wat?
Is it harmonized in the sense that you have to do it? Or in the sense that if you do it you must do it on these dates?
I can remember when the UK wasn't in alignment, you you'd be on the same time as Paris for a week at one end, and out by two at the other. And now, thanks to Nigel Farage we'll be able to do it again! That'll stick it to the boche!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
“Only a white man would believe you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket.”
Daylight saving time does strike you as something that only a progressive era, white intellectual could think of rather than something simpler like changing school schedules.
Daylight savings is being kept around because it the extra hour of daylight is an extra hour of shopping. You're going to have a powerful lobby of retail chains fighting against ending it. It's similar to why we can't have good public transport: if you could get around easy you'd be less likely to stop at a restaurant for dinner. In the days before chain stores and restaurants people didn't think this way, but when you do stuff on the scale the chains do then all sorts of silly evils become worthwhile. I remember finding out that my town refused to build an express way to route around a 3 year highway closure because the local fast food owners paid off the city council to stop it. You'd be amazed how much local corruption there is.
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Economical LED lams made Daylight saving time change obsolete.
It just brings confusion into our lives and adds complexity to computer systems.
People are obliged to repeat trillions of times "do not forget to change time tomorrow" for no rational reason, but just because populists are afraid to change anything due to the Status quo bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I find summertime to be much more pleasant anyway. But joke's on them: after the last switch to wintertime I never changed my hours. So now I go to work at 7:30, instead of 8:30. Sure, it's still dark, but at least I get to go home in daylight... Unlike the official time zone, which would have me arrive in the office and go home in the dark.
Shows what you know then. They only have the hottest women of all of Europe.
We could stop changing clocks. But it won't necessarily change anything to the way we live. For example, the train timetables in France before implementation of summertime changed twice a year, with summer and winter service. The summer service usually ran one hour earlier than the winter service. Of course, this also not limited to trains, so there was already something like a summer time implemented. Note that Lithuanians could use this, changing their schedule around the legal change to keep using the same solar time.
There are many things that "people" find annoying, and would probably be overwhelming against them in opinion polls: paying taxes certainly, but also dying in car accidents because of working in the dark. Decisions shouldn't be taken by the people's belly; they should be based on rational evidence.
Bingo.
Unfortunately, I am somewhat skeptical of most people's ability, particularly those in power that would legislate on the matter, to think rationally enough to come to that conclusion.
After all, it's so much more fun to make laws based on what "feels right", isn't it?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
it would be difficult to be the only state not observing it.
Why would it be difficult? More than 150 states are not harmonized with EU and they seem to do fine.
This is a horrible idea. People, pets and farm animals have internal clocks. If we would use your suggested sliding time everybody would all the time try to adjust and never be in sync.
You're showing a complete disregard for the complicated history of the Baltic region. Which has me assuming that your American.
Yes, the Baltic states were part of the Soviet Union. But not by choice.
Historically, the Baltic states are closer to central Europe then to Russia, and after the end of the Soviet Union they realigned with western Europe and are members of the EU and NATO.
So no, they're not "covertly meddling in the affairs of other countries". Quite the opposite. They are in constant danger of Russia meddling with their affairs, as for Putin they are parts of his Russian Empire that he wants back.
... most people find it annoying to have to adjust their clocks twice a year.
Set your clocks ahead one hour, then six months later set them back - so annoying.
Thankfully, there are so many other things we get to do way more often.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
50%: what, Lithuania is a country? other 50%: what, Lithuania is in Europe?
No, it was a British ocean liner sunk by q German submarine in World War I.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
At least that should be made simple by software. The meeting time should be UTC in the database, and both the client making, and the client receiving the meeting data should handle the conversions.
On the other hand, the synchronisation between Outlook and Sharepoint doesn's even handle DST correctly. When we tried that, our team birthdays wound up being from 23:00 to 23:00 in one half of a year.
Because some people claim that there is some vague energy saving aspect to it.... which has never actually materialized.
