Daylight Saving Time Isn't Worth It, European Parliament Members Say (arstechnica.com)

AmiMoJo shares a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this week, the European Parliament voted 384 to 153 to review whether Daylight Saving Time is actually worth it. Although the resolution it voted on was non-binding, the majority reflected a growing dissatisfaction with a system that has been used by the U.S., Canada, most of Europe, and regions in Asia, Africa, and South America for decades. The resolution asked the European Commission to review the costs and benefits of Daylight Saving Time. If the EU were to abolish Daylight Saving Time, it would need approval of the majority of EU member states and EU Parliament members.

"We think that there's no need to change the clocks," Ireland Member of European Parliament (MEP) Sean Kelly said to Deutsche Welle. "It came in during World War One, it was supposed to be for energy savings -- the indications are that there are very few energy savings, if any -- and there are an awful lot of disadvantages to both human beings and animals that make it outdated at this point."

Comments

Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Get rid of it. Although, I'd prefer if they let us vote on it instead of just a bunch of assholes in brussels.

Re:Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vote?! Are you mad, man? This is the EU.

Re:Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

a bunch of assholes YOU voted for.

Re:Yes, finally.

[91degrees]

No, these are the EU parliament. This is why it's non binding. The EU didn't feel the need to give the democratically elected assembly any actual power.

Re:Yes, finally.

[butzwonker]

The problem I have with getting rid of it is that I very, very strongly prefer the summer time - but the "original" time is winter time. I want DST for the whole of the year.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't even make any sense. You are one of those people who think the number on the clock means something... The kind of weak thinking that led to the adoption of this stupid "daylight savings" scheme. You're not saving any daylight bro... The sun doesn't care what's on your clock.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

There seems to be a need to remind everyone that changing the position of the hands on the clock does not change the position of the sun.

If something should start when the sun has reached a certain point in relation to the surface of the earth then wait until that point. Changing the time on your clock does not make it happen sooner or later.

Re:Yes, finally.

[captbollocks]

Maybe you should learn how the EU works. The EU executive proposes laws and directives and the EU parliament approves or disapproves them. So yes they certainly do have actual power.

Re: Yes, finally.

[butzwonker]

You're an idiot if you think that standard work times could be changed as easily as an arbitrary time zone convention.

Re: Yes, finally.

[butzwonker]

The whole idea of DST and changing time zones is that it's way easier to change the hands on the clock - and arbitrary but binding convention - than actually changing ten thousands of time tables, work schedules, bus and metro routes, etc.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Bert64]

And having fixed standard work times is just as idiotic as the idea of daylight saving...

The majority of us don't work in fields or require natural daylight to do our jobs anymore.
Many of us have to deal with clients or suppliers in other countries who don't work at the same time anyway.
Many businesses are intentionally open outside of regular working hours because that's the only time many customers can go there (retail, restaurants etc).
Travel congestion is a serious problem in terms of time wasted, the unpleasantness of the congestion and environmental impact. You end up with transport infrastructure thats massively overcrowded for a few hours a day, and mostly idle for the rest of the day/night.
Many businesses operate 24/7.
Many call centers are located far away from the locations they serve (eg lots of indian call centers serve customers in the us and uk despite a huge timezone difference).

Just because something has always been done a certain way, doesn't mean that is still the best way.

Re:Yes, finally.

[91degrees]

So why was this only a non-binding resolution? Why didn't they go the whole hog and introduce legislation to actually make the commission review the costs and benefits?

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? What special thing does changing one thing require that the other does not?

Re: Yes, finally.

[TheRaven64]

Removing the standard 9-5 working hours would be a far more sensible thing to do. Having everyone trying to get to and from work at the same time causes peak loads on roads and public transport and often results in lots of stationary cars sitting and polluting but not moving anywhere. In the UK, it's particularly stupid synchronisation because most shops use it as well and so ensure that they're open only when people with jobs can't go to them because they're at work.

Re:Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

That sort of personal-opinion comment would be slightly less useless if you said where you are.

UTC+1 for the whole year has been tried in the UK: it was not popular. They particularly hated it in Scotland.

Personally I'd prefer 12:00 on the clock to roughly correspond to solar noon. UTC+1 in the UK seems crazy to me. Working hours are not immutable. Also, all the schools have slightly different hours and change them from time to time. So we definitely can adapt working hours to the clock rather than the other way round.

Re: Yes, finally.

[butzwonker]

Time zone change: uniform change for all of society

versus

Individually changing all bus schedules, plane schedules, work schedules, child care schedules, school schedules, TV and radio programs, and so forth.

You don't see any difference?

Re:Yes, finally.

[DamonHD]

I believe the message to which you are replying would answer the question that you have asked, ie one proposes the other disposes in this case.

Rgds

Damon

Re:Yes, finally.

[jellomizer]

Set your alarm clock an hour earlier then
As a morning person myself, I just do things earlier in the day then others tend to do. Chances are your job will be slightly accommodating, allowing you get in an hour early and leave an hour early. As this normally expands the coverage in the company.

Re: Yes, finally.

[DamonHD]

Being rude louder doesn't improve your point.

As it happens the cemetery has a sensible opening schedule within sight of my desk right now that varies by month to acknowledge that it's not good to have people wandering around in there after dark. It's not that hard.

Another example: our local schools already coordinate on opening hours and holidays to avoid creating problems for parents. Adjusting the hours to something sensible and safe by (half-)term probably would not be hard.

9-5 never made that much sense and doesn't even acknowledge that humans are diurnal and live at different latitudes with different sub hours and climates!

Let's stop working to an entirely illogical rigid timetable, messing around with the clock to try and fudge it, and, given that most of us have smart assistants with calendars, etc, go with something that better reflects reality, ASAP.

Birching seemed like a good idea at the time, but seems less so now that most societies have given it up. DST will be much the same in the rear-view mirror.

But whatever, calling the poster above an idiot does not advance anything.

Rgds

Damon

Re:Yes, finally.

[Barsteward]

"UTC+1 for the whole year has been tried in the UK: it was not popular. They particularly hated it in Scotland." - when did they do that? apart from every year up to 1916

Re:Yes, finally.

[oobayly]

The vast majority of us are represented by people we didn't vote for, yet somehow when it comes to the EU it's an indicator that the system is undemocratic.
One of my MEPs is Nigel Farage (the MEP with the 2nd worse attendance record) - I didn't vote for him.
I didn't vote for my Prime Minister (as I'm not in her constituency)
I didn't vote for MP either

In fact, I've never lived in a constituency where I was represented by the person I voted for, somehow I've always lived in uber-safe seats.

Re:Yes, finally.

[murdocj]

I heard a proposal on Car Talk for what you want. It's call "Daily Savings Time" . Each day, at 2pm the clock is advanced an hour, so you lose an hour of work. Each day at 2am the clock is moved back an hour, so you gain an hour of sleep. Presto!

Re: Yes, finally.

[murdocj]

And yet there often are (gasp) reasons as to why things are the way they are. Maybe you need to be in the office 8 to 5 because customers expect to be able to reach you? Or co-workers who want to talk to you can? Or there's an early shift because the UPS truck comes at 4pm to pick up product and producing something at 4:01 is worthless?

Re:Yes, finally.

[Opportunist]

As far as I'm concerned you can turn the clock by 12 hours or whatever makes you happy, as long as it STAYS THAT WAY.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Opportunist]

I guess it should be doable to "retrain" customers to reach you at different times. And with easier and easier telepresence, being able to talk with a coworker is by no means tied to being in the same place at the same time anymore. Most of my communication is with people I never met and will most likely never meet.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Opportunist]

We've done that a long time ago. We even did away with a having to be at work at a certain time. And guess what: It works.

Yes, some people start at 6am. Some come in around 11am. But there's plenty of overlap that you can get a meeting scheduled, and a lot of NON-overlap so you can actually get work done, too, because you can't stuff that time with more meetings. Which led to people actually thinking before scheduling yet another useless hour long meeting for something that can be resolved in 2 emails.

This way the ones that want some precious afternoon rays can get them by getting out around 3pm while those that value their morning sleep can arrive just before lunch (and are actually awake by then instead of waddling in like zombies at 9am and require an hour and three coffee just to be barely functional).

Re: Yes, finally.

[Opportunist]

Not changing anything seems to be the more sensible alternative.

Re: Yes, finally.

[butzwonker]

The OP was an idiot in the sense of stubbornly insisting on a point instead of just admitting that he was mistaken, because he pointed out in a fairly smartass way the obvious fact that the hours on the clock are an arbitrary convention, thereby missing the whole point of DST, which is exactly that. The hours on the clock are an arbitrary binding convention, so if you want to change the relation of society as a whole to the daylight hours, then for Christ's sake adjust the clock rather than changing all time tables in all professions and all areas of life. What I hate about discussions like this is that so many people assume in them that the original inventors "didn't get it" while not really understanding what they're talking about themselves. Just check how many people in this thread erroneously believe that DST is winter time rather than summer time. True, it's debatable whether DST has fulfilled its original purpose of saving energy in light of the oil crisis, but at least the inventors of DST did understand the overall purpose of adjusting the clock - more than you or the OP, apparently. Sorry if that hurts your feelings.

Now regarding your other suggestion of flexible time tables for everyone in every profession and every area of life. It's a utopian and illusory idea and I personally believe the disadvantages would far outweigh the advantages, but in any case it has nothing to do with a discussion of DST.

Re:Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eu commision makes a law and presents it to parliament
EU parliament haves a vote on that law
The commission is then completely free to ignore the vote if they don't like it, or make adjustments to the text
EU parliament has a second vote on the text
The commision is then completely free to ignore the vote again

EU parliament has the right to disband the commision, it's done so twice now I think. Yet the Commision keeps ignoring the parliament vote whenever they feel like it, i.e. whenever it's not the result they wanted.

Re:Yes, finally.

[Opportunist]

Where do I sign?

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously are too young to have kids in the public school system. You think they will rewrite their schedules at a drop of a hat? DST is what keeps the sun from waking our asses up at 4am (where i live, the sun would rise at 4:30am if it were standard time). I cant just declare my day is now 4am - noon. There are too many other schedules, not just employment related, that destroys this. I actually enjoy the sun being out as late as 10:30pm during the summer.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

But everyone says that everything can be solved by more flexible working hours, etc, which is effectively the same as changing all the timetables...

Besides, all the clocks are digital now and switch automatically, even many analog ones as well. If you didn't tell me when daylight savings stopped/started I probably wouldn't' notice.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Workers of the world, unite!

Re: Yes, finally.

[bickerdyke]

Sun rises at 4am here thanks to DST.... Without it would dawn around 3am.

I definitely want to keep it.

OK, during winter I can't decide if it sucks more to be dark again by 5am or if it's worth to postpone it to 6pm but 9am still being pitch black night.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Opportunist]

Neither would I. All that really happens for me with DST is that I come to work an hour late and go home an hour late.

Re: Yes, finally.

[bickerdyke]

These things either are becoming more and more non-linear (who does still watch TV? Whenever you're having superbowl - it won't be at prime time for 23 out of 24 timezones anyway!) or child care centers that have long opening hours (up to 24 hrs) and you pay as you go without defined drop off/pick up times OR are only scheduled to meet peak demand. (train/plane schedules) that would profit from demand being spread more evenly.

Re:Yes, finally.

[Megane]

It does depend to some extent on where you are in the time zone. I've lived most of my life at around 98W, in the middle of CST, and Daylight Saving Time works about right, except for that nonsense where they tricked Dubya into changing the dates for no valid reason. (DST does not "save energy")

For one year in 9th grade, I lived in Louisiana, near the eastern edge of CST, and it was really weird to see the sun come up half an hour earlier. It also would have set half an hour earlier, but I was too freaked by how early the sun came up to notice. There is a reason we have time zones, it's so that we don't have thousands of local times for thousands of cities.

There's also some difference in how it works vs latitude as well. Above the Arctic Circle, there are times when it's day or night for 24 hours, so that means there will be areas where +/- one hour wouldn't be enough. Fortunately, most of the human population doesn't live at such high latitudes.

The point of DST is to keep the sun from rising too early in the summer, to move that extra daylight to the evening in the summer (here sunset is 9PM at the solstice), and then back to standard time to keep the sunrise from being too late in the winter. But it can't fix the basic problem with time zones, that it's an entire hour difference in solar time between the east and west ends of a time zone.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was to save candle wax.

Re:Yes, finally.

[denbesten]

... I want DST for the whole of the year.

I'm betting you live in the west end of your time zone. That tends feeling tends to get stronger the closer one lives to to the west edge.

Re: Yes, finally.

[aardvarkjoe]

All the DST-lovers always try to pretend that it's impossible to adjust work hours.

That's a stupid argument. Walk down any street and take note of the business hours. Every business keeps different hours; they adjust their times based on day of the week and holidays; even having different hours in summer vs winter is fairly common. This conception that people have that we need DST so that everyone will work the same schedule is simply false. People already can and do account for the fact that working hours aren't always the same.

The world will not fall apart if business A adjusts their schedule by an hour and business B does not.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Raistlin77]

Retrain customers you say? HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!

HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!

HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!

Oh, you were serious? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Re:Yes, finally.

[Megane]

There's also some difference in how it works vs latitude as well.

It seems that latitude may be more important than I expected. I've been living mostly near 30N, with some time near 35N, but it seems that a lot of the people complaining are north of 50N. That's farther north than the urban parts of Canada. That far north, the day is long enough that pushing it forward causes the summer sunset to be 10PM and later. In other words, after bedtime. But there's not a lot you can do about it; if you didn't use DST, the night would still last the same amount of time and you wouldn't get any more time to sleep before the sun came up.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Change the time tables one more time, then leave it alone.
Considering DST is the norm (8 months) for the year, why bother changing 2x every year. I used to replace batteries in the t-stat and smoke detectors at time change, but don't anymore. Now I just do it on the first day of Summer and Winter.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of curtains?

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

That may work for your business, but that does not work for the majority of businesses. The majority of business don't consist of just people sitting at desks staring at computer monitors. The simple fact of the matter is that most business are only open for 8-10 hours every day, and for business-to-business communication, it just plain makes more sense for all businesses to be open at the same time.

Re:Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with that is a lot of jobs are not accommodating and we as humans coordinate with each other via clocks. So we, for better or worse, need the same time system. So I agree with the parent. DST all year to appease those who complain and we can get the extra sunlight to enjoy in the spring and summer.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because you haven't grasped the concept of arbitrary clock conventions yet.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would any of that change just by getting rid of DST? If you start working at 7am and you need to ride a bus that starts running at 6am, it's still 6am, the bus still starts running, and you still get to work to start your shift at 7am. DST has NOTHING to do with anything you mentioned. The only problems caused by getting rid of DST will be for those that forget that it is gone and change their clocks anyway, or those that don't disable DST settings on their clocks that change automatically. After a year or two, it will be like DST never existed and the world will continue to go on as usual.

Re:Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

That only works if you can do your job all by yourself. For anything that requires meetings or working with teams, you will always be saddled with someone who can barely make it into the office by 9 am and has no concern about staying until 7 pm. I don't think I've met a single executive that comes in early either. They all come in around 9 and stay late and give you a funny look when they see you getting in the elevator with your laptop bag at 4 pm.

Re: Yes, finally.

[chefren]

Hey, the banks did it! Good luck trying to get into a bank office these days without a time reservation or a crowbar, all the customer service is online.

Re:Yes, finally.

[jellomizer]

At least with my East Cost perspective. Most 9-5 jobs normally have the last meetings end at 4:00PM.
The trick is to make yourself known in the office doing work at the early hours. (7am, 8am emails from work) let your boss and exec know that you come in early. When others get into work later, have a lot of deliverables done and ready for them.

Now if you are normally working 9-7 and you decide to work 8-6, in general if your management and team knows you are working in the early hours they normally don't have much an issue at all. Just as long they know you are doing your fair share.

Re:Yes, finally.

[MBaldelli]

Get rid of it. Although, I'd prefer if they let us vote on it instead of just a bunch of assholes in brussels.

I remember when they tried this back in the 80s. The public confusion was more than palpable. I would like to see it removed, but at the same time do no look forward to the confusion again.

Re: Yes, finally.

[houghi]

This depends from job to job. If you are depending directly or indirectly on others, this might be a problem. e.g. if you have store opening hours from 09:00 to 18:00, this means that problems with the POS will be during those times. That means that the IT people who deal with those issues must be available. No, this will not be all of them.
But these people will have to often get into contact with the networking people, because the issue was a network issue. They then realize it was a cable cut, so they need to contact the cable company. They need to contact the people company that goes in and digs up the cable to repair it.

I could give many examples like that.

Re:Yes, finally.

[AmiMoJo]

I used to love coming in to work early, because I could dos about posting on Slashdot while no-one else was around, and then knock off early and post on Slashdot from home for a few extra hours ever evening.

Then I realized I can just post on Slashdot all day at work on no-one seems to notice, so I only get up just in time to roll in to work right on time.

You think I'm joking.

Re: Yes, finally.

[apoc.famine]

No, it's really not easier to do all of that. Do you know what's easy? Everyone just using GMT or UT.

I look at my clock. It says 14:34. The person I want to get in touch with works between 12:00 and 19:00. Can I reach them now? Yes!

And that would work for everyone in the world. How does it currently work?

It's 2:34 and I need to get in touch with someone 1000 miles away. What are their work hours? What is their timezone offset? Did either of us adjust for DST while the other didn't? It is so mindlessly complicated that I can't figure out why anyone wants to keep this system. I know lots of people who have missed meetings because they traveled across a timezone, didn't remember to account for that, didn't update their computer clock, and were suddenly an hour off.

I really don't care if the clock says 13:00 when I get up in the morning. Those numbers don't really mean anything. I'm happy working 15:00-23:00. But across the world we want to get up at 6am and we want to have the midpoint of the day at 12:00, and so we continue to waste massive amounts of time and effort playing time detectives when we could just all agree to use the same time, and then only have to share hours of operation.

Re: Yes, finally.

[atrex]

Not changing anything seems to be the more sensible alternative.

The problem is that DST has been found to have negative side effects. From the forced shift of sleep schedule affecting peoples' health, to increased traffic incidents caused by weary motorists, to added weariness causing a drop in work performance. http://www.businessinsider.com...

Therefore, if DST has little to no positive benefits, then the negative ones make it sensible to spend some cost to abolish it so that we can get rid of the negative ones.

Re: Yes, finally.

[TheRaven64]

if you have store opening hours from 09:00 to 18:00, this means that problems with the POS will be during those times. That means that the IT people who deal with those issues must be available. No, this will not be all of them.

This is another of my pet peeves: Having store opening hours the majority of which fall in the time when most people with jobs can't visit the store. Unless you're something like a coffee shop with a large customer base that grabs a cup on the way to work, your most important business hours are likely to be the couple of hours in the middle of the day over which everyone else's lunch breaks are spread and the time after 17:00 when other people leave work. Changing your opening times to 11:00-20:00 would likely increase the amount of time when you're open and your potential customers are able to attend and would mean that most of your staff wouldn't be travelling to and from work at rush hour.

Re: Yes, finally.

[iamhassi]

Time zone change: uniform change for all of society

versus

Individually changing all bus schedules, plane schedules, work schedules, child care schedules, school schedules, TV and radio programs, and so forth.

You don't see any difference?

What time zone change? Article is about changing daylight savings time, not time zones

Re: Yes, finally.

[Opportunist]

I don't care what your clock says. I heed mine.

Re: Yes, finally.

[reanjr]

I just walk into my downtown bank branch, sign my name, and wait 0-5 minutes. Find a new bank.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Opportunist]

We are probably "open" (read: someone being reachable) for more hours than your office. Unless there is actually someone (competent) answering the phones from about 6am to about 8pm.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Opportunist]

What I meant is that we should stop changing the clocks twice a year for no good reason.

Re:Yes, finally.

[OneAhead]

Oh look, Ivan and Mikhail are at it again. What's the matter - Facebook and Twitter delete your accounts?

Re: Yes, finally.

[Cro Magnon]

These days, you're lucky to find someone (competent) answering phones from 9 to 5.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think my job is a lot more representative of what your average bloke does than yours.
I do preparatory work for a rather large logistics business. This has to be done in teams; if your mates don't show up on time you're just standing there watching people shout angry profanities into their mobiles. Furthermore, there's both an upper and a lower bound on the time you can start working. We usually start at half past six in the morning; a quarter of an hour earlier and we'll just be standing around twiddling our thumbs waiting for our suppliers to catch up with us, a quarter of an hour later and the delivery trucks will miss their deadline getting our perishable products to the shops on time. In some cases, they will literally miss the boat.
Everyone has to be on time; even a five minute delay is sufficiently annoying that it gets people fired if it happens too often.

Re:Yes, finally.

[Cro Magnon]

For one year in 9th grade, I lived in Louisiana, near the eastern edge of CST, and it was really weird to see the sun come up half an hour earlier. It also would have set half an hour earlier, but I was too freaked by how early the sun came up to notice. There is a reason we have time zones, it's so that we don't have thousands of local times for thousands of cities.

Yup, I noticed a significant difference in sunset when I visited my aunt in eastern Iowa (I live in western Missouri).

Re:Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's for the issues actually presented to the parliament, such as DST which has little overall consequences (or it would have been abolished long ago).

The real issues get decided by the EU commission who then give directives to the member states to implement national laws. Of course you don't see this because it happens behind locked doors (unless you're a lobbyist, not a citizen).

Re:Yes, finally.

[OrangeTide]

There is a difference between having the opportunity to elect your representative, versus a bureaucratic appointment. Theoretically elected representatives are swayed by feedback from their constituency. A bureaucrat only answers to the person that appointed him.

Re: Yes, finally.

[atrex]

Ah, sorry, I misread

Re: Yes, finally.

[Fetko]

Most places I've worked typically have core office hours where people are expected to be in the office or available. Typically something like 10 to 3 or 9 to 4 or whatever. The earliest I can leave is fixed, even if my schedule is flexible within these constraints. I prefer more daylight after work. Having DST hours year round means more daylight after work for me. Most businesses with this model aren't going to shift to be more fluid, because people need to be available during the same core times for each other. Sure, some businesses have different hours depending on the season, but it is unrealistic to believe that every company would do that.

You also need to take schools into account. Good luck getting your kid to leave a couple hours early every day because you want to enjoy more post-school daylight with them.

Re:Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmph. I knew somebody was paying you to post all that social justice garbage, but I figured they'd be aware of it.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

These days, you're lucky to find someone (competent) answering phones from 9 to 5.

Vast majority of people answering phones do not do it from 9 to 5 and do not want the job.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

California has largely done that, and now you get rush hour traffic levels for around 15 hours per day. Flexibility in (not really) motion

Re:Yes, finally.

[PrimaryConsult]

More the east end. The west end isn't bad.
For example, sunset in Buffalo today is 5:44 PM. Sunset in Boston is 5:14 PM

It's annoying enough that Boston officials keeps half-studying if they can join the Atlantic time zone.

Re: Yes, finally.

[thegarbz]

Many of us have to deal with clients or suppliers in other countries

Okay, let me stop you there Mr fortune 500. The overwhelming majority of any population never has any business with people outside of their own timezone. At best they may have business with people within their timezone who will internally to their own company source something from another timezone.

Re:Yes, finally.

[Zaelath]

Theoretically elected representatives are swayed by feedback from their constituency.

That's naive bordering on the ridiculous.

A bureaucrat only answers to the person that appointed him.

That's even funnier.

Re:Yes, finally.

[taylormc]

1968 to 1971.

Re: Yes, finally.

[brunnegd]

Have you ever lived without DST? I have 38 summers with no DST, 35 with. I much prefer no DST.

Re:Yes, finally.

[OrangeTide]

That's naive bordering on the ridiculous.

Calling your state and local representatives does work in my personal experience.

A bureaucrat only answers to the person that appointed him.

Take positions in the President's Cabinet for example. You are appointed by the President, and you are removed by the President. You are answerable to, guess who, the President. Do you offer a counter example?

Re:Yes, finally.

[Zaelath]

Calling your state and local representatives does work in my personal experience.

To what? If you mean get them an easy win by poking some public servants, sure. If you mean by getting them to draft and pass legislation that might be seen as counter to their fund raising efforts for the next election, mmmm nah, I don't think so.

Take positions in the President's Cabinet for example. You are appointed by the President, and you are removed by the President. You are answerable to, guess who, the President. Do you offer a counter example?

Sure, any of the president's industry appointments will do. How far do you think they're straying from what the industries they "regulate" want? You think the President is closely monitoring what the FCC or the EPA are doing?

Or let's talk about the SCOTUS? Any firing going on there? Or any other fixed-term appointment, say tenure at a University.

Re: Yes, finally.

[aliquis]

You're completely retarded for thinking the fact social media got so much power and bans us is actually an argument against us or their point.

Re: Yes, finally.

[aliquis]

I don't know how it works there or for you but here in Sweden the party need 4+% of the votes and the lock the lists so really the only thing you CAN do is vote for THEM.

Also we have a minority government. The EU is even worse. We have no clue there. Plus it's not all that democratic in the first place.

Sweden is a democrature but democracy risk just being socialism and lack of freedom anyway. That suck. It's shit regardless.

As for time if I could had mine be 24 / 10 hours per day and then just be awake whenever the fuck I wanted that would be nice.

Re: Yes, finally.

[aliquis]

Well it's sure as fuck easier to just change the time for work than to change the middle of night and day (especially when the time of the day changes with them.)

Go with DST and the system no longer make any sense.

Just start everything one hour earlier if you want too. Make sense since people doesn't sleep 20-04 as is.

But could we please also switch to 10 hours and 100 minutes?
Counting hours at 24 hour clocks is some sort of work. Because of analog clocks I guess. 7-4 is simpler than 17-9.

Sleep 9-2 if you want to ;)

Re: Yes, finally.

[aliquis]

Since Sweden and the US doesn't change at the same dates (maybe also hours?) It mess up for me anywat because things happening at 20:00 CET suddenly happen at 19:00 CET for instance since its American time.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Bert64]

In most cases the reason is simply inertia...

Customers *expect* to reach you 8-5, but many would often like to be able to contact you at other times, and it might even be easier for them.
You don't need to be in an office for customers to reach you, have you heard of this modern invention known as the cellular telephone?
The world is far more connected now, many companies now have customers in different countries. If you insist on working 8-5 in the uk and your client insists on working 8-5 in australia then your working hours never overlap, so when can you talk to them?

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

And where are you from? Very MANY Swedes and other EU citizens are realizing this is CCCP 2.0 but with a much more evil agenda: destruction of White Europe and its values. This will be prevented through nationalism which is spreading very quickly now. The coming years will be interesting indeed.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of society doesn't need to be on the same schedule, and already isn't , as others already pointed out. You claim something about that ngd fitting into a bigger picture - well the elementary schools where I live have hours that don't match up to my work schedule . So I could care less if it's an hour earlier or later compared to sunrise, because school ends a fixed number of hours after that which is LESS than the fixed number of hours I spend at work. So you can't sell me your nonsense, my money is already tied up with after school care.

Plus, that elementary school routinely has half days, that would throw a wrench into my schedule if I weren't paying for after care but guess what - I have to send a note that on such and such a day the hours are different . Oh and it's a year round school with different "tracks" for when kids get time off. So I need to communicate that schedule to the termite daycare.

So I deal with it , I don't expect the entire country to redefine what 8am means , or redefine a workday to be 9-12 to match school half days, or redefine "suer vacation" just so that I can avoid communicating schedule changes to people I work with or that work for me .

Daylight savings is an idiotic idea, always has been, and I am glad more people are finally recognizing that.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

As I have explained to you in detail, there is nothing idiotic about DST or changing the time zone in another way that is overall beneficial to society as a whole.

Re: Yes, finally.

[butzwonker]

The discussion in this subthread was not about the article but about adopting DST for the whole year. Read the context before hitting the reply button.

Re: Yes, finally.

[murdocj]

Have you heard of not wanting to be on call with customers 24x7?

Re: Yes, finally.

[Outta_the_way_peck!]

Yes. That is why all customer service is routed to India.

Re:Yes, finally.

[dcw3]

In fact, I've never lived in a constituency where I was represented by the person I voted for...

So, did you never have the opportunity to vote against them (they're not from your district?), or are you saying you'd always voted against these people? If you just voted against them, they you ARE represented democratically.

Re:Yes, finally.

[chasc]

You could get your wish, when the UK experimented with this summer time became the standard. BST went from British Summer Time to British Standard Time. Regrettably after the experimental period they went back to the old system, probably to stay in line with the rest of Europe.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Cinnamon Beige]

And yet there often are (gasp) reasons as to why things are the way they are. Maybe you need to be in the office 8 to 5 because customers expect to be able to reach you? Or co-workers who want to talk to you can? Or there's an early shift because the UPS truck comes at 4pm to pick up product and producing something at 4:01 is worthless?

Customers expect those hours because tradition--except the question of '9-5 which timezone?' is becoming more and more one your customers may be asking because your customers and you don't as often reside in the same time zone, and more to the point, they expect to be able to reach you so it can very much pay to have your hours not overlap completely with the hours they work. Your coworkers, meanwhile, presumably know how to use a phone, can email, and possibly even one of the many messaging, chat, and VOIP options.

Also, fixed standard work times in the US are the '9-5, M-F,' which is what produces rush hours. You actually do want to depart from that if you're needing an early shift--and if the UPS truck comes by at 4PM to pick up product and something produced at 4:01PM is useless, then you're starting shutting down for the night well before 4PM and departing from fixed standard work hours on both ends.

For the reasons the person cited, we are gradually moving away from the standard workweek--it doesn't really work as well when you're doing business with people in multiple time zones and/or need to be accessible to customers who work during standard office hours. One of the major alternates I've seen is 4 day workweeks where you have 10 hour workdays without necessarily having the same extra day off for everybody--in part because of the effects of travel congestion and the time wasted in it.

Re: Yes, finally.

[Cinnamon Beige]

Switching to using GMT or UT makes more sense than DST.

Re:Yes, finally.

[Rakarra]

Chances are your job will be slightly accommodating

Nope! US society found out the hard way that it's far far easier to change our conception of dates, to change what "8 am, noon, and 4pm" are than to have businesses change their hours. That last part is not going to happen.

Re: Yes, finally.

[ebvwfbw]

Just because something has always been done a certain way, doesn't mean that is still the best way.

That's what we said when we went to daylight saving time.
However if changing a clock is too hard for some people, I suppose we could stay with one time. Too bad we have to go down to the lowest common denominator all the time. I just showed a guy how to set his clock in his Sebring. He couldn't figure it out for 7 years. Took me like one second.

While we're at it let's go all in. Maybe we should go with that base 10 time as well?

Re: Yes, finally.

[oobayly]

I never said it's not democratic, I was responding to the parent's comment about not being represented by people they haven't voted for.

I've always voted, but the my current MP received more than 50% of the votes, so it's pretty much impossible for him to lose as the remaining vote is split between multiple candidates*. Clearly he had a lot of support, but then my constituency would elect a fox in a pheasant run if it was wearing a blue rosette. Just as my last constituency would have elected a donkey if it was wearing a red rosette. Personally I'd prefer a PR system, but c'est-la-vie.

* Unless he fucks up majorly before the next GE.

Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[upuv]

Day Light Savings was put into place so that farmers children could help on the farm before heading off to school.

The farm day starts at sunrise.

All fine and dandy when the majority of the population was rural and farming was much much more manual labour than it is today.

Now however the balance has shifted to a urban population. Where tasks prior to work or school are minimal in comparison to that of the farmer decades before. Now with Daylight savings we are actually being robbed of 2 hours of potential daylight after work and school. Which in turn takes away time from extra curricular activities outside and takes away time from the family that doesn't involve screen time.

If any thing I think daylight savings should go the other way. Not just get rid of it.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

> being robbed of 2 hours of potential daylight after work and school.
What the fuck are you talking about?
DST moves the clock forward by 1 hour. That means it stays light longer.
The exact opposite of what you are saying.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[jawtheshark]

Even back then, they could have said: “We start school at ten”. Problem solved.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[upuv]

I should have elaborated.

I'm basically saying is that the clock is two hours out year round. Yes the current system gives more sun in the summer months. But it basically means we come home in the dark in winter. Why not come home to a little sun and enjoy some outdoor time with the family, friends the garden what have you.

We should be moving the clock in winter and leaving it alone in summer. Even better move the whole clock an hour and apply reverse DST in winter thus the 2 hours.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Antiocheian]

That means the sun during the winter will be rising much later.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Blymie]

Everyone speaks of circadian rhythms, and how important they are. Part of that? Is sunlight, blue skies in the morning. *That* supposedly syncs things up.

So while I really don't care that much about the time zone changing, if people are going to want 'more sun at night', that's really the wrong reason to do it today. If we keep it, it should be so that the sun appears in the morning. That way, when the majority of people are in transit to work?

They get sunlight, blue skies in their eyes.

But really, all this blather about it hurting animals and man? Welp, certainly if it 'hurts' man, greater suicides, deaths due to all the reasons I've read about -- then I say this...

Are we going to start receiving hazard pay, every time we travel to a new timezone for work? Because that's the same, yes? Even 1 hour off, hurts humans! Can *kill*! If it can kill, then traveling for work is sort of like taking up smoking, because the boss demands it -- yes?

Yet why aren't scientists and others warning, screaming, yelling at the top of their lungs how DANGEROUS time zone travel is?

Welp, I can only conclude that there is no agenda of people wanting to kill off DST, and coming up with silly excuses to do so.

People want DST gone? Fine, I'll listen. People want to claim it's killing, harming people? THEN IT APPLIES IN ALL CASES, have some damned sense!

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[quarkoid]

Yes the current system gives more sun in the summer months.

There is exactly the same amount of sun in summer regardless of whether the clocks are put forward, backwards or left exactly the same.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to being ass backwards about sunlight in the afternoon, another indicator that you don't what you're talking about is that you think it's called "daylight savings". It's just daylight saving. Because, it aims to *save* the *daylight* in the afternoon when people leave work for the day.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[upuv]

Yep

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[butzwonker]

Exactly, and that's why I strongly prefer DST for the whole year. Without DST it would be dark an hour sooner in the summer. I don't want that. Where I live (Portugal) people stay up long and get up late. Our time zone is wrong.

Re: Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Zorpheus]

Though this would mean that we have to go to bed while the sun is shining. I think that also doesn't work so well with the circadian rhythm.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[ChunderDownunder]

Try Spain, they are an hour ahead - it's still dark in winter when the kids leave to go to school in Galicia.

Re: Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Blymie]

You've responded to me, yet I don't see how your comment applies to what I've said in my post. I didn't advocate changing anything, or modifying anything.

My comment about "if we keep it" was meant to stress that we shouldn't *change* it so that there is more light at night. That's the post I was responding to..

In terms of "go to bed when the sun is shining", all I said is that it's supposedly good to have sunlight + the blue sky in the morning. To sync things up. This doesn't mean you have to watch the sun rise, or anything silly like that. Only that the sun HAS risen by the time most people go to work.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[fafalone]

Does anyone really want the version of 'getting rid of DST' that involves not having that extra light after work/school when you can actually go do something instead of in the morning when it's useless, then dark way too early? Who wants daylight gone by 5:30pm like it is here now? Unless that's what we're getting, screw it, keep DST so at least we get it in the summer. (Your times and seasons may differ but the principle is no doubt the same).

Re: Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yet why aren't scientists and others warning, screaming, yelling at the top of their lungs how DANGEROUS time travel is?"

Man, you ain't kidding!

I once went back in time a found this super hot babe I started banging and almost Marty McFly-ed my ass as I started to slowly fade. Fortunately I pulled out last second when I realized it was my grandma. I'm still pretty fucked up "today" from the whole situation. Someone definitely should have warned me of the dangers, so I'm posting this for myself from the future. Still working on unfucking everything else wrong in your current era, but that reality should fade once I made a few minor changes. This shit is really, really complicated. Fuck, they are here, gotta run!

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, that's the problem. Nobody cares about going to work in the dark, people want to have more light in the evenings. Besides, modern energy saving light bulbs make the idea of "saving energy in the morning" negligible.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Bert64]

The farm day started at sunrise, irrespective of what it said on the clock.
There's no reason why the school day couldn't have started later, tying it to the arbitrary position of clock hands is stupid when you're in a location which results in the sunrise/sunset times changing significantly depending on the time of year.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Viol8]

You do realise that the actual amount of daylight doesn't change , right? Its just a number on a clock. If you want more light then get up earlier! All DST does is fool your mind into thinking its later than it is so whats the difference?

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[TheRaven64]

So while I really don't care that much about the time zone changing, if people are going to want 'more sun at night', that's really the wrong reason to do it today. If we keep it, it should be so that the sun appears in the morning. That way, when the majority of people are in transit to work?

Why? In the mornings, people get up and go to work and sit inside. In the evenings, they go out and can, if there is any, enjoy the daylight. When GWB extended summer time in the US, it had no measurable impact on any sector of the economy, except sports clubs, which saw an increase in custom, because people had more sunlight in the evenings when they could go and enjoy themselves.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[TheRaven64]

If you can persuade all employers to let their employees come into work an hour early and leave an hour early, that would fix the problem as well. Good luck with that.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fairly certain that Portugal is west of Greenwich. It should definitely not be on UTC+1. UTC-1 would make more sense.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Spain and much of the rest of Europe is UTC+1, Portugal is UTC. Switching to UTC-1 would make zero sense for Portugal.

Portugal is east of Greenwich, like the rest of Europe. "east is where the thumb points left"

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[butzwonker]

Because spare time BEFORE you start your daily work is much the same as the spare time in daylight you get AFTER you've come home from work... well, maybe for you, but not for me.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Barsteward]

farming technology has moved on since then

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Day Light Savings was put into place so that farmers children could help on the farm before heading off to school.

The farm day starts at sunrise.

DST moves the clock forward, meaning sunrise is later in the morning. That wouldn't enable children to help before school; it would hinder it.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Bright Apollo]

Never worked on a farm, didja? Work starts *before* sunrise.

Time is arbitrary anyway. Stop shifting, pick one thing, do that. I prefer getting dressed in daylight so fuck DST, but that's just me and people like me. It's not as if DST adds more sunlight to the total.

--#

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Opportunist]

Because that way you leave your home in the morning when it's not dawning, but when it's NIGHT.

I don't know about you, but around here, the sun rises at midsummer at 4am and sets at 8pm, unadjusted. So let's say we shift that by 2 hours so it rises at 6am and sets at 10pm. Great.

Now midwinter. Sunrise at 8am, set at 4pm. And if you shift that by 2 hours to get some evening rays until 6pm that means the sun rises at TEN in the morning.

I don't know about you, but I should be at work before that time. So you'd essentially want to go to work while it's darkest night for the chance of maybe see the sun set when you finally come home?

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Opportunist]

Try that a little further north and it means that in Winter you leave your house in the morning when it's pitch black night, so you can see the sun set when you come home. Well, if you come home early.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Blymie]

Why? Really? My post says precisely why. Circadian rhythms.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Opportunist]

I don't give a fuck either way. If it makes you happy, crank those hands on the clock by 6 hours so you get to work when it's (now) midnight so you can get out of work with sunrise, but stop putting me into jetlag twice a year.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Just in case you wonder why you've been downvoted: Almost everything in your post is erroneous. To figure out why, get a pen & paper and keep in mind that DST=summer time, standard time=winter time.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[91degrees]

A lot of Europe is in the wrong time zone. Spain wants to stay in sync with France. Portugal is on UTC (or UTC+1 in summer) same as the UK and Ireland. They tried +1/+2 for a few years in the 1990's to match Spain, but it wasn't popular.

I'd say Spain and possibly France are in the wrong timezones, but they seem to like to be in the same timezone as each other and Germany.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Alioth]

Well that's too bad. In the winter, it's dark when I go to work, and dark when I get home, and since I have no windows - if it's a busy time I could quite easily go from December to Feburary without seeing proper daylight.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[TheRaven64]

And the evidence that you have to support circadian rhythms benefitting more from sunlight while people are in offices than from sunlight when people are outside is...?

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I don't care what they call it. I want maximum daylight AFTER work. Daylight during work means nothing to me. Keep it, get rid of it, whatever, just don't stick us with "standard time" year round.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Viol8]

I guess you've never heard of flexitime.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Viol8]

Do you have comprehension problems? What difference does it make if the clock says 5pm and you leave work then, or it says the real time of 4pm and you leave then having got into work an hour earlier? The real time you leave work will be the same. Are you too dumb to understand this?

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[TheRaven64]

Portugal is east of Greenwich, like the rest of Europe. "east is where the thumb points left"

I've no idea what 'east is where the thumb points left' means, but Greenwich is exactly on the Meridian (by definition), Lisbon is 9 degrees, 9 minutes West of the Meridian. Even Madrid (which is in the country to the East of Portugal) is West of Greenwich (3 degrees, 43 minutes), though Barcelona (right on the Eastern edge of Spain) is 2 degrees 11 minutes East of Greenwich.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[TheRaven64]

Then you have a new problem, that anyone who works a 9-5 job has to figure out how to get their children to school an hour after they're supposed to be at work. Not a problem if one parent doesn't work, or in places where children can walk / cycle to school, but still a big issue in a lot of the country (particularly rural areas).

That said, there's a lot of research that shows that children don't lean efficiently until about 10-11am (depending on age, for many teenagers it's not until the afternoon), so there are other arguments for making the school day later.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[mitler]

You've echoed my thoughts exactly. The time change is annoying and causes all kinds of problems with scheduling, computers, etc. On the other hand I prefer the summer schedule of having the day go longer because I don't need daylight first thing in the morning anyway. I feel like most people in the modern age fit into this category. So my vote if I had one (which I don't), would be to permanently stay on DST.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[swillden]

I'm basically saying is that the clock is two hours out year round. Yes the current system gives more sun in the summer months. But it basically means we come home in the dark in winter. Why not come home to a little sun and enjoy some outdoor time with the family, friends the garden what have you.

Why not leave the clock alone and go to work at 6 AM rather than 8 AM?

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

> come into work an hour early and leave an hour early
You know, actually that's what DST/Summer Time achieves without adjusting working hours twice per year.

Re: Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Here that would would mean sunrise at 10 am in December. No thank you.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[jawtheshark]

I was specifically talking about the "rural scenario in the past", that the OP described. Regarding 9-5 jobs: where I live many jobs are 8-5 (mandatory 1h lunch) and school beginning at 8h, you still have a problem. My wife being a teacher, it's going to be real fun to organize that with our kid. Especially, teachers are supposed to be there 20-15min early and there is no guarantee that my wife will work in the school the little one will go.

Even worse, there are tons of people not working 9-5 jobs, but have early shifts (or late shifts, same difference but the problem arises when kids have to go home). My mom was a nurse for years, her early shift was something like starting at 6h00. Schoolkids? What are schoolkids? People work around this, if there is enough demand, then an industry will organically arise to solve the issue.

Regardless of 9-5 jobs, this problem has *always* existed.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you've never heard of flexitime.

Flextime only works when you don't have jackasses who still schedule meetings before 8am or after 4pm.

Also I rather prefer not driving to/from work with the rising/setting sun in my eyes the entire damn time.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people don't have that option.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[TheRaven64]

I've heard of it. Now tell me what percentage of people, particularly of people in low-paid occupations, who constitute the majority of the workforce, work at places that offer it.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you've never heard of schools or other institutions that start every day at the exact same time regardless of sunlight and don't care about sunlight? Or 3-shift jobs that don't have flextime because of their very nature?

The point is you'd have to change a lot of institutions in order to actually be able to shift your working time. Have you ever tried to change an institution? It's almost impossible these days.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice invented argument you got there, because no one is saying that jet lag is safe.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[butzwonker]

No comprehension problems here, but I have to admit you and a few others don't particularly shine with their intelligence and wittiness in this thread. Shifting the clock by one hour is really not rocket science. My employer won't change my work schedule because you say so, and neither does my girlfriend's employer or just about every other one you can imagine. Having more flexible work schedules is all fine if you actually have them. But no, child care and TV and radio and hospitals won't change all of their schedules because you or I think it's better.

Meanwhile, with DST people can enjoy longer sun in the evenings instead of sleeping while the sun shines an hour earlier in the morning.

Now if you personally prefer winter time, fine - just say so. I don't. I prefer to have longer sun in the evenings. Got it? Or do you still prefer to pretend to be stupid?

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Most employees do not have the luxury of setting their own hours. That's done by the management of the establishment that work at. Often, in large corporations by management at a corporate office, maybe even in another nation.
Are YOU to dumb to understand this?

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, flex time: where you come in at 7 and plan to leave at 4 but there is always some jackass who declines any meetings before they stroll in at 9 and expects everyone to attend their meeting from 4 to 5 pm.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

It is well established that working shift work increases health risks. Jet lag is also well established to have a negative effect on health.
Most shift workers get a bonus for working shift work, at least they do from decent employers. When I travel for work, unless there is a strong reason to prevent it, i am authorized an extra day to compensate for jet lag if traveling across so many time zones. That mean's flying out on Saturday, rather than Sunday or getting Monday off if required to fly back on Sunday. Not all companies do this, but as I said decent ones do.

Re: Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[tetris11]

past nastification affects more people than the government wants to admit.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Viol8]

"My employer won't change my work schedule because you say so,"

Unless you're a medical or emergency worker or you working in a factory then the chances are these days that yes, you can shift your schedule an hour.

Re: Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Additional wtf; I grew up on a farm, I got up and started working whenever my parents told me to do so, if they said 5 it was 5, if they said 6 it was 6... I didnâ(TM)t look at the clock and tell them it was too early.

Kids do what the fuck they are told to do no matter the time, time is irrelevant.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all that's not true. Many employees simply cannot shift their work by an hour that easily. Second, not only you but all family members and schools would also have to shift the schedule. Then if all radio and TV stations, all public events, all museums and cinemas and all bus and train lines would also shift their schedule by an hour, the effect would finally be the same as having DST.

Will this ever happen if we ditch DST? No. Are flexible work times and DST/permanent DST/permanent winter time the same topic? No, they are barely related.

It's called a red herring fallacy.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[iamhassi]

> being robbed of 2 hours of potential daylight after work and school. What the fuck are you talking about? DST moves the clock forward by 1 hour. That means it stays light longer. The exact opposite of what you are saying.

Right, which makes sense. What doesn't make sense is deciding the shortest days of the year should be made even shorter by falling back an hour during the winter, so instead of sunset at 6pm it's now sunset at 5.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

In normal countries (e.g. in the EU) children can walk or take public transportation on their own. They don't need to be escorted until they turn 13, and it is safe to let them just be children and on their own.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[TheRaven64]

Maybe my school (in the UK) was unusual, but in my class under 20% walked, the remainder took a bus or were driven - and most of those were driven. The few buses that went near the school didn't go to all of the places pupils came from and most lived outside of comfortable walking distance. The same was true of most of the schools where my mother taught (in various bits of Devon, mostly rural).

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Blymie]

What on Earth are you talking about? I said nothing about indoor versus outdoor. Nada. Zip. Zero.

You're so far out in left field, that I suggest you go and read up on the topic -- in depth. Sunlight and blue sky are paramount EARLY in the morning. As in, as close to waking as possible.

You can find dozens of studies to this effect with a simply google search. It's why people say smartphones are BAD at night. Why lights are bad at night. Why you should sleep in the dark. Why red light is better than other light, if you need light late at night. The list goes on and on, but you're out in left field blathering on about people being inside or outside, or economic impact.

It's *timing*. Did I mention timing? Also, it's the TIMING.

And FYI, yes being inside isn't good enough... so go and READ instead of blathering on here.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

What DST actually does is (poorly) adjust for the differing day length between winder and summer.
The basic idea is you set you sceduel based on when dawn in in winter then during the spring you ajust you clocks back to take advantage of the loger day. (and reset in fall).

This only makes sense if you assume that getting up at dawn is important.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bitztream the autism-hating, custom EpiPen-hating, Musk-hating, Qualcomm-hating, Firefox tabs-hating, Slashdot editors-hating Slashdot troll!

Re: Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

You have that all backwards...

Daylight savings was to start school and work an hour early, instead of wasting an hour of daylight because most people did nothing before school/work started

Many business did 12 hour days in summer down to 6 in winter. This is when candles and lights ere expensive and time was kept by a bell tower.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[PrimaryConsult]

In the northern half of the US at least, our commutes are long enough and the winter days short enough that we're waking up in darkness regardless. The only sun I see is through the windows at the office, may as well be an LCD panel showing sunlight for all I know. Sun at the end of the day is better.

Tl;dr - Circadian rhythem is already f'ked, might as well get some sunlight after work out of the deal.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Aqualung812]

Day Light Savings was put into place so that farmers children could help on the farm before heading off to school.

This is a myth that needs to die. I don't know why it keeps getting retold over and over again.

Farmers have generally either hated or ignored DST.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[MorePower]

Unless you're a medical or emergency worker or you working in a factory then the chances are these days that yes, you can shift your schedule an hour.

Or work in a mine, or a refinery, or a shipyard, or an airport, or basically anything other than a Dilbert-style white-collar office worker. Which I know is over-represented here on Slashdot, but is still not the norm for most of us. But even as a non-Dilbert-style worker I hate DST because it makes it so businesses can make you be at work before dawn almost the whole year instead of only in winter.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[gmack]

Actually, having lived in Spain, the attempt did them no good whatsoever. The Spanish arrive at work later in the morning, have a lunch at 1 pm and leave later in the evening than the Germans. They live on UTC even though their clocks say CET.

Re: Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Beats never seeing because youâ(TM)re locked in a fucking cage until it set.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you do realize that the length of the day is the same, regardless of whether DST is used or not? The earth doesn't somehow rotate faster or slower when we change our clocks. It's always killed me that otherwise intelligent people talk in terms of "longer days" or "more hours of sunlight".

Look, if you want more hours of sunlight when you get home from work, then go into work earlier so you can leave earlier. If you don't have flexible hours, then try getting up earlier to use the sunlight in the morning, before you go to work.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Just in case you wonder why you've been downvoted

Bitztream gets downvoted because he's a troll and a moron.

Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs

[Rakarra]

or basically anything other than a Dilbert-style white-collar office worker

Many of us white-collar office workers don't have flex time either because we're support staff and our shifts have to cover the time periods that the other office workers are actually here. If THEY all left an hour earlier, than our shifts could start and end an hour earlier too. Will this happen? No. It will not.

Good in some areas

[Anonymous Coward]

Daylight saving time is good in areas closer to the poles, but not really helpful in subtropical regions.

Re:Good in some areas

[6Yankee]

65N here and I haven't met a single person who thinks DST is a good idea, even when the clocks go forward.

Just as the autumn proper ends and it turns really dark, grey and nasty for November-season, you lose an hour of daylight in the evening along with a good chunk of your will to live. By the time you get to December the sun might bother to drag its arse over the horizon by 10:30, but it'll never get above the trees and it'll be back in bed by 2:30. The kids are going to school in the dark and coming home in the dark, whether we faff about with the clock or not.

Here, DST is a swift kick in the nuts when you need it the least. Much further north and there's no daylight to save.

Re:Good in some areas

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do so many people think winter time is DST for some reason?
DST is summer time. It's not that difficult.

Re:Good in some areas

[6Yankee]

Well, yes, but without "summer time" we wouldn't have "winter time". And in the summer we have so much daylight we have to black it out if we want any sleep, so (until we can bottle the stuff) why would we want to save it then?

Why do we have to piss around with the clocks at all?

Re:Good in some areas

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm at 65N just at the polar circle, I do like summertime, but not standard time (wintertime). I just wish they changed one last time to summer time and left it there or simply just left clock at standard time and refrained from changing it ever again. Going back one hour messes everything up.

Re:Good in some areas

[Anne Thwacks]

Here in the UK, it is hard to see how DST makes much difference to anything - in the summer its light from 5Am till 10PM, so there is plenty of sun to go round. In the Winter its dark from 3PM til 10AM. An hour each way might make a marginal difference in March and October - maybe. Obviously, taking sun from one part of the day to move it to another part of the day is a waste of time. It just messes with your circadian rhythm.

The solution is to take sun from the summer and move it to the winter!

Re:Good in some areas

[butzwonker]

Without DST you'd have less light in the evenings in the summer, and the same bleak dark winter days that you already complain about in the winter.

Re:Good in some areas

[6Yankee]

Given that the sun here sets well after midnight in summer and is back up again before 4am, and I've seen people out having a picnic in broad daylight at 2am, summer evenings really aren't an issue. Spring and autumn, though, sure. If we could have permanent DST, great; it's the changing back and forth this half-time half-assed DST implementation brings that makes it suck a pain.

Re:Good in some areas

[Hal_Porter]

Once we leave the EU we can set our own DST rules, free from the tyranny of a federal superstate.

Re:Good in some areas

[itsdapead]

Without DST you'd have less light in the evenings in the summer, and the same bleak dark winter days that you already complain about in the winter.

Assuming the solution to abolishing DST is literally to abolish DST rather than the sensible approach: make a zone-by-zone decision on whether to stay permanently on DST or non-DST.

Most of England would probably be best on permanent DST - unfortunately, Scotland probably needs its own time zone. Maybe that can be fixed if Scotland break away so they can stay in the EU... Trouble is, in the current political climate, the Daily Mail is gonna be shouting "you can take our Greenwich Mean Time from our cold dead fingers". Sigh.

Re:Good in some areas

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we have to piss around with the clocks at all?

I agree. That's why I'm in favor of switching to the stardate system.

Re:Good in some areas

[Anonymous Coward]

A brilliant idea, that will show those stinky Germans with their European time. In the winter, to celebrate London (the glorious capital of the empire, All hail Empress Victoria!) we can have say Greenwich Mean Time, then in Summer, to celebrate British Summers (Famous for their long warm days and dry weather) we can have British Summer time.

All Hail Brexit and do exactly what Putin says!

Re:Good in some areas

[Opportunist]

Take a wild guess why Iceland never bothered to join the idiots club.

Re:Good in some areas

[Opportunist]

In Summer it's virtually impossible to get the kids to bed at a sane time because it's light outside until about 10pm. You think that makes any parents really happy?

Re:Good in some areas

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you need permanent DST? Why not just have permanent "start work at 8 instead of 9?"

Re:Good in some areas

[Anonymous Coward]

We can already, you brainless brextremist.

Re:Good in some areas

[Anonymous Coward]

I think everyone is confused. Daylight savings time in the EU is from March 25 October 28. The perceived loss of daytlight is the rolling back at the end of daylight savings time. I'm seeing this complaint a great deal where people complain about standard time. IMO if we are going to get rid of the time shift I want to stay on DT as the daylight range seems better suited.

Re:Good in some areas

[IgnitusBoyone]

I see this confusion all the time. Everything people complain about is the returning to "Normal Time".

Honestly, the most expensive part of DST is the modern debates about keeping DST. Computers handle the rest on most clocks by now and you hardly need to worry about it.

Re:Good in some areas

[parkinglot777]

The solution is to take sun from the summer and move it to the winter!

Ok, here you are.

Summer is now named Winter
Winter is now named Summer

Problem solved? :p

Re:Good in some areas

[Hal_Porter]

Back before the EU British Summer Time was announced when Her Britannic Majesty emerged from her underground Winter Palace. If she saw a shadow summer had arrived and we all wound our pocket watches. Anyone that didn't was killed, horribly.

This is how it should be.

Re:Good in some areas

[Rakarra]

In the winter, to celebrate London (the glorious capital of the empire, All hail Empress Victoria!) we can have say Greenwich Mean Time

That's a lot of snark to aim towards folks who didn't want to be a part of the empire of Europe, subservient to a foreign government unaccountable to them.

Re:Good in some areas

[Rakarra]

Summer is now named Winter

Winter is now named Summer

Problem solved? :p

That means we're not in Summer and Winter is Coming, again. That blows.

Animals read clocks?

[righteousness]

I'm curious as to how daylight savings time is disadvantageous to animals.

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Calydor]

Deer, as an example, get used to roads being safe to cross until a certain point in the morning. All well and good, but suddenly that point shifts by an entire hour without any warning that the deer can perceive. Result: More animals hit by traffic.

Most animals live by their circadian rhythm. Wake up at a certain time, eat at a certain time, sleep at a certain time. For farm animals like cows and pigs, this fits into their daily routine as livestock. But suddenly everything shifts by an hour, resulting in anything ranging from confusion to stress. And for what? So the stores turn on their all-night LEDs at the same time they always do?

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Xest]

Because they too have to set their alarm clocks to wake up an hour earlier, but as they don't have jobs to go to suffer from higher levels of depression as a result and so are more likely to commit suicide.

This is why you see more roadkill around the time the clocks change.

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

My dog puts herself to bed at the same time every night. The clocks changing confuses her.

Re: Animals read clocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

#DeerLivesMatter

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Daylight saving time is very bad for the environment. An extra hour of sunshine every day evaporates more water from all the lakes and rivers.

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Daylight saving time is very bad for the environment. An extra hour of sunshine every day evaporates more water from all the lakes and rivers.

I can only hope this was a joke...

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Opportunist]

First, livestock doesn't give a shit either way. A cow wants to be milked at at certain time, whether you call that time 6am or 7am the cow doesn't care. So this may not be disadvantageous to the animal, but certainly to the person that has to deal with the animal because he or she cannot heed the dictate of DST simply because the animals don't give a fuck about it.

Then there's animals that we're a threat to. Animals have a pretty good idea of timing, oddly enough, and if they learn that you avoid roads during these couple hours because there's lots of cars on the roads during these hours, they will do so. Now those cars shift by a whole hour. Without consulting the animals, of course, leading to animals considering hours safe that are actually dangerous now.

We humans also tend to start working or doing whatever else we do as "business" at the same time, for the most part. Animals get used to this and they are usually rather wary of sudden changes in their environment, even if it should be none of their business. But they suddenly notice that for no particular reason they could understand, we get busy an hour early. That means stress. Because they don't know what's going on and they start to worry.

And all that happens right at the time when a lot of those animals start having their young...

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Opportunist]

So we could fight global warming simply by eliminating DST?

Awesome! Who'd have thought it's that easy. And it was so obvious, I mean, look at how temperature changes, and then look at when countries started using DST! Try telling me that's a "mere coincidence"!

Re:Animals read clocks?

[c]

But suddenly everything shifts by an hour, resulting in anything ranging from confusion to stress.

This.

I have a dog who suffers seizures within a few days of the fall DST shift. Spring is okay for some reason, though.

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

OR
OR
OR
ORRRRRR

The farmer can simply ignore DST so the animals aren't disrupted.

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbass they'll just adapt over time.

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Calydor]

And when the milk tanker shows up half an hour before the farmer is done milking instead of half an hour after?

Re:Animals read clocks?

[bickerdyke]

How did you teach her to read the clock?

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

My dog doesn't follow daylight savings at all. I walked him at 5 in the morning, before I get ready for work. Then the time change happened and what was 5 became 4, yet he still comes in and wakes me up at the same time, so now I walk him at 4. Though one more month and it goes back to 5.

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most animals live by their circadian rhythm. Wake up at a certain time, eat at a certain time, sleep at a certain time. For farm animals like cows and pigs, this fits into their daily routine as livestock. But suddenly everything shifts by an hour, resulting in anything ranging from confusion to stress.

Do you really think that farmers are that stupid?

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the thing, farmers don't have to do everything by the clock. When DST happens, they can just do everything an hour earlier and the animals won't notice. This is like complaining kids will have to go to school in the dark, something that is entirely controllable if you just move the schedule.

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

have you actually met any? Honestly I am suprised if they can tie their shoes without shitting their pants

Re:Animals read clocks?

[tetris11]

"I told you to come at 8am my time, not 8am regular time you twat!"

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Animals which are already stressed by the intensive agricultural practices stress even more from the additional irregularities. Result is increase in deceases and medical costs, and a decrease in product quality and productivity.

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most animals live by their circadian rhythm. Wake up at a certain time, eat at a certain time, sleep at a certain time. For farm animals like cows and pigs, this fits into their daily routine as livestock. But suddenly everything shifts by an hour, resulting in anything ranging from confusion to stress. And for what?

Animals that have been slaughtered under duress taste better, human scum!

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Quirkz]

Deer, as an example, get used to roads being safe to cross until a certain point in the morning. All well and good, but suddenly that point shifts by an entire hour without any warning that the deer can perceive. Result: More animals hit by traffic.

Deer move the most around dawn and dusk. The DST transition occurs during the time of year that puts the daily commute close to dawn and dusk. I'd be shocked if the increase in accidents didn't occur because of that, rather than because of a timer in the deer. Around here they're constantly running across the road in the evening, all winter long, even after having 3-4 months to adjust to the new schedule.

Re:Animals read clocks?

[Calydor]

But everyone the farmer deals with DOES.

I gave the example of the guy coming to pick up the milk elsewhere in this discussion. He's on a deadline, and that deadline shifted with DST coming and going. Thus the farmer has to be done milking on HIS schedule, not that of the cows.

Re:Animals read clocks?

[gmack]

Don't know about that. I used to live in an area that had an annual deer cull to keep the population down. You could always tell when that was because it was the only time of year the deer would hang out in people's yards and school playgrounds.. where it was illegal to shoot them

Somehow the cull never got it's quota

Re: Animals read clocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Farmers work when the sun is out, about to come up, or has gone down, regardless of what the clock says. Rest assured, the cows and other livestock are as unaffected by DST as their farmers are, for they do not know how to read a clock.

No fucking shit

[Anonymous Coward]

'nuff said.

EU Parliament?

[jawtheshark]

Nothing the EU Parliament votes on is binding. It’s a hollow institution. The true power lies with the commission and those people are appointed and never have to justify themselves.

I’d love DST to be gone. Won’t happen in my lifetime.

Re:EU Parliament?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Balderdash, the Parliament represents the views of the people of Europe and none who hold democracy dear would fail to implement its decisions.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

Urgh the EU Parliament has to agree on laws with the commission or the are not laws.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nothing the EU Parliament votes on is binding. Itâ(TM)s a hollow institution. The true power lies with the commission and those people are appointed and never have to justify themselves."

Christ, as people still parroting this long discredited UKIP drivel?

The commission president is elected by the European parliament, and the commissioners are appointed by state governments. If you think they're not accountable then that's most likely because your government isn't accountable and is using the commissioners to do things against your interests - that's not the EU or the commissions fault, that's the fault of your own government.

But even outside of that nowadays yes, the commission is accountable to the European Parliament too, and as the European Parliament is democratically elected through proportional representation that makes it one of the single most accountable governments in the Western world - certainly more so than in countries like the UK where a party with only 30% - 40% of the vote can get 100% of the power and rule in the face of the 60% - 70% majority, even now in the UK for example we're in a situation where 54% of the electorate voted for parties supporting soft Brexit, but the other 46% hold 100% of power so are defying the democratic will of the populace.

You should probably educate yourself before spouting such drivel in future, you clearly have no idea how the EU works but are just parroting the line of your favourite local anti-European xenophobic neo-fascist organisation (tm) who only hate the EU (and it's predecessors) precisely because it has been so astoundingly successful at blocking the re-birth of neo-fascist anti-democrats since just after the war. The EU is a bulwark against anti-democratic forces and we're better for it - one of the primary reasons assaults by neo-fascists against it are so effective is because it doesn't engage in massive widespread propaganda efforts like they do and so can't fight fire with fire. It should be respected for rising above their populist games, but instead useful idiots like you fall for the populism and spout the utmost nonsense to support neo-fascist forces who want to end democracy in Europe. You only have to look at the UK's Brexit debacle to see a fine example - the forces behind Brexit talk about sovereignty and democracy but are actively defying the democratic will of the people by bribing a tiny party with £1bn of public money to back them. If that isn't one of the biggest affronts to democracy in the UK's parliamentary history I don't know what is, but funny enough it's the Brexiteers who are apparently "giving us back control" that are most for it. That isn't a coincidence - what they say is the opposite of what they want, they wanted us out the EU not to give the people back control, but to give themselves more power to control without the democratic checks and balances that the EU enforces.

Re:EU Parliament?

[dehachel12]

> those people are appointed
appointed by whom ?

Re:EU Parliament?

[jawtheshark]

Typical political fail, which I have heard all too often "Well, theoretically possible, but nobody would ever do that". Heard it all too often in my civics classes. I find it absolutely incomprehensible to have no fail safes.

Re:EU Parliament?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

> those people are appointed appointed by whom ?

Russian hackers, of course.

Re:EU Parliament?

[jawtheshark]

So, the commission is is accountable to the EP... Now tell me, what is the power the EP has to punish an out of control commission? That's the point: the EP has no power. It can at best block a law, and that law will come back, somehow reformulated, until it passes.

Look, I know how it works in theory. I look at the practice, and the practice doesn't work as the theory.

Often enough laws are passed that are blatantly against citizens. The EP does nothing, or at best waters down the law a bit.

I am not a citizen of the UK, actually I live in one of the most pro-EU countries in Europe and worse, I had my education at the European School (if you even know what that is). You can believe me that you get indoctrinated into believing the EU is good. I actually still think that the concept is useful and should be implemented, but the way the EC behaves (pro TTIP, totally in the hand of lobbyists, okayed the blanket road toll on German highways, Glyphosate, Roaming allowing national-only contracts, etc...), and the way the EP behaves has totally disillusioned me.

I say: scratch everything and rebuild it. With much more power to the EP, and lobbyists kicked out of Brussels. Ironically the "more power to the EP" part was supposed to be part of the EU constitution... but we know how that went: the trust in the EU was already in an all-time low, and people wanted to get back at the EU. Totally comprehensible.

Re:EU Parliament?

[91degrees]

The commission president is elected by the European parliament

So, who were the candidates for president? How many votes did the second place get? (The answer, is zero, because the president is appointed in a really stupid way that in no way reflects democracy).

and the commissioners are appointed by state governments. If you think they're not accountable then that's most likely because your government isn't accountable and is using the commissioners to do things against your interests - that's not the EU or the commissions fault, that's the fault of your own government.

It's a shame the EU wasn't structured in such a way as to keep them accountable. Who are they directly accountable to? Parliament as a whole, the cabinet, or the head of government? If I object to a decision by my commissioner, who do I contact to make this objection known? The fact that I live in a country where the government doesn't represent the people doesn't excuse the EU from being crap here.

as the European Parliament is democratically elected through proportional representation that makes it one of the single most accountable governments in the Western world

I have two objections to the EU Parliament - firstly, STV is not mandatory. Secondly, it has no ability to initiate legislation. The only elected body of a nominally democratic institution only has the power to rubber stamp, or reject legislation.

You should probably educate yourself before spouting such drivel in future,

Oh piss off with your "educate yourself" drivel. Some people disagree with you. This does not mean they're not educated. It means they haven't bought in to the idea that the EU is the bastion of democracy. It's not, and pretending it is because the power is vested in a group appointed by a group selected from a body elected by the people in an election that is not necessarily representative, does not make it so.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

those people are appointed

appointed by whom ?

Russian hackers, of course.

And who appoints the Russian hackers?

Re:EU Parliament?

[Errol backfiring]

none who hold democracy dear

In other words, the European Commission, which holds all the power.

Re:EU Parliament?

[JaredOfEuropa]

This. As a European, I am glad the EU exists and I applaud the good that it has brought, but its political structure is deeply flawed. "Hold democracy dear" is not a term I would apply to the likes of Druncker, Schulz, and many of the Commissioners. There is not enough direct voter influence on the EU power structure, and that's not merely undesirable, but dangerous. We need those fail safes.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

Voter influence is how we ended up with the disasters of Brexit and Trump. Voters are idiots. Having educated people with advanced degrees in position to make the right decisions is the correct choice.

Re:EU Parliament?

[dave420]

Direct democracy is even more dangerous. It just takes a well-crafted series of facebook posts to convince millions they're in danger, and their votes can be swayed.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anne Thwacks]

And who appoints the Russian hackers?

The Turtles, obviously!

Re:EU Parliament?

[AmiMoJo]

I used to be a fan of direct democracy. Why not just vote on everything now that technology makes voting cheap and reliable, right?

But the reality is that most people aren't interested enough to educate themselves about important topics, but want to participate anyway. Even the ones who seem to be engaged are often really just angry because of decades of abusive Daily Mail headlines warping their perception of the world and baiting them every single day.

Someone will now accuse me of being a fascist who gets butthurt when things don't go his way, but actually every democracy has things to prevent direct democracy getting out of hand, e.g. a constitution.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that appointment goes through Russians.
McConnell is in a different branch of that hierarchy.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Megol]

What about direct democracy in the small - the things people actually interact with daily or at least several times per month?
Then they can see the effects of their choices faster.

Also this would allow a more dynamic process by allowing people to together move towards a (local) system that works according to their wants and needs.
This could be done for instance by having several periods with increasing length so that the first vote will have a short period of validity, the second vote for the same question will have a longer period and the third an even longer (e.g. 4-8 years minimum before a new vote).

While this wouldn't scale it could have positive effects in educating people about democracy and what it requires from the voters.

Re:EU Parliament?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Direct voter influence on the power structure (how I worded it) is not at all the same as direct democracy (i.e. referendums). It simply means that those in power are elected by the voter rather than appointed or voted on by a committee. Or failing that, having sufficiently powerful democratic oversight over appointed rulers. In case of the EU, a good start would be to give more power to parliament.

Re:EU Parliament?

[JaredOfEuropa]

I used to be opposed to direct democracy. I thought a representative democracy is best, where we choose our rulers and those rulers make the difficult decisions. And referendums are problematic, just look at Brexit. Or at the Dutch referendum on the EU constitution, with both sides of the issue playing on emotions. "If you vote against, the lights will go out and we will have war", as an example statement from a government member.

However during the referendum on the treaty with the Ukraine I saw kind of the opposite: utterly uninformed politicians voting blindly, and rather well informed ordinary voters (on both sides of the issue) not just voting but able to state their case, and explain rationally why they'd vote one way or the other. Sure, voters are still being played, but in general, I have been seriously disappointed in the quality of the decisions made by our politicians. Their insights aren't necessarily better than those of the general populace. And many (but not all) of them have the wrong set of priorities: their own career, the party interests, business friends, future job opportunities, and only then they think of the good of the country. That is a heavy accusation to make, but I no longer hesitate to make it; the evidence is all around us.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to see how direct democracy would fare, just take a look at this thread. Every second post is somehow mistaken about DST, including wrong explanations of its origins and purpose, all the classic off-by-one errors. and persistently confusing DST with winter time. All of that given that people on /. are probably more intelligent&educated than the average and the topic is not even a particularly hard or important...

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU Parliament has to approve any new legislation, the commission can only propose stuff. The commission is the executive and does the day-to-day running, the Parliament and Council are for policy changes.

The motion is binding in the sense that the Commission has to carry it out.

But I suspect you knew all this and are just being facetious.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Opportunist]

You're joking, but ...

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

We have failsafes - the ECJ and ECHR.

TTIP is a good example, the ECJ intervened on that and ruled against the commission precisely because it's one of the few cases where the EC was ignoring citizens:

https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/u...

I think it's all too easy to mistake democratic institutions deciding on something you don't like for corruption, or lack of fairness. Unfortunately the reality is that there will always be some issues in which you're in the minority. I don't much like Brexit or Trump, but unfortunately as a democrat these are things I have to accept.

If there is proven corruption or subversion of democracy behind something I don't like then fine, call it out, and punish harshly those responsible, but that's hardly the norm. As a Brit living in the UK, who doesn't like the way the country is going democratically I have a couple of choices - I can stay and try and change it, or I can move to a country more in line with my ideology. What's pointless is for me to sitting pissing, and moaning, and crying about the system being rigged, or making spurious claims that don't hold up to scrutiny about lack of checks and balances when they very clearly do exist.

Re:EU Parliament?

[91degrees]

Seems to work reasonably well in Switzerland, and even for US constitutional amendments. There are hurdles to getting things on the ballot, so it's not absolute democracy, but it does create a lot more involvement of the populace in lawmaking.

Re:EU Parliament?

[TheRaven64]

But the reality is that most people aren't interested enough to educate themselves about important topics, but want to participate anyway.

Most? I doubt that there are any people who have well-informed opinions on the vast majority of issues that come up in Parliament. The issues are sufficiently complex that it would take full-time study to understand just a few of them.

The problem with representative democracy is that, in my experience, the representatives that we elect are only marginally less ignorant than the average voter. They have to rely on opinions from the civil service and self-proclaimed experts, who are often pushing an agenda and not giving impartial advice.

I suspect that the problem is that we pick people to be general representatives. I wonder how different it would be if we had to vote independently for people to represent us in different policy areas and require that they collaborate in issues that overlap multiple areas.

Re:EU Parliament?

[TheRaven64]

One of the proposals that I've seen is for direct democracy but with arbitrary layers of delegation. I don't have time to vote on every issue, but there's someone I know who's well-versed in issues relating to heathcare and someone else who knows a lot about education, so I delegate my votes to them in these policy areas. They may not have time to vote for everything, but they know enough to be able to judge other people that have sensible opinions, so can delegate my vote and theirs. You'd need some safeguards to prevent sudden swings in public opinion from causing things that have been worked on for months to collapse, but even something like preventing you from changing your delegation more than once a month would help there.

This also addresses problems of gerrymandering. Constituencies are entirely fluid entities, with individuals able to add and remove themselves at will.

Re:EU Parliament?

[TheRaven64]

I have two objections to the EU Parliament - firstly, STV is not mandatory. Secondly, it has no ability to initiate legislation. The only elected body of a nominally democratic institution only has the power to rubber stamp, or reject legislation.

The last time that a proposal came up to move power to the EU Parliament and away from the Commission, it was vetoed by the French and the English. If the UK leaves and Macron remains staunchly pro-EU, I wouldn't be surprised if that changed.

The sad thing about the Brexit referendum wasn't that people wanted to take power from the EU, it was that they thought that giving it to the people most responsible for the least-democratic aspects of the EU was a good plan.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

Direct democracy is even more dangerous. It just takes a well-crafted series of facebook posts to convince millions they're in danger, and their votes can be swayed.

I live in the one country with the most direct democracy in the world and I can tell you from experience that your claim is utter bullshit. The amount of damage "a well-crafted series of facebook posts" can wreck in a direct democracy is actually lower than in less direct forms. The best antidotes to this issue is encouraging a healthy political discourse, which more direct forms of democracy facilitate; also enabling people to have the time and access to resources helps a lot.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh. My. God.

The Russian hackers must be turtles!!!!

Re:EU Parliament?

[Malc]

The parliament can dissolve the commission. As can directly elected national governments via the council of ministers.

Re:EU Parliament?

[91degrees]

Right. Despite my criticism above, I'm still fairly pro-EU, but feel the organisation needed some fairly hefty reforms. Ironically, I think the UK being outside of the EU might mean they actually fix most of the aspects that were causing problems in the UK.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Archangel Michael]

Why bother with that, just have the courts declare it a right or unconstitutional as needed. That way, we can all be smug about how smart the idiots wearing robes are.

Re:EU Parliament?

[tetris11]

how sensationalised is swiss media though? Are voters swayed easily by tabloids?

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the same stupid excuse used to justify the Electoral College, and it's just as stupid today as it was in 2016. If one candidate gets more votes, she should be President. End of story.

Re:EU Parliament?

[jawtheshark]

... and when did that ever happen? Honest question. I googled it, and found nothing.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

"As a European, I am glad the EU exists and I applaud the good that it has brought, but its political structure is deeply flawed."

As someone who voted Leave, I wish the EU was not flawed and would welcome a democratic replacement; I have nothing against Europeans or immigrants. But after watching what happened to (and is still happening to) Greece I simply can't support the existing system even by turning a blind eye. Any system that views 47% (and higher at times) youth unemployment as a price worth paying for the stability of a private banking system has simply run out of reasons to continue existing. Remaining in the EU at this point is simply worshipping an idol wrapped in a flag and chanting peons to a dead ideal.

The response to your view about direct voter influence is dismissed by the leadership and the wealthy of the world is that ordinary people don't understand the technical complexities of a modern economy. Which rather overlooks the fact that neither do the economists who led us over a cliff in 2007 without so much as a blush of shame. C'est la vie, I guess, but we don't have to sit at home and let them get on with carving up the turkey.

Leaving the EU will hurt the UK financially - I always knew and expected that - but there's more at stake than just money. Which is why people like Barnier are baffled and annoyed: for them there is nothing other than money. They see all decisions as coming down to which option makes the most wealth but are sadly less interested in who that wealth is distributed to.

Re:EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

Direct democracy is even more dangerous. It just takes a well-crafted series of facebook posts to convince millions they're in danger, and their votes can be swayed.

I know right? Representative democracy has so many problems by itself there is no need to even consider alternative forms that nobody has ever properly tried to implement. Why not try something tested with time like some form of despotism and feudalism? Both have been wildly successful for the majority of recorded human history. Just consider the world we live in. Who knows where we would be without the Dark Ages? Back in the forest hugging trees, that is where. Fuck Democracy. People are too dumb in general to make decisions anyway. Most don't even bother showing up to vote. What we need is a governance system exclusively composed of "expert decision makers".

Re:EU Parliament?

[91degrees]

We've seen a decent number of politically educated people pushing for leaving the EU. It's a good thing is economic stability is your goal, and don't get me wrong - economic stability is a good thing; but it's not the only thing that matters.

Trump was a response to a really bad choice essentially between the highly unpopular Hillary Clinton, and Trump; who is extremely unpopular to his opponents, but appeals to some people because of his brashness. It's not really a democratic process.

Re: EU Parliament?

[Anonymous Coward]

They havenâ(TM)t been around very long. Itâ(TM)s almost 400 years since the British parliament removed the monarch. Along with his head. How many times have the US elected representatives removed the president? This kind of thing is rare, even if mechanisms are in place to allow it.

"summer" all the time :-)

[njet]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Of course not in the Europse

[Anonymous Coward]

since dakr and cold it is there where time of day is least of problems.

Brins Songa.

Parliament also voted to keep DST for now

[radi0man]

There were actually two resolutions on Daylight Saving Time. The other was about abolishing DST and was rejected: https://www.timeanddate.com/ne...

Re:Parliament also voted to keep DST for now

[Calydor]

So they voted to find out the pros and cons rather than just going with a gut feeling to rip out the existing system.

Seems reasonable to me.

Re:Parliament also voted to keep DST for now

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there is reason why earth is split to timezones and why they go hand with longtitude...
Anyone absurd enough to believe they magicly get more sunshine by turning clock should be executed as moron instantly

Re:Parliament also voted to keep DST for now

[thegarbz]

Seems reasonable to me.

Tell me about it. Clearly these people are unfit to be politicians.

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[Max_W]

LED lamps consume several times less electrical energy than incandescent bulbs.

I mean nowadays it is possible to save energy on lighting by less radical measures.

However, it would be very hard to cancel Daylight Saving Time. As there will be undoubtedly political populists trying to construct a career by defending this tradition.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[KiloByte]

A good part of opposition to reducing lighting energy came from governments pushing "energy saving" (ie, CFL) bulbs -- "energy saving bulb" being literally the name used in trade, at least in Poland. These bulbs cause massive pollution, are very dangerous if broken, and are unhealthy for eyesight (both due to flickering and bad spectrum).

Despite these flaws, legislation sounded like "energy saving" are the second coming while incadescents are Hitler reincarnated; obviously, some favours from CFL makers were involved. This made the public lose any trust in such measures.

And as most voters are irrational, a voice that says "THEY want to again change things contrary to what we always did" can indeed gain some votes.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[KiloByte]

To whatever idiot modded this as troll: it's LEDs which are overwhelmingly (save for the initial cost) better than incadescents; energy savers (CFLs) on the other hand wouldn't be used or allowed to use by any rational person if not for the purchased law. Also, studies which try to dismiss the downsides say that flickering and noise affect "only" cheap CFLs -- as if 99% of people didn't pick the cheaper bulb whenever presented two with neither having a readily apparent upside other than price.

Thus, adoption of LEDs and other sane energy saving measures were hurt by the "energy saving" CFL crap.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[Freischutz]

LED lamps consume several times less electrical energy than incandescent bulbs.

I mean nowadays it is possible to save energy on lighting by less radical measures.

However, it would be very hard to cancel Daylight Saving Time. As there will be undoubtedly political populists trying to construct a career by defending this tradition.

A good part of opposition to reducing lighting energy came from governments pushing "energy saving" (ie, CFL) bulbs -- "energy saving bulb" being literally the name used in trade, at least in Poland. These bulbs cause massive pollution, are very dangerous if broken, and are unhealthy for eyesight (both due to flickering and bad spectrum).

Despite these flaws, legislation sounded like "energy saving" are the second coming while incadescents are Hitler reincarnated; obviously, some favours from CFL makers were involved. This made the public lose any trust in such measures.

And as most voters are irrational, a voice that says "THEY want to again change things contrary to what we always did" can indeed gain some votes.

Which "Energy saving" bulbs are you talking about? ... cause the OP was taking about LED bulbs which are solid state not Fluorescent ones. Compact fluorescent are particularly high in mercury and they are (or they used to be) a bit of a bitch to recycle. LED lights also contain various kinds of metals including lead,nickel, some also contain arsenic and (surprise, surprise) copper. However, incandescent bulbs contain very high levels of lead and mercury so it's not as if we are transitioning to something more polluting, it just that the LED bulb uses less energy than the incandescent and it lasts longer. Incidentally the most polluting LEDs are the coloured ones, it's the white LEDs that are most used for light bulbs who seem to contain the fewest contaminants. In the end the most important thing is which one of these, Incandescent, fluorescent or LEDs are the easiest to recycle and not rating LEDs as being disposable in conventional landfills. LED bulbs are electronics and should be sent to recycling plants like any other electronics waste for recycling since LEDs are up to 95% recyclable. Recycling is also important because of the lead and arsenic in the coloured LEDs which needs to be collected and safely disposed of or re-used.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[KiloByte]

The name "energy saving" means explicitly CFL in common labelling in shops and in advertising in Poland; I believe I pointed so well enough -- if that wasn't clear, then sorry. LEDs are thus called "LED bulbs" or "LED lighting" (when in non-bulb shape), to disambiguate.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[l20502]

Pretty much all modern "white" LEDs are blue LEDs covered with yellow phospors

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[l20502]

Those CFL might cause a lot of radio noise and make videos look silly but they still run at some hundred kilohertz plus there's the persistence of of phosphors so they shouldn't affect humans much.
Not to defend them, but cheap CFL usually last longer than cheap LEDs where the LEDs aren't sufficently cooled and cook themselves.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[Calydor]

Better than covering them in white phosporous.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[KiloByte]

One I still have attached to my desk (used only to attach a LED lamp with no arm) flickers at somewhat around 5Hz, with a longer cycle several seconds long.

Overhead fluorescents that plague classrooms and similar public places also usually flicker, often with audible noise. It's hard to find a classroom without at least one flickering lamp.

A hundred kilohertz cycle can't make videos look silly (other than possibly interference): what you see is strobe effect at 60Hz.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[Megane]

I don't know why you're talking about light bulbs, because Daylight Saving Time does not save energy. Period. It saves "daylight", just like it says on the tin. Some extra time that the sun is in the sky in summer is moved from the morning to the evening.

I started using CFL bulbs around 2000 or so, and the big thing to me was all the time I saved in having to replace burned out bulbs every month. Back then was early in CFC technology, so they were all well-made, not the cheap crap ones that flicker or die early, so most of them are still where I put them over 15 years ago. As they start to die, I'll be replacing them with LED bulbs.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[Max_W]

I don't know why you're talking about light bulbs, because Daylight Saving Time does not save energy. Period.

Still in the Wikipedia article the energy saving is stated as the first raison d'être: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... "Proponents of DST generally argue that it saves energy, promotes outdoor leisure activity in the evening (in summer)..."

I agree with you that it does not save time. Besides, I like to run in the morning before work, and because of the DST I have to run in darkness. I cannot wait when it is abolished.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[Max_W]

...I agree with you that it does not save time....

Oops, my typing error. Rather: ... that it does not save energy.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[Anonymous Coward]

As there will be undoubtedly political populists trying to construct a career...

Hey, wait a minute there. I thought that was the purpose of School Boards.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[Anonymous Coward]

And the light they produce is shite.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG, CFLs are not "unhealthy" for the eyes. Panic monger some MOAR republitard.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad these are becoming bright enough too, with a real light bulb form factor and around 10 euros in brick and mortar store.
One place I go has standardized on 2700K pretty much. Something around 3500K or even up to 5000K might be better but with 2700K ones at least the harmful and spiky crap is filtered out!
While not the 100% theoretically best I sure would encourage most anyone to get 2700K white LED. It's blue LEDs cost effectively "de-blued".

Wish there were similar lights for bicycle, outdoor, head-mounted etc. as blue-white is used to maximize light output but looks very bad and is harmful.

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you mind providing a reference for your statement that incandescents contain lead and mercury? There's typically a little spot of solder on the base, but other than that they're glass with a little tungsten filament. Was this a typo?

Re:Light-emitting diodes (LEDs)

[Rakarra]

It strains the eyes of some people and often gives an unpleasant light compared to an incandescent or these days, an LED.
Please don't include personal attacks like that, especially since it has nothing to do with Democrat vs Republican.

Daylights Savings is like emoji

[MonoSynth]

Emoji forces single language software to support Unicode and DST forces single time zone software to support different time zones. And screw up badly.

That's the only positive thing about DST that I can think of.

Re: Daylights Savings is like emoji

[Anonymous Coward]

Single timezone software is by definition broken software. There are hundreds of timezones with all sorts of whacky rules and as a developer you have to deal with it.

Re: Daylights Savings is like emoji

[Megol]

Ridiculous! If some software is designed for use in a single timezone it isn't broken and saying so is just pure crap!

Re: Daylights Savings is like emoji

[Megane]

Just be lucky that nobody in post-electronic times has decided to use double-DST. I would bet that much hardware and software only has DST as an on/off flag for a one-hour offset (I know I've done that myself in software for a product) and would break so hard if anyone decided to do two-hour DST, or Eris-forbid, multi-phase two-hour DST. As the latter would probably result in an actual civil uprising, I don't expect it to happen.

Re:Daylights Savings is like emoji

[TheRaven64]

Supporting multiple time zones isn't that hard, though it seems that most people who develop calendar software have never travelled more than a couple of hundred miles and can't conceive of an event that would start in one time zone and end in another. It's much more difficult to support multiple calendars (e.g. Gregorian, Buddhist, Chinese, Coptic, Hebrew, and so on) and most software that deals with dates fails spectacularly there.

Re: Daylights Savings is like emoji

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider the worst case : the area or country you're in changes the time zone altogether, permanently. Or such a change is reversed after 80-100 years.
And there can even be a half hour offset though rarer.

No Daylight

[tquasar]

I have ten clocks. By the time I reset them it's time to go back in time. I have no time for this.

Re:No Daylight

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry - I misread your post...

But, if I had ten of them - I'd never get anything done either....

Re:No Daylight

[Megane]

This is why when it's not a clock (on a PC or smart phone) that has OS support for DST, I prefer to use so-called "atomic" clocks, which listen to WWVB. The WWVB signal includes one bit representing the DST status for the United States, letting the clocks automatically change to summer time, in addition to staying mostly locked to UTC time. Unfortunately, someone convinced Dubya that changing DST dates would somehow "save energy", so we've been using the "wrong" dates for over a decade.

I know that Mexico still uses the old dates, because I had to binary patch some legacy code that we could no longer compile, so someone in Mexico could start using our old product until our next generation product was ready. (The year comparison was still in there, so I just had to change the high byte of the year.) I guess those WWVB clocks wouldn't be quite as popular in Mexico.

Re:No Daylight

[toddestan]

A surprising number of those clocks, for whatever reason, ignored the DST bit and instead had the DST dates hard-coded in. So of course, Dubya's idiotic DST change broke all those clocks. You could still use them if you didn't mind mucking around with the time zone setting twice every spring and twice again every fall. Perhaps all those clocks made their way down to Mexico?

It's the fucked up working day that's the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Without daylight savings you can end up commuting at less than optimal times of the day. Mandatory two our flexibility in working day start/end would deal with that but it does disadvantage workers who's employers claim they must be there 8 to 5 for example - which is why flexible working hours would have to be mandatory - that also takes some pressure off road systems.

I think we should keep it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the one thing that makes every programmer realize that time is difficult.

Re:I think we should keep it

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are reminded of it twice a year!

Re:I think we should keep it

[bickerdyke]

On the other hand it's the single thing that adds most of the difficulty...

Farmer lives matter!

[Anonymous Coward]

Put on your SJW hat and join our crusade at the evil that is trying to rid us of our beloved customs!

While We're At It...

[ytene]

... can we take another look at the definition of the working week?

I'm pretty sure that most of the folks who vote in the EU parliament don't work five days a week or more. So how about we declare that Friday is actually part of a 3-day weekend and that the working week is only 4 days long?

Given the amount of time I'm asked to spend in pointless meetings each week, if I could schedule those to run back-to-back on a Friday I could achieve this with at worst zero drop in productivity...

I'd rather we did this than worry about the time of day...

Re:While We're At It...

[tetris11]

Many firms pretty much let their workers phone it in from home on a friday

Re:While We're At It...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to extend the weekend you should absorb Monday rather than Friday.
It'll be way more fun confusing future generations will all our "I hate Mondays" memes than it would be recontextualizing all the "thank got it's Friday" memes.

Re:While We're At It...

[thegarbz]

Friday is actually part of a 3-day weekend and that the working week is only 4 days long?

Yes but that proposal also comes with learning to speak French.

Re:While We're At It...

[ytene]

Tell you what - let's do both.

Re:While We're At It...

[toddestan]

In the US, most office workers get two Mondays off a year as holidays (Memorial Day and Labor Day) but there are no regular holidays that fall on a Friday that get a day off of work. This may not sound like a lot, but keep in mind that many office workers only get 6 or so holidays a year. So by absorbing Friday into the weekend instead of Monday, you get 2 extra days off a year

y2k problem repeat

[zdzichu]

I'd really like getting rid of DST. But I expect quite a fallout caused by devices keeping time (and observing DST) but not getting updates. We have witnessed struggles with operating systems, when governments decide to move time change date and companies fail to apply upgraded tzdata package. With embedded devices this will be many times worse.

Re:y2k problem repeat

[zdzichu]

Nb. don't believe this happens often? See the example from one random distribution:
https://koji.fedoraproject.org...
Look into the changelog – how often governments change their minds and how few days are left to react.

Re:y2k problem repeat

[Anonymous Coward]

Since, at least in the U.S. not every state uses DST it is almost universal that devices and applications allow the user to set whether DST is to be used. This is true for Windows, any of the Linux distributions I've used and all of the digital clocks I've purchased int he last few decades. Phones get their time form the carrier. So I just don't see a "Y2K" level problem with getting rid of DST.
The biggest problem, and the one I always here about locally, is that if we get rid of DST school kids will have to stand in the dark to catch their bus. A problem easily solved by adjust school hours so that kids go to school at a decent time in the morning, something already supported by research that says 8:00 is too early to start school anyway. In the '60's it started at 0900 and ended at 1600, rather than so much earlier as now.

View from Finland

[Anonymous Coward]

Living in middle parts of Finland, I've found this clock turning ritual simply harmful if anything.
It is dark in the winter, and it doesn't matter if the brief moment of light near midday shifts in either direction. During summer, there is no dark, no matter what the clock is. When the sunrise and sunset get close to commute hours, it gets difficult; sun shines from so low that it is hard to see the road and traffic ahead. Unless it is cloudy, which it typically is. This difficulty we can't overcome by turning the clock, it is just easier to go to work earlier or a little later.
This practice hasn't made any sense in here ever. Great example on how politicians help is likely the worst tragedy that a man can face in his life.

Restructure this whole world clock business

[ContextSwitch]

I've always thought that the use of time zones was a bit of an anachronism. Pick a longitude; the international date line is as good a place as any, and that sets the time and date for everyone on the planet.

So you end up going to work at 22:00 and return at 08:00 and it's all in the daylight, so what , these are just numbers. Travel planning will be simplified and so will arranging meetings where people join on-line from different time zones.

Re:Restructure this whole world clock business

[Anonymous Coward]

But the Americans will insist on using AM and PM instead of the 24hour clock.
So nothing will change.

Re:Restructure this whole world clock business

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't work because of the concept of "day": if people start their working (or holiday) "day" on one "day" and finish their working (or holiday) "day" on a different "day" it's unworkably confusing. In practice people would reinvent the old system and use it informally, and people would end up missing appointments by a whole 24 hours.

Re:Restructure this whole world clock business

[DNS-and-BIND]

Wow, this is breathtakingly ignorant. You realize most people are in one time zone and don't have these problems? You don't, do you?

Re:Restructure this whole world clock business

[AmiMoJo]

This would be more confusing for travellers though. For example, say you book a flight to Korea, and you arrive at 5:00... Should you be planning to go directly to your business meeting, or getting dinner... Will the trains be running, will the shops be open if you need to grab something? And what is the best strategy to manage your jetlag?

Ticking over midnight while at work could also be problematic for some people. Days nicely batch things together.

And that's before you get to the fighting over where the international date line ends up.

Re:Restructure this whole world clock business

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would arranging meetings be easier? Right now I have to figure out what time it is in Seattle and Denmark. In your scenario, I'd know it is the same time, but I'd still have to do math (or use websites) to help me figure that while 10 AM in Seattle is still 10 AM in Denmark, that people in one city might be asleep at that time, so another time should be picked. Right? Am I missing something about meeting scheduling in this scenario that you see?

Re:Restructure this whole world clock business

[Anonymous Coward]

"Boo hoo I'm cuntfused by the time. I'm also cuntfused by the money, why wont they take my dollars, I'm cuntfused by the language why does nobody speak enligsh? I'm cuntfused by the people where are the white people" - Nobody.

If someone travels to a country, they are expected to know certain things. This is really minor compared to things like currency, laws, and so on. In addition, people work nights all the time and nothing gets disrupted by them. In fact, just about every computer system counts seconds and converts that into days and so on. Ever wonder why the calendar on a computer starts centuries in the past?

Re:Restructure this whole world clock business

[phantomfive]

So you end up going to work at 22:00 and return at 08:00 and it's all in the daylight, so what , these are just numbers. Travel planning will be simplified and so will arranging meetings where people join on-line from different time zones.

You optimize for the common use case.......talking about 9:00AM and expecting people to know it's morning is a much more common use case than needing to change your watch when you travel.

If I say, "Oh, it's 7:00PM in your time zone?" everyone already knows it's after standard business hours there.

Re:Restructure this whole world clock business

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, this is breathtakingly ignorant. You realize most people are in one time zone and don't have these problems? You don't, do you?

Wow, this is breathtakingly ignorant. You realize a lot of people do business with people in other time zones? You don't, do you?

This idea would actually cut down confusion and require less time / effort to communicate event and meeting times. It would take some getting used to but it makes sense to me.

Re:Restructure this whole world clock business

[Rakarra]

Wow, this is breathtakingly ignorant. You realize a lot of people do business with people in other time zones? You don't, do you?

Not many people do, actually, and the current time zone system works JUST as well as the lack of time zone system that ContextSwitch proposed. It would replace the "time zone problem" that only affects a small number of folks (barring DST) and replacing it with a system that would be especially confusing all the time for the majority of people.

Re:Restructure this whole world clock business

[Rakarra]

You sound like a total asshole. Why would you use such language? Do you speak that way to your mother? Random people on the street? Your boss? Why would you think that ought to be acceptable here?

Who benefits from DST?

[Black Parrot]

Everyone hates it, everyone thinks it has adverse effects, and yet we still have it. Is someone making a buck off it? Is the Little League lobby running the country? Do the lizardmen who've infiltrated all the world's governments like it?

What's the deal here?

Re:Who benefits from DST?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, big clock and their massive lobbying effort prevents any real change from happening. Also, the clock setters union refuses to allow any change that might impact their workers.

Re:Who benefits from DST?

[Anonymous Coward]

The deal is there is no deal. Most people don't hate DST; they like daylight extending deep into the "evening". (Southern hemisphere might have issues with this but they lost on the basis of population.) What people hate is the switching back and forth. I thought that was clear enough by now and if people can't yet realize that they should just give it up and not change anything. I say split it in half (30 min.), take the punch once and then never change. Just to end this stupid "problem". My livestock will get over it, besides, I'm going to eat most of them before the next jump anyway.

What I really want to talk about is these damn politicians wasting all their time and my taxes bullshitting about things like this and then making their work "non-binding". Why even do it? I'd like their jobs to be non-binding, that way they can be thrown out of office for good when we change the clocks. Take the punch once and move on.

Thanks for listening. I feel so much better now.

Re:Who benefits from DST?

[Areyoukiddingme]

Obviously, big clock and their massive lobbying effort insists that real change must keep happening.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Who benefits from DST?

[GoCrazy]

I don't hate it. In the summer without DST, the sun rises at about 4:00 AM and sets at 7:00 PM. Some people are awake at 4:00, but more are awake at 5:00. And almost everyone is awake between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM. With DST you get an extra hour of sunlight while you're awake.

Re:Who benefits from DST?

[Anonymous Coward]

Daylight Saving Time is a good thing and you should stop complaining about it.

Re:Who benefits from DST?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say "everyone", do you mean "every loud mouth whiner"?

Re:Who benefits from DST?

[mjwx]

Everyone hates it, everyone thinks it has adverse effects, and yet we still have it. Is someone making a buck off it? Is the Little League lobby running the country? Do the lizardmen who've infiltrated all the world's governments like it?

What's the deal here?

I fucking love DST.

It means the sun isn't up at 4:30 in the fucking morning... and I mean completely up, not just peeking over the horizion, I mean up and robbing you of sleep.

I live in the UK at the moment, during BST (British Summer Time) it stays light until 9 or 10 at night... fantastic if you want to do something after work like most people like doing in the summer when the weather is good. It also means that the sun isn't up until after 5 AM and usually isn't completely light until 6 so most of us can get our beauty sleep.

I used to live in Western Australia which rejected daylight saving time because and I shit you not, these were the actual excuses, "the curtains would fade" and "the cows would not know what time to get milked". Lets ignore that the sun was completely up by 4:30 so by 6:30 in the peak of summer it was already over 35 C by the time I got to my car to drive to work and the sun went down at 8 PM Fuck going back to that.

Re:Who benefits from DST?

[Anonymous Coward]

Abolishing it would be an admittal of government failure, much like abolishing drug prohibition.

Re:Who benefits from DST?

[Rakarra]

Everyone likes DST. Standard Time is the real enemy here, though few realize it. They hate switching to it in the Fall and away from it in the Spring. Get rid of standard time and our problems are solved.

Re:Who benefits from DST?

[Rakarra]

The deal is there is no deal. Most people don't hate DST; they like daylight extending deep into the "evening". (Southern hemisphere might have issues with this but they lost on the basis of population.)

If we were on DST year-round, it would affect Southern Hemisphere folks exactly the same as it does Northerners. Basically, not at all. But DST is a regional thing anyway -- the Southern Hemisphere is not pinned to our northern DST ways. For an even more local example, Utah and Arizona are on the same Longitude, Utah observes DST while Arizona does not.

Re:Who benefits from DST?

[toddestan]

There are some that lobby for DST. Retailers believe that people are more likely to go out shopping after work if it's not dark out (this is more of a brick & mortar thing though - I have to wonder if the big online shopping giants believe the opposite?). Golf courses are in favor of it, as well the folks that make your backyard BBQ.

If I had my way though, they wouldn't lose out as we'd abolish DST, then shift our schedules up by 1 hour, essentially permanent DST. Or actual permanent DST if people find that more appealing than moving everything up by an hour.

Its time has past

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally never thought it had much statistics to back up doing it anyway. The logic wasn't there, you have a natural cycle of shorter days and longer nights in Winter, the reverse in Summer. Changing the clock a hour doesn't really affect this in terms of saving anything. The problem is getting a whole series of governments to agree its time has past. That in itself is where the real problem lies.

Let's watch out for California

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever the review outcome, I hope they'll ensure there is never a 10-hour time difference with California. 9 is already such a PITA, which only Portugal/Ireland are safe from for now.

Whats the point in having accurate clocks...

[Viol8]

... and then setting them an hour out? Plenty of idiots above have talked about the "extra hour" of daylight they get with DST. Err, no, you don't. The earth doesn't rotate any quicker, you get exactly the same amount of light FFS. Want some more during winter? Then get your arses out of bed an hour earlier! All DST does is fool your mind into think its an hour later than it actually is so whats the point? Just keep the clocks the same and get up an hour earlier.

Re:Whats the point in having accurate clocks...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and then setting them an hour out? Plenty of idiots above have talked about the "extra hour" of daylight they get with DST. Err, no, you don't. The earth doesn't rotate any quicker, you get exactly the same amount of light FFS. Want some more during winter? Then get your arses out of bed an hour earlier! All DST does is fool your mind into think its an hour later than it actually is so whats the point? Just keep the clocks the same and get up an hour earlier.

The "extra hour" comes from outdoor businesses and activities. The time shift accommodates business hours to align with more daylight. Certain sports and activities are essentially impossible to do in the dark.

Re: Whats the point in having accurate clocks...

[Anonymous Coward]

To add further, ordanances in many cities don't allow loud outdoor work before 7am.

Re:Whats the point in having accurate clocks...

[butzwonker]

An extra hour of light in the morning before you get to work is useless to most people. They want to have an extra hour of sunlight after work. Life has also generally shifted from early morning hours to staying awake longer in the evenings. It's not unreasonable to assume that most people upon sincere reflection would prefer to have DST for the whole of the year, i.e., have their time zone shifted +1 and getting rid of DST.

Re:Whats the point in having accurate clocks...

[Viol8]

So get to work an hour earlier and leave an hour earlier! Jesus, I thought people on this site generally had higher than average IQs. Not judging by the remarks on this topic they don't!

Re:Whats the point in having accurate clocks...

[Anonymous Coward]

So get to work an hour earlier and leave an hour earlier! Jesus, I thought people on this site generally had higher than average IQs.

How much IQ do you need to realize that not everyone can change their working hours at will?
Plenty of work requires you to be in the expected place at the expected time.

Re: Whats the point in having accurate clocks...

[Anonymous Coward]

So get to work an hour earlier and leave an hour earlier!

Or, change the time! DST!

Jesus, I thought people on this site generally had higher than average IQs. Not judging by the remarks on this topic they don't!

Maybe we do?

Re:Whats the point in having accurate clocks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately the vast majority of workers are not in the position of being able to set their own hours.
I work shift work and the person I'm relieving might very well like to get off an hour earlier. I doubt the person who relieves me is interested in coming in an hour earlier.
And yes I work a high tech STEM field.
So before you start disparaging people's IQs perhaps you should engage yours.

Re:Whats the point in having accurate clocks...

[PrimaryConsult]

Even in places with flex time, few places extend that earlier than 7AM. One standard work day has one leaving at 3PM (if you're lucky), 3:30 PM (if you're normal), or 4:00 PM (if you're really unlucky).
And even if the workplace allows arriving earlier than 7AM, there's those commuting by public transport. Unless you can get the bus companies to have the first bus arrive in the CBD before 6:30 AM, same issue.

So when the sun sets at 4:30, still useless. Having the sun set at 5:30 during the short days is far more preferable.

Shift the time zones by one (enter DST) and never go back. Quality of life for most people (and animals!) improves.

Re:Whats the point in having accurate clocks...

[Anonymous Coward]

We have low IQs? You are the one who thinks I dictate to my boss what I'm gonna do at work and when I'm gonna do it.

Re:Whats the point in having accurate clocks...

[TeknoHog]

To me, DST looks like the solution to a particularly stupid problem: (a) I want to go to work one hour earlier, but (b) I still want the clock to show the same time when I go to work.

Besides redefining a physical measurement system willy-nilly, I'm also worried about the whole ideal of going to work earlier. Most of the arguments are about leisure time in the evenings, as if no one cared about their performance at work, no matter how tired.

Re:Whats the point in having accurate clocks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone gets it! I love DST. I want DST all year round.

good

[cascadingstylesheet]

Jet lag for every human being, twice a year ... insanely stupid.

But at least the kids' soccer game has more light! Bleah.

and yes, get off my lawn ...

Re:It's the fucked up working day that's the probl

[Anonymous Coward]

Without daylight savings you can end up commuting at less than optimal times of the day. Mandatory two our flexibility in working day start/end would deal with that but it does disadvantage workers who's employers claim they must be there 8 to 5 for example - which is why flexible working hours would have to be mandatory - that also takes some pressure off road systems.

Work can perhaps be made more flexible. School systems cannot. They already stagger school start times in many areas. In many ways, our work hours are dictated by the school/daycare hours.

If you want to make a REAL impact on business efficiency, stress, and mental and physical health, make remote work more of a mandate rather than the exception. Make employers justify every position where employees are forced to commute to a building to sit behind a desk. I can sit behind a desk at home and do the same damn thing without wasting hundreds of hours every year sitting behind the wheel of a car.

Oh great

[oobayly]

I'd love to see the end of DST, but if this is agreed to by all the EU member states then it'll be a nightmare for us in the UK, because the lunatics are in charge of the asylum, so 1). They can't agree on anything, and 2). If the EU does it, it means that it's undemocratic and bad.

Re:Oh great

[NicknameUnavailable]

Nah, it will just be another footnote in The TZ Database, similar to the existing notes and commentary about timezone changes resulting from wars, dictatorial decrees, and bureaucracy from Human history across the globe. It's a really interesting read if you have a weekend to sift through it, or many months to try to implement a library to handle timezone translation across known history (I pity you, even with the TZ database it's not going to happen.) Incidentally, because this is a historical record the decision in the EU can only impact future timekeeping, so they actually add more work by changing anything because you still have to account for the existing rules if you want to handle any dates prior to their decision or import old data.

Re:Oh great

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, if an unelected bureaucracy does it, it's undemocratic.

Note the punitive fines that the EU plans to levy on England for the audacity of complying with the voters instead of the autocrats.

Re:Oh great

[Anonymous Coward]

UK can then reinstate DST after 2020sh separation so that the daylight will be saved and conserved. Any conservative would like that!

Re:Oh great

[thegarbz]

2). If the EU does it, it means that it's undemocratic and bad.

Not at all. In the case recently of mobile competition sometimes you end up with:
2a) If the EU does it, pretend it was a partisan win for whoever is currently in power and that they came up with their ideas independently to preserve the Brexit narrative.

Re:Oh great

[Anonymous Coward]

If the EU does it, it means that it's undemocratic and bad.

They're not wrong. That's the whole point of the EU commission: to be able to rule and lobby without interference from those pesky voters.

I shudder.

[Anonymous Coward]

At the thought of all the computer software upgrades that would have to go out.

Think of the programmers

[Anonymous Coward]

After abolishing the DST in Europe many programmers will initially think that this will make their lives easier since it should make the code dealing with time cleaner. Then they will realize that this in fact means adding ANOTHER special case (since the dates before the change will need to be handled accordingly) and will groan in unison.

Er...

[argStyopa]

What animals are inconvenienced by DST?

I mean sure, Rover might get his walk an hour later, or Bessie get milked an hour earlier, but it's not like these expectations are ENTIRELY the result of habituation to human schedules in the first place.

It's not like Yogi Bear is like "oh shit, I was supposed to steal that picnic basket at 8 and I missed it because I forgot to reset my goddamned alarm clock..."

Re:Er...

[Anonymous Coward]

Farmers don't care what time it is when dealing with animals. Being "on-time" is purely a human concept.

Re:Er...

[bickerdyke]

What animals are inconvenienced by DST?

I mean sure, Rover might get his walk an hour later, or Bessie get milked an hour earlier,

And even here: Why does Bessie needs to be milked at 5am? Milk her one hour later during DST!

Re:Er...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cows are massively distressed by shifting their milking times. I know this first hand from having worked for a farmer and having friends who are farmers.
Especially the modern high-yield cows actually go into pain at some stage if they are not milked at the right time.
My friends always swore about the time change because it forced them to shift their entire day by the hour, just so that the animals could keep their normal rythms. (and not just milking, feeding as well, and letting out to pasture/getting back in etc)

So daylight savings is as effective as APK then

[Anonymous Coward]

So it sounds like according to the EU daylight savings time is just as effective as APK and his hosts file engine then.

It's LONG past time...

[MitchDev]

...for this Daylight Savings Time nonsense to die....

Go to permanent DST

[sjbe]

Earlier this week, the European Parliament voted 384 to 153 to review whether Daylight Saving Time is actually worth it. Although the resolution it voted on was non-binding, the majority reflected a growing dissatisfaction with a system that has been used by the U.S., Canada, most of Europe, and regions in Asia, Africa, and South America for decades.

I don't think anyone minds Daylight Saving Time itself. What they mind is the needless switching back and forth. Personally I want us to go to Daylight Saving Time permanently. It gives me the most daylight hours in the evening after work when I can made the most use of them. I don't need noon to be the point in the day when the sun is highest overhead. I'm perfectly fine with noon being defined in the manner with the greatest utility for the most people. If that means noon is what currently is 3pm then so be it.

Re:Go to permanent DST

[Anonymous Coward]

hear hear!

Re:Go to permanent DST

[Anonymous Coward]

Might as well. There's no convincing some people DST doesn't save energy anymore (if it really ever did) and getting the kids to sleep past 6am in the summer is more important anyway.

Re:Go to permanent DST

[JasterBobaMereel]

The issue is that people who live in the north (or far south in the southern hemisphere) would have very skewed days for no benefit to them ...

Re:Go to permanent DST

[painandgreed]

I don't think anyone minds Daylight Saving Time itself. What they mind is the needless switching back and forth.

Actually, with all the cell phones and computers online and acting as the vast majority of clocks, I don't even notice DST anymore as they all switch automatically. The only way I can tell anymore is when my clock on my stove either changes to be the same as my cellphone or not.

Re:Go to permanent DST

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anyone minds Daylight Saving Time itself. What they mind is the needless switching back and forth.

But the switching back and forth IS part of DST. If the switch were permanent, then it wouldn't be 'Daylight Savings Time' as we know it.

(Yes, Savings, with an 's', because that has always sounded better. And when we get rid of DST, we can avoid debating about "Saving" being correct but sounding really stupid.)

Re:Go to permanent DST

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anyone minds Daylight Saving Time itself. What they mind is the needless switching back and forth.

LOL, what? That is DST! Next you'll say, "I don't think men mind getting raped in prison, it's the penis being forced into the anus that they don't like." WTF?! Well, having moved to a country that doesn't observe DST 7 years ago, I can say that I don't miss it, nor does anyone else I know. It's an idiotic, obsolete, stupid "tradition" that needs to die a painful death.

Re:Go to permanent DST

[Anonymous Coward]

Please God, no.

It's hard enough to get kids to bed anytime. It's twice as hard when it's still light outside. And don't even get me started on getting up while it's still dark.

Let's have our daylight evenly spread both sides of noon, please. That's what "noon" is supposed to mean. You want to get up earlier, knock yourself out, but don't drag my clock - and my kids' school's - into it.

Captcha: "parental"

Re:Go to permanent DST

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anyone minds Daylight Saving Time itself. What they mind is the needless switching back and forth. Personally I want us to go to Daylight Saving Time permanently. It gives me the most daylight hours in the evening after work when I can made the most use of them. I don't need noon to be the point in the day when the sun is highest overhead. I'm perfectly fine with noon being defined in the manner with the greatest utility for the most people. If that means noon is what currently is 3pm then so be it.

That's it... this is a good idea...

Shared schedules matter

[sjbe]

And having fixed standard work times is just as idiotic as the idea of daylight saving...

You've never tried to manage a business have you? There is a lot of benefit to having most companies work predictable schedules. Real, tangible, measurable, economic benefit. If you worked in a company like mine you'd find that it's really hard to run an assembly line without people showing up at the same time each day. Good luck running a hospital with people coming and going whenever they feel like it. Have fun running a restaurant when the waitstaff or cooks can come and go whenever.

Many of us have to deal with clients or suppliers in other countries who don't work at the same time anyway.

And far more of us do work with clients who are nearby and need to be able to interact with us on a predictable schedule. It is a LOT easier to arrange this if most businesses have roughly similar or highly predicable schedules.

Many businesses operate 24/7.

Many more do not. What is your point?

Re:Shared schedules matter

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never tried to manage a business have you?

Not yet, I admit, but once the basement expansion project is complete it's look out world!

Re:Shared schedules matter

[Doke]

I agree you need to be able to schedule when your people will be there. You need predictable hours of availability. However, that's very different from flexible hours schedules. Neihter is letting them show up whenever they want. You probably already stagger some schedules. For example, cleaning staff seldom work the same hours as office staff.

Re:Shared schedules matter

[Bert64]

While it's sensible for your assembly line workers to arrive at the same time every day, there is no reason why that time needs to be 9am. If your assembly line workers all arrived at 6am or 11am instead they would have wasted less time travelling to work and your assembly line would operate just the same (or better, because workers would be less stressed from their shorter commute).

Hospitals are typically 24/7 operations, the staff don't all show up at 9am and leave at 5pm, you have various shifts and staff who remain there over night etc.
Same thing for a restaurant, very few (if any) restaurants operate 9-5, most of them open shortly before lunchtime and close late evening.
A restaurant worker who travels to work after the 9am rush has finished has a far easier journey to work than an office worker trying to arrive before 9am.

I never advocated against schedules, i advocate against everyone arbitrarily being on the same schedule for no reason other than it's always been that way.

That seems to be the consensus

[bradley13]

I think most people agree with you. Having the extra daylight in the evening is nice. Very few people like standard time ("Winter" time).

It's about time we abolished this idiocy. Assuming the EU actually listens to the populace, then we will all just shift to permanent DST, which is the same as shifting one time-zone to the right.

The chances of the EU listening to the populace? Variable, sort of like a lottery.

Re:That seems to be the consensus

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire Iberian peninsula is already one or more time-zones to the right. The east coast of Spain is basically due south of Greenwich, but Spain (except the Canary islands) uses CE(S)T and Portugal, a time-zone west, uses the same time-zone as the UK.

qwerty123

[Anonymous Coward]

permission to submit

http://triksulap-indonesia.blogspot.com

IT systems and DST

[Anonymous Coward]

This will result in changes of DST in some computer systems. Any auto DST adjustments in May need adjustments accounting for regional setting. Baked in calendars in systems with scheduler and batch jobs. For companies who works with teams globally (U.S. and EU) also account for GMT-x hours for half a year and then GMT-(x-1) the other half.

As someone who grew up with it in California...

[Anonymous Coward]

It was fucking retarded here too.

All it did was stress out us kids for up to a week while we got acclimated to the clock no longer aligning with our expected times of the sun coming up/going down. Basically yearly jetlag for growing kids who didn't need it.

As an added bonus, getting rid of it means even legacy software shouldn't have any issues, since most of it included options for NOT using daylight savings time, and now that daylight savings time has been changed multiple times in the past 2 decades, in at least some regions, eliminating it would remove all the potential pitfalls of old code with hardcoded daylight savings switches by just turning the whole damn codepath off.

Personally I just switched to UTC about ten years ago, and just keep my most used desktop in regional time for when I need to sync up 'real' time with what the idiot government has decided time should be this year.

DST == Most Politically Dysfunctional Thing

[NicknameUnavailable]

Step 1: People have to write DST-compatible workarounds for software, costing billions.

Step 2: Politicians see opportunity for improvement after all the code is written.

Step 3: Remove DST in a region as a test.

Step 4: Costs the same amount to have all the contractors come back in and figure out how to unwire the DST components of code without breaking everything.

Step 5: Politicians compare costs and say not worth it.

Step 6: Goto step 1.

Re:DST == Most Politically Dysfunctional Thing

[PPH]

Do you mean to tell me that these people wrote their time zone stuff without moving the data to some easily replaceable datafiles?

Step 4: Costs the same amount to have all the contractors

There's your answer. Job security for the contractors.

Re:DST == Most Politically Dysfunctional Thing

[NicknameUnavailable]

You can't just store algorithms in data files, timezone, DST, and other time-related functions are intrinsic to the operation of the program, at least in any language which doesn't automatically account for all of those by replacing the core datatype with something impervious to change (e.g. all of them.) If you have a moment, take a look through the TZ database, then understand that it's only accurate in 70-80% of known cases, and you'll have some clue as to how absurdly complex the whole issue is (there's actually commentary in there detailing why changes were made for specific timezones, obscenities like "the dictator of morocco decided to pull a prank on his advisors so for the 4th through 6th month of 1973 there is a 1 hour adjustment in the timezone for this country.")

Re:DST == Most Politically Dysfunctional Thing

[PPH]

the dictator of morocco decided to pull a prank...

Still more easily handled in a database read by some suitably flexible functions than to hard code this sort of thing into an app. And then have to devel/build/release an emergency patch every time the king decides to prank someone.

Re:DST == Most Politically Dysfunctional Thing

[NicknameUnavailable]

Still more easily handled in a database read by some suitably flexible functions than to hard code this sort of thing into an app.

Spoken like someone who has never written enterprise software.

Re:DST == Most Politically Dysfunctional Thing

[PPH]

Lots, actually. And I made great efforts to use well documented and tested system libraries instead of convincing the boss that I needed to write my own custom crap.

But then it's always easier to start from scratch if you can't understand a problem in the abstract and see how it fits existing solutions.

Re:DST == Most Politically Dysfunctional Thing

[NicknameUnavailable]

Individuals don't write enterprise software, you hack. It's done by teams of people with other teams overseeing the client relations with other teams to maintain with other teams to architect, etc.

nightmare for many industries

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work in industrial automation for a few years. This change will be a considerable pain for any antiquated installations that rely on devices that keep time themselves (as opposed to be sync'd over networks) and rely on decades old daylight saving time algo. There is lots of this stuff in the wild, operating anything from airport equipment to sewage processing plants. Mostly ugly stuff that just works and the OEMs behind the PLCs may or may not still be around to issue updates. It will suck for people that operate those systems to implement the change.

I've ditched standard time.

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer daylight time, year round, as most people should if they had any sense about them. There's no point in living life where it's dark when you go to work and dark again by the time you get home. There is something fundamentally wrong with people who believe that this is the right way to go.

From the same people

[sproketboy]

From the same people who brought us Nazism, Marxism and WORST OF ALL - DST.

Put noon in the middle of the day

[locofungus]

8 til 6, 9 til 5.

A normal working day has 1pm in the middle. Non DST has more hours of daylight before the working day than after.

In the depths of winter it makes no difference, dark going to work, dark coming home.
In the height of summer it makes no difference, dawn chorus at 3am. Blackout curtains needed at 10pm.

But in spring and autumn DST is better than not. And double DST would be better too. Put the clocks forward in spring. Leave in autumn. Forward again in spring and then leave it alone.

Re:Put noon in the middle of the day

[BlueCorvette]

Just knock off work an hour earlier. :) Noon is by definition the middle of the day and the easiest time to physically determine, right? (Your shadow points North at noon.) My vote is to just pick a time and leave it there. DST back and forth sucks.

A bad analogy can help

[Anonymous Coward]

Switching back and forth between DST and standard time each year is like driving on the left side of the roads half the year, then driving on the right side of the roads the other half, in order to balance the wear on tires.

GMT FOR ALL

[Anonymous Coward]

DST and Time Zones are completely the wrong answer and all psychological.

The true answer is that we abolish both and move to an all GMT system around the world. No time zones, no "if I call Sydney now, are they going to bed or eating breakfast?" mental queries.

A number is all psychological and it's high time we move away from all these time zones.

GMT FOR ALL

Always corner cases

[sjbe]

The issue is that people who live in the north (or far south in the southern hemisphere) would have very skewed days for no benefit to them ...

You are always going to find corner cases where someone has a problem. Find the system that benefits the most people or failing that the system that most people want and go with it. Personally I think most people would prefer to have maximal daylight in the evening after work because that is of greatest utility to the greatest number of people. I like that during the summer solstice sundown is around 9:30PM or so. I don't really care if it is dark when I get up and commute to work.

Anyway people who live way up towards the poles get weird daylight no matter what. If that is an issue for them they should move closer to the equator.

If we get rid of DST

[Cro Magnon]

How will I know when to change my smoke alarm batteries?

Re:If we get rid of DST

[freeze128]

You change your smoke alarm batteries the same way you do now: right before your house burns down.

Re:If we get rid of DST

[Anonymous Coward]

Move to a house built of real materials like concrete and stop living in fear of fire. In a concrete house you don't need stinking smoke/fire alarms

Re:If we get rid of DST

[Anonymous Coward]

Any smoke alarm that isn't complete garbage will emit an audible warning when the batteries need to be replaced.

Re:If we get rid of DST

[Anonymous Coward]

when it stopped working .....

Re:If we get rid of DST

[Anonymous Coward]

You just won't be allowed to buy a smoke alarm with a replaceable battery. Problem solved.

Re:If we get rid of DST

[Fly Swatter]

Knock off this nonsense. One day you will furnish your concrete cave, or at least build a kitchen in it. At which point those cabinets and furnishings are wood, cloth, and plastic. But hey if you want your concrete bunker to be your scorched concrete tomb, by all means don't worry about safety.

Re:If we get rid of DST

[thegarbz]

They will start beeping at 2am instead of 3am.

Re:If we get rid of DST

[toddestan]

Which will always manage to occur at about 4 AM, for some reason.

What I want to know is that why in my smoke alarms, which are mains powered with a battery backup, that the battery still only lasts about a year? I'm half-convinced it actually runs off the battery, and only uses the mains power to light up the little LED indicator. Otherwise, if the power doesn't go out, the battery should last a very long time.

Compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

How could they make such a change and not break all the Time\Date\Calendar code built into major languages and frameworks?

Also, God help the poor masochists who wrote their own DateTime code, but they dug their own grave already.

Direct democracy

[DavidMZ]

Direct democracy is even more dangerous. It just takes a well-crafted series of facebook posts to convince millions they're in danger, and their votes can be swayed.

Luckily you don't have direct democracy in the US, as this list can attest.

It literally KILLS PEOPLE!

[jediborg]

Every daylight savings time heart attacks increase by 25%, car crashes increase by 17% (2.75 billion cost over 10 yrs). The only reason people do daylight savings time anymore is because we've been doing it for so long we don't question it anymore. It never saved any daylight, I think a study after world war II showed the policy barely had its intended effect (increased productivity, energy savings) and came with a whole host of unintended consequences. For the love of god we need to quit this idiotic experiment!

Unfortunately at this point there are established interests that want to keep it going. Starbucks knows they get more business when the clocks change, and would resist any proposed law to get rid of daylight savings time. There are dozens of other companies in a similar situation. sources: https://www.reuters.com/articl... http://www.telegram.com/articl...

Re:It literally KILLS PEOPLE!

[Quirkz]

Every daylight savings time heart attacks increase by 25%, car crashes increase by 17% (2.75 billion cost over 10 yrs).

The numbers I can find are 5-10% for heart attacks, not 25%. Also, there's a corresponding dip on the other side of the year, when the time changes the other way. In other words, getting less sleep is bad and more is good, and that's entirely in a person's control. The only car crash study I found said there was NO detected change, in part because of increased visibility due to more morning light.

Hear here!

[Anonymous Coward]

Backward America thinks otherwise!

I don't care

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care how clocks are set, whether DST exists at all. I don't care if an extra second is added to each minute on even days and subtracted from minutes on odd days.

Those proposing changes should either put up factual evidence supporting their positions showing real benefit outweighs costs of disruption or shut the fuck up.

The truth is when you change time not only do you have to make changes to all peoples and machines understanding of time but we all get to spend another decade at least having to live with the consequences of our clocks behaving wonky and doing different shit based on manufacture date all because idiot politicians decide to waste their time screwing with time.

Praise be

[Anonymous Coward]

fiddling with the clocks (rather than, say, the time of school or a work-day) twice a year, out of sync with other parts of world, is insane and needs to die. we're normally 8 hours off from city X -- unless it's 7, or sometimes 9. WTF?

Disappointed

[Anonymous Coward]

Disappointed because: No mention of Predator Drones.

Idiotic "traditions"

[sjbe]

It's hard enough to get kids to bed anytime. It's twice as hard when it's still light outside. And don't even get me started on getting up while it's still dark.

I am a parent and that is among the weakest and dumbest arguments I've ever heard. Suck it up buttercup. Make the room dark and deal with it. You chose to have a kid so I'm not sympathetic at all. I don't ask anyone else to compensate for my kid.

Let's have our daylight evenly spread both sides of noon, please.

No thank you. My day isn't schedule like that so I'd prefer my daylight match what we actually do. Having the majority of daylight when most people are stuck inside at work or school is a stupid idea. Arrange the day so that most people receive the most advantage. Since it's difficult to get everyone to change their company and school hours all at once, change the clock instead.

That's what "noon" is supposed to mean.

That argument is nothing more than "that's the way we've always done it" which is ALWAYS a stupid argument. Continuing to do something stupid because that's the way it was done in the past is the very definition of insanity.

Why we share schedules

[sjbe]

While it's sensible for your assembly line workers to arrive at the same time every day, there is no reason why that time needs to be 9am.

Who said anything about 9am? Most non retail businesses are open well before 9am these days. Most open at 7 or 8am. There IS a reason why we chose the times we do. Two reasons actually in my company's case. 1) it ensures our deliveries get to our customers at the time in the afternoon when our customers require them and 2) it avoids rush hour which ensures our staff can be on time reliably and not have to waste their lives sitting in pointless traffic jams. It also keeps us on a similar schedule with our suppliers maximizing our ability to work closely with them because most of them keep similar hours. Plus we employ a lot of parents who appreciate being able to go pick up their kids after school.

Hospitals are typically 24/7 operations, the staff don't all show up at 9am and leave at 5pm, you have various shifts and staff who remain there over night etc.

Missing the point. The point is that those "fixed standard work times" didn't evolve by accident. There certainly are cases where they don't make sense but for the most part they exist for a variety of rather sensible reasons. People have children and lives outside of work. People need to be able to communicate with other businesses while they are open. Having schedules that don't mesh well with other people's schedules can be a huge problem.

I never advocated against schedules, i advocate against everyone arbitrarily being on the same schedule for no reason other than it's always been that way.

My least favorite words in the English language are "that's the way we've always done it" so from that perspective I very much agree with you. It's the reason why I think continuing to say 12 noon must coincide with the sun being highest in the sky is rather ridiculous given the realities of modern life.

"know certain things". like the timezone...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Boo hoo, you hate the time zone and want YOUR time to be universal so YOU don't have to do that nasty rithmatic!!!!!

By changing the clock, that is what you are doing.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ALREADY leaving an hour earlier and leaving an hour earlier when you change the clocks forward. So what fucking point is there to making it a universal (nearly) clock change and not a universal (nearly) working hours change?

Business leaders too dumb to handle it?

DST FOREVER!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Last year, I left every clock and timekeeper in my house on DST all year. The only "correct" one is the cell phone. I plan to do this forever. :) The U.S. simply isn't going to get rid of DST, because so many businesses would be against it (which is why the first Bush lengthened the months of DST in the first place.) It's too much to hope that the entire nation will switch to permanent DST, but in my house... it's the law.

Yeah...Not worth it

[Stubbyfingers]

We're no longer an industrial/agrarian society where workers have to run home from their jobs to tend to their private victory garden.

I'm sure a few of you out there grow some of your own food, but I doubt you're using it to stave off starvation.