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One Step Away from Changing Daylight Savings Time
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jul 20, 2005 05:30 PM
from the oh-that's-wise dept.
from the oh-that's-wise dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Congressional leaders from both parties have signed off on a proposal that will change daylight savings time in the United States as early as this year. All that is left is a signoff by President Bush. If the proposed solution becomes law, DST will be extended two months, from March to November. With many IT applications relying on accurate time information and many having automatic adjustments for DST, how will the IT world handle this change? And with the proposal reportedly taking effect this year, is there enough time to implement change?"
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Ask Slashdot: Prepared for Next Year's Time Change? 293 comments
wohlford puts forth this query: "Next year, daylight saving time will be extended another four weeks. Slashdot has covered the time change proposal and its estimated impact, already. Since then it has been signed into law. Looking around on the Net I don't see anyone taking this seriously. Will this become the next tech doomsday or just another joke like Y2K?"
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Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:4, Insightful)
The purpose of DST is not to remind you when to check your batteries. If it works for that too, fine; but that is something extra, not the reason for DST. Support or oppose the DST change for REAL reasons.
From the article:
For years, the International Association of Fire Chiefs has framed a widespread public information campaign around Daylight Saving Time, reminding people to change the batteries in their smoke and carbon monoxide detectors when they change their clocks. The last weekend in November is too late for the reminder, fire officials say.
This could be a Hallmark event (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:This could be a Hallmark event (Score:5, Funny)
Good idea, except we will need two holidays, one for spring and one for fall. We should name them something similar so people will never remember which is which (like memorial day and labor day). Maybe "Don't burn your house down" day in the spring and "Save your life" day in the fall.
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Re:This could be a Hallmark event (Score:4, Funny)
Commie.
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Re:This could be a Hallmark event (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:This could be a Hallmark event (Score:5, Funny)
That's a Commie holiday. We don't support Commie holidays here in the US.
No, we "celebrate" Labor Day by forcing our blue collar workers to their jobs to run the retail stores while everyone else enjoys sales, promotions, and extended shopping hours.
Celebrate Labor Day by working! Amazing!
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Re:This could be a Hallmark event (Score:4, Funny)
YOU must be the terrorist leader( or if you are older, then you are a commie pinko ).
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Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:4, Insightful)
Here in Canada, the change is being presented as something the Americans are ramming down our throats. Seriously: here's the Toronto Star coverage [thestar.com].
What kind of a country is this where you can get a knee-jerk reaction against anything by calling it "American-style"? (I'll tell you: it's the kind of country that, 138 years later, still prints their colonial ruler's face on their money.)
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Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:5, Insightful)
While most people -- excepting vampires -- favour more daylight
What's the point of all this? No matter how you mess around with the DST, you won't get a single minute of daylight that you didn't have before.
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Good Christ (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, it's pedant day on slashdot! The point, Captain Obvious, is to provide the most daylight during waking hours for the average diurnal person.
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Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I went to public school in the US and I learned Spanish and German starting in the 4th grade.
This is the thing about the United States that people from other (smaller) countries don't seem to grasp... and as you illustrate, even a lot of Americans forget it. It's a huge country, and it's very regional. There are 50 states. There are tens of thousands of school districts within those states. Every district does things differently. Is it fair? No. But you can't generalize like this about the US, about almost anything.
I'd be willing to put money down that there are more fluent Spanish-speaking Americans than fluent English-speaking Spaniards, even as a percentage of the population.
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Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:5, Informative)
I could not have said it better myself. I live in Wisconsin (about the size of Germany) and the changes even within the state are amazing. For example, the opening day of deer hunting season might as well be a holiday. In the North where I am attending college, everyone leaves and hunts with their friends, family, ect. I am from Southern Wisconsin where hunting is not as popular mainly due to the environment. Southern Wisconsin is farmland for the most part. Forests are few and far between.
It may sound weird but I experienced culture shock my first year at college. I came from a high school that was racially diverse, with a 30% African-American and a 15% Hispanic student body. Spanish, German, Latin, and French were offered. I took Spanish for two years. Most people didn't take a foreign language because chances are they won't live or do business in a foreign country.
When I arrived at college it was weird because the campus was 96% white. I myself come from a German background but never looked at myself as being white. The weather was also much different. In the winter, the temp. never got above 25 F. It was usually around 0. In Southern Wisconsin, winter temps. rarely went below 20 F. When it went below zero school was usually cancelled. Up North when it went below zero, put on extra clothes. The student parking lots have electrical outlets so you can plug in your engine block heater. As a Freshman I arrived in August when the weather was warm. I wondered what the hell the outlets were for. I realized what they were for when winter arrived. Before leaving for Christmas break I decided to warm up my car. It was -25 F outside. My car wouldn't turn over. I got a jump from someone and amazinly the car started, and ran for 45 seconds before the block cracked.
So what's my point. Do I have a point? As a matter of fact I do.
The United States might as well be called the United Countries. Every State has different standards, practices, cultures, ect. Within the States there are hundrends if not thousands of microcosms. It is relatively easy for one to say that European schools are better because they teach more languages at younger ages. The fact is they have to. Look at the geography. In an area roughly the size of the US English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German are spoken. A trip between France and Spain is like a trip for me between Wisconsin and Kansas. Europeans must learn multiple languages to be successful. In the US we only need to teach our children how to work long hours with no overtime. (From personal experience.) Languages other than English are not seen as important however this is starting to change in the Southern US.
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Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:4, Insightful)
The United States might as well be called the United Countries.
Well, you know, it already is; 'state' is another word for 'country' - in British English we refer to state-funding, the state pension scheme etc. I think the founding fathers really saw their respective territories as potentially independent (nation) states joining together in a mutual defence and commerce pact.
I was interested to see that the entry here [reference.com] (which I assume to use American English) puts the "United States" use of the word below the "nation state" use.
I think your story did highlight the diversity of the US very well; many foreigners look at the US as one country, whereas I think it's more interesting (certainly when travelling) to look at it as a union of 50 separate countries which happen to share a common language and currency.
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Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny, I don't find it confusing at all. I never have to change my clocks around, somehow pretending it has any kind of meaning. And, I know that no matter what the date, my time is GMT -7.
Given the increasingly global, and increasingly 24 hour world we live in, it makes much more sense to me to get rid of the anachronism of "daylight savings time" all together.
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Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:4, Interesting)
If the current, shared royal family dies out, there is no reason Canada would adopt the same royal family as England.
Another situation where they could diverge is the sovereign of England is also the Head of the Church of England. In theory, if the Queen (or her successor) converted to Islam, or some other religion, then she would cease to be the Queen of England, but she would remain the Queen of Canada.
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Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:5, Funny)
- Daylight Wasting Time
- Congress Has Too Much Time on Their Hands Time
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Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:4, Funny)
We'll just call it "Standard Time Full Speed" and "Standard Time Hi-Speed"...that'll solve the confusion.
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Original Ben Franklin Essay on DST (Score:5, Insightful)
I always post this when the topic comes up. I'm a fan of Franklin and really enjoy reading this.
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Re:Original Ben Franklin Essay on DST (Score:5, Insightful)
My solution? "Fall Back" a half hour one year, and just leave it there permanently. Right in the middle....
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Farmers *hate* DST (Score:5, Interesting)
DST is there to make factory workers get up an hour earlier, without the government having to admit that it's telling everybody to get up earlier in the morning. Rather than messing with the clocks, they *could* just tell the TV stations to run earlier schedules, and most Americans would obey....
There's no reason to set the clock to some other time - during Standard Time, the sun is at its highest at 12 Noon in the middle of the timezone area, and you could just as well leave it there.
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Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:5, Informative)
Nonsense [standardtime.com]. Farmers are against daylight saving time because they do everything by the sun. They start when the sun rises, and stop when it goes down, regardless of what time it is. A clock that jumps back and forth twice a year is an unnecessary complication that forces them to juggle their schedule when delivering crops to clock-bound businesses. Daylight saving time was instituted regionally in WWI and then made national in WW2 as an energy saving scheme.
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Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, every couple of years I ignite some paper in a can and hold it under the detector to make sure it actually detects smoke. A test-button may test the alarm, but what about the smoke detecting part?
Just be careful not to burn your house down if you do this. }:)
-Z
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Billing rates are going up!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully the consulting companies will be able to sell the scare and raise the billing rates!
Jobs!!!! Jobs!!!!
How about we have our 'puters set for GMT?
Seriously-Many applications have DST deep in the code. I can see the folks that develop things like the Netbackup scheduler (and others) to be freaking. Didn't they just fix bpsched? (again?)
This is spectacular (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll tell you how they'll handle it. They'll handle it the same way they handled Y2K, and that's by offering more jobs for people like me. The increase in demand for employees posessing the special skills needed to fix this problem will subsequently raise the expected salary for software engineers and IT professionals. Under these premises, I'd say this gives us something to toast and look forward to.
I hope that Bush doesn't screw this up by not signing off.
--
I'm not a troll; I'm just a skeptic.
Re:This is spectacular (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:This is spectacular (Score:5, Funny)
It would be the 1970's all over again
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My own preference (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My own preference (Score:5, Funny)
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Software yes, hardware no. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's nice to see the American government coming up with a solution like this instead of concentrating on and suggesting alternate energies.
Really warms the ol' cockles of the heart.
Abolish DST (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck, I'm not a believer in time zones, either. Let's adopt one time standard and adjust schedules accordingly. I don't need to be tricked into waking up in the morning.
No DST worked for me! (Score:4, Funny)
I agree no DST is awesome.
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Re:Abolish DST (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because it ( usually! ) takes a while to cross a time zone now doesn't change the fact that your clock is no longer correct after flying cross-country, even though it has kept correct track of the number of seconds which have past since you left. A clock that just shows GMT is always correct for that locallity, it's the local time elsewhere that's been shifted so that, for whatever reason '8:00 AM" is always morning, even Australia.
That said, I understand why it's done, but it's a convention, and a completely arbitrary one at that.
The idea that there are several places where you can drive a half-mile down the road and have to change your clock to support such an arbitrary convention is more than illogical and annoying. It's downright stupid. I can't imagine what folks do who live near a time zone demarcation line do, although I know what large cities in such a position do- they arbitrarily choose one zone or the other, which just shows how dumb the whole thing is.
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Get up an hour earlier (Score:4, Insightful)
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Answers (Score:5, Funny)
Score yourself at home. How did you do?
Don't they have a dick to pull... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is yet one other sign that we need to shoot lobbyists that approach D.C. as if they were a direct Al Queda attack. This is a crackpot idea that not only screws with all the time-sensitive software (right down to our operating systems and their time zone support) but also fucks with the world agreement on such use of DST.
I'm in Indiana, where we have just approved the use of DST for the majority of the state that never observed it (Arizona and Hawaii are similar holdouts). And NOW some politico-corporate lackey wants to change things just for business...never mind that you aren't saving a damn bit of daylight in November, unless their laws affect the Earth's tilt and orbital position to give us more sun than we're to have at that time.
There's no reason for this...and the cost for changing everything will make the costs of Y2K seem like a pittance. Problem is, I don't know who would profit from it. Once I do find out, I hope they're shot. A lot.
Daylight Saving Time is a Joke... literally (Score:5, Informative)
However, an Englishman named William Willett (how can you take someone with that name seriously? Come on!) was apparently too dense to realize that Franklin was joking. Therefore, he thought it would be a novel idea to set clocks back for 20 minutes on each Sunday in April, and then turn them back on the Sundays in September. Eventually, daylight-saving time came to be as we now know it."
Taken from here [grinnell.edu]
No big deal in *nix (Score:5, Interesting)
For most *nix systems, look in /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo for zone definition files. If you're lucky (or have Solaris), there's a src directory in there.
You'll find a README file with a reference to a place with updated zone files [nih.gov].
On the other hand you could try to roll your own like I did for Belo Horizonte and edit the rules in one of the source files (I would think "northamerica" for the US ;)
Do a man zic for more info on compiling and then distributing to other systems.
Typical governmental BS (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand the theory that by changing people's work habits relative to the solar day, we may be saving some energy. I think the reality of it is rather less impressive than the theory, and certainly doesn't justify the expense and hassle, but it's undoubtedly there.
Too bad changing DST is the stupidest way to do it. As has been mentioned before, DST impacts way more than just work schedules. It's buried deep in various applications where it doesn't belong. It's hard-coded into embedded systems where it can't be changed. It's stuck on old software installations that will never see an upgrade. Changing DST is bad enough, but a half-assed mix of new-DST machines and old-DST machines is just a recipe for disaster.
If the government really wants to save energy by changing work habits, there are enormously better ways to do it. Tax credits for corporations that stagger their workers' start times by a significant margin would save way more energy than this DST nonsense, and it wouldn't have the unpleasant ancillary effects that changing the definition of time of day would have. Unimaginably large (you can look for the true numbers as well as I) amounts of gasoline are wasted in rush-hour traffic across the nation. Tax credits for starting 1/3 of employees 2hr earlier than normal and 1/3 2hr later would motivate employers to do it, and reducing the time people spend idling their cars on the freeways, or worse, driving in stop-and-go traffic, would save tons of fuel.
Tax credits (or some other incentive) makes people happy because the government's not forcing anyone to do anything they don't want to. It would have very few unintended consequences. And it would save many times more energy.
The reasoning that leads to a change in DST is just tortured. The government wants people going to work at a different time. So rather than ask (bribe, punish/bribe, whatever) businesses to employ people at different hours, they change the meaning of 8am, and screw up the entire country. Where's the logic in that?!
They should change the names, too. (Score:4, Funny)
Sweden did this a few years ago (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft changed it through some Windows patch, and *nix people tend to fix things themself
Re:Sweden did this a few years ago (Score:5, Informative)
Sweden is a poor choice for an example as they seem to be able to do these things better than most countries. Heck, they switched from driving on the left to driving on the right in 1967 and there were no big problems!
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Re:Sweden did this a few years ago (Score:4, Informative)
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Horrible from a Jewish perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
The specific case which shows the problem is the Passover Seder, which has to begin after nightfall, and there's about 2 hours of stuff before eating. Right now, about half the time, Passover falls during ST, and starts at a reasonable hour. With this change, it'll be much harder to keep children up to participate.
-David Barak
Re:Horrible from a Jewish perspective (Score:5, Informative)
you wrote "I consider all religions to be completely and obviously false, therefore all religions are cults."
The flaw in your reasoning is readily apparent: just because you can't or won't understand something doesn't mean that it's false.
Point two is the charismatic religious leader: while many Christian and Islamic denominations have charismatic leaders, very few Rabbis are described as charismatic. Further, Rabbi = "teacher" i.e. someone who has studied a lot about Jewish law, ritual, and philosophy. Not an intercessor before God, not someone who is especially holy, or anything of the sort.
Let's return to the dictionary, shall we?
charisma 1. A rare personal quality attributed to leaders who arouse fervent popular devotion and enthusiasm.
2. Personal magnetism or charm: a television news program famed for the charisma of its anchors.
3. (Christianity). An extraordinary power, such as the ability to perform miracles, granted by the Holy Spirit.
Clearly, the word "charismatic" is not meant to apply to God.
Now, "brainwashing"... sheesh... what exactly would you consider the difference between "brainwashing" and "educating"? Whether the subject of the education is one of which you approve, I presume. Feel free to correct me if you have a more precise definition, although it sounds like you're using malapropisms merely to attempt to offend.
Please, if you're going to play the part of the angry Athiest (doesn't that get old after a while?), there are arguments against various and sundry religious beliefs which don't require torturing the English language. Feel free to try them. I'll assume you've read Russell's Why I am not a Christian? His arguments, while easily refuted, are civil and the model of appropriate use of language and rhetoric.
Otherwise it's just trolling...
I find it interesting that your signature is from PKD's Valis - are you at all familiar with his theology?
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Re:Horrible from a Jewish perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the problem, you see... your experience might just be a bit too limited.
The authoritative sources of many of the recognized religions in this world that are not considered cults (including Judaism and Christianity, just to name a couple) practically mandate that people think for themselves, to always think clearly and rationally and not act on mere impulse or emotion, and indeed even be prepared to question whether or not something that claims to be from a higher power actually is divinely inspired by rationally and objectively comparing the claims to already known truths. This doesn't seem like brainwashing to me, but if you still think so, that's your right to have a differing opinion.
Most religions don't claim to make its followers into perfect and infallible people in this life, and I would put it to you that your experience with these religions may not coincide with what I have described above is a result of normal human failings rather than a failure in the actual philosophies that they teach.
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Re:They should do away with 24-hour clock (Score:4, Funny)
- Working 9 to 5 becomes a breeze.
Are you insane? With a 100 hour day, working "9 to 5" becomes a 96-hour day, equivalent to 23.04 of your Classic American Non-Metric Hours. That's no good.
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Re:I know how I'll handle it... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Linux will be updated faster. (Score:4, Informative)
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I think Canada should follow Saskatchewan's lead (Score:5, Informative)
I don't live all that far north--maybe around 300km north of the 49th parallel. Even after you set your clock ahead the sun rises before 7AM--right now it rises here before 6AM. In Saskatoon (they do not change their clocks) it'll get light at 5AM...in either case I'll still be asleep for another 30-90 minutes so I'm not going to care.
Where DST REALLY peeves me off is at bedtime. I have to rise by 7AM so I like to be in bed by 11PM...but it's DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME so its still F'in light outside! Let it get dark before 11PM please--thanks but I don't need any more day--it is long enough. A lot of people in fairly norhtern cities like Edmonton will thank you--and people in Whitehorse and Yellowknife won't even notice the difference since the sun won't set again for another few weeks anyways.
So here is what I think Canada should do: Instead of all the expense and confusion around changing DST, or the similar confusion around keeping it the way we have it when the US will be different, we should just go to standard time and STAY there at the point when the US changed their DST. Sure we will still be different from the US, but it'll be the least painful solution because:
* Even though we'll be out of sync with the US we won't have people getting confused when the US TV programmes remind people to change the clock at a different time than Canadians would have to.
* There is data suggesting that the loss of sleep on the first Sunday of April due to DST is responsible for increasing the number of injury and fatality accidents on the following Monday. Abolishing DST would eliminate that risk.
* Since there are already parts of the world that do not do DST all current electronics and computers support NOT adjusting the clocks. Changing DST would be expensive because all those systems would need to change too.
* It'll finally be dark enough to fall asleep at night in the summer!
I've always thought that DST was backwards anyways--if we moved ahead for the winter then it wouldn't be pitch black by dinner time--it would be totally dark at 7PM instead of 6. I dunno...the whole concept of DST doesn't seem worth it at all to me anyways.
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