France was the first EU country to introduce it in 1976 and Swiss was the last one in 1981. There were earlier attempts at it, but those were luckily only short lived.
recently voted in favour of the same, after a citizen initiative. For years there has been a general argument that there's nothing Finland can do, since the EU dictates everything, and not following their rules would make us look really bad. But now we're finally pushing the issue via our MEPs.
I guess it makes it easier to work with timezones when all EU countries switch at the same time. However, to really harmonize things, why not have UTC (or possibly Central European time) across all EU? We only have something like 3 adjacent timezones anyway, and natural solar time has already been ruined by summer time.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
That's only applicable for US readers. European readers will instead consider other aspects of Lithuania.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
We have the technology for every individual to keep personalised local time, just like we used to with sundials and local time for every village - midday is when the sun is at its highest for me. And we have the technology to make that work and do all the coordination stuff. It just involves some good hard analysis to work it all out to make it work. All of your undoubted objections are just a list of things to analyse and work out. It ca be done!
And imagine the continuous wave of new year's eve fireworks around the globe.
It was December 17th when my cat finally stopped getting mad that dinner was suddenly an hour later.
Agricultural societies don't give a damn what the clock says and operate when it gets light out and go home when it's dark.
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]
Gee, why not go on quadruple savings time then? You can have the sun out until 1AM!!
Because there are only 24 hours in a day Because that isn't the point of DST.
Or you could simply admit that DST is just a silly attempt at self-deception to get ourselves to do things earlier
No, it is an attempt to allow people to have daylight while they are doing work. This requires working within the fact that in most places, daylight is many hours longer in the summer than in the winter. During early spring before we move to DST, it is getting daylight at 4 AM. The concept that we're supposed to adapt to the local day night cycle of every place on earth just substitutes a much more complicated adjustment then thinking of timezones. I deal with East Coast to West Coast communication all the time. I don't call them before 11 AM my time, and they don't call me beyond 2 PM their time.
Now when tying the whole thing to daylight/darkness in each area, you have a real mess. Even in my case, there is a fair difference between say San Diego and Seattle.
I had an assistant who couldn't figure that stuff out. When I was on travel to the West coast, he would call me as soon as he got into work at 0730-0800. Nothing like getting woke up in the wee hours. Told him after the tenth time that unless it was an emergency and I had to make the decision, he would either have to make it or wait until 11 AM. Or find a different place to work. . If we want to do things in the sun after work, we need to go to work early and get out of work early. Lying to ourselves about the time is one of the most ridiculous ways imaginable to try to do this.
12 noon should be left as close as possible to true solar noon.
In future years, the idea that the government mandated that people lie to themselves about the time will seem as bizarre as the strangest medieval legal customs seem to us today.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
you have not had much contact with the broader population.
Everyone should be required to work in retail, similar to how the Israelis compel military service. Nothing got me through enginerding school like the motivation of my retail experience. ~
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Probably better to change the time we start work to be an hour after sunrise. Then we've all got an excuse for being late :-)
that's interesting - because if member states do not have to have it, why is Lithuania not just scrapping it regardless. Having been to Lithuania (great place BTW, go try their beer) they still have more in common with Russia, which has its own ideas about DST, so I doubt it really matters that Lithuania would be disadvantaged by not being compliant.
maybe its one of those "you don't have to do as we say as long as you do as we say" rules the EU has :-)
Why would it be difficult? More than 150 states are not harmonized with EU and they seem to do fine.
That is because it mostly only matters when you are dealing with someone close.
...
When I deal with Germany or the UK it is a different matter. Then I known that if I put the order in before 16pm on their time they will have it packed the same day so I can get it delivered to me the next day.
You know what's odd about that story? Germany and the UK are one hour apart.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
That's crazy. Sunrise time changes by more than 4.5 hours over the course of the year, more for people near the poles.
Know what's odd about you? You can't see the phrase "their time".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Scratch that thing and hang the one who pushed for it, please. If he's not already dead. It's annoying and completely stupid. Time is a stupid concept anyway. We all have our own biological clocks and those are most important.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti