One Step Away from Changing Daylight Savings Time 898
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?"
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.
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.
Canada? Mexico? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Rollback this. (Score:2, Insightful)
We have this nifty concept called "conservativism," or not wasting electricity, money, and natural resources now. That's the point behind DST: using less electricity and benefitting because of it.
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.
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.)
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.
Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:3, Insightful)
Phbbbbbbbt!
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?!
Re:Abolish DST (Score:2, Insightful)
So for the slashdot folks: using computers outside; reading about computers outside; watching DVDs outside..etc.
Re:My own preference (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DST is artifical anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that in practice, I have never, ever seen a place of business actually turn off the lights and depend on what comes through the window.
Quite the opposite, in fact - In rooms with a lot of windows ("Front" offices, for example), in the morning when too much sun comes in at a low angle, people draw the shades and turn on desk lamps in addition to the overhead lighting.
Personally, I think the clocks should stay constant
Agreed. If businesses can save a penny by changing when the workdway begins and ends, they most certainly will, without the need for our Nanny-in-DC to shove the idea down our throats.
Abolish STANDARD time (Score:3, Insightful)
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....
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.
Hey, I live in Mexico, you insensitive clod! :( (Score:3, Insightful)
Why did we do it, you ask? Pressures from the US.
I doubt Mexicans would want to accept a schedule that only makes things only worse. But as usual... we have to obey the all-powerful US otherwise we suffer the consequences.
If Bush wants to sign this to save some bills, why doesn't he stop wasting money in IRAQ. Sheesh.
Winter Time (Score:3, Insightful)
Since in this proposal the non-DST time would last only three months (Dec-Feb), you might as well call that "Winter Time".
Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:3, Insightful)
That statement is correct except for two minor inacuracies
1) The image isn't of the Queen of England, but rather the Queen of Canada (so it isn't a colonial ruler)
2) it isn't the image from 138 years ago, but rather of the current Canadian head of state.
I am sure that there are some countries who do put images of centuries old rulers on the back of their coins, but it isn't Canada.
Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:2, Insightful)
Lets say you goto sleep at 10PM every night. If it gets dark at 6PM all the lights in your house are on for 4 hours. If it gets dark at 7PM instead, thats an hour less electricy used. On the flip side the sun coming up at 6AM instead of 5AM won't matter because most people are asleep then anyway.
Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:2, Insightful)
Get up an hour earlier (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, it is if you think about it. Instead of asking the rest of North America how they would like things to work, the U.S. just decided to go change it on their own. They just assumed, as the most powerful nation in the world, that everyone else would follow suit.
What kind of a country is this where you can get a knee-jerk reaction against anything by calling it "American-style"?
Now, as a Canadian who has lived in the U.S., I would agree that the knee jerk reaction gets overdone a lot among Canadians, but this is, in a way, a good example of why America isn't so popular there. It tends to do things without consulting anyone else who might be affected by its decisions.
What I would like to know, however, is why does there have to be a change in the time, when, as has been said, they could just have employers and schools change their schedules to adapt to the change in daylight? The logic behind changing the meaning of the hours just baffles me.
I'll tell you: it's the kind of country that, 138 years later, still prints their colonial ruler's face on their money
What the hell does that have to do with anything? So our money has the Queen on it. We didn't have a bloody revolutionary war. Seems like a decent deal to me.
Re:Typical governmental BS (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're a 3-employee company and you spent $95k on Y2K, your boss was foolish.
On the other hand, if you're fortune 500 and you have the same accounting glitch, you're talking more than 6 hours of work to fix it.
If you're able to fix widespread accounting problems easily, then you're not super-dependant on your computers. So, it isn't worth spending extra to make sure they work.
Part of why nothing happened on Y2K was the fact that people actually took it seriously and tested their code. If you remediate your code and test switching your servers to Jan 2nd, 2000 and it works, why should you be surprised when nothing happens on the dawn of Y2K?
All the talk of wasted money on Y2K sounds like people complaining because they went on a careful diet to control their cholesterol and lived to the age of 85 and got hit by a car. They didn't ever have a heart attack - so the diet must have been a waste of effort, right?!
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.
Re:Why the IAFC is against the change (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Horrible from a Jewish perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand daylights time meddling (Score:3, Insightful)
And having different work schedules depending on season is somehow inconcievable, and changing the actual time for the entire country is, somehow, a better approach.
I mean, change the 9to5 for 8to4? WHAT? NEVER! Lets have all clocks in the country changed instead, duh!
Re:No big deal in *nix (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod parent up "+5 Clueful". Yes, many UN*Xes use either the "Arthur Olson" time zone code or something compatible; this includes, at minimum, Solaris, OS X, most if not all Linux distributions, and all the free-software BSDs. For those systems, the time zone files would be updated, and anything using the OS calls for converting times, or otherwise using the time zone files, will Just Work.
Timezones are evil (Score:1, Insightful)
No more Indian timezones off by 30 minutes, or the zone in Nepal that's off by 15 minutes.
DST (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd be so happy if "they" would give up the daylight saving time. All my clocks are running UTC and I'm just calculating the local time on the fly since years. It's much easier than setting all my watches and clocks all the time. In the broadcasting business nobody cares about any time offsets anyway. It's all about UTC.
The funny thing is, that the switchover is not happening at the same date worldwide. That makes the whole problem more difficult.
It's confusing enough for me, that for example LA is nine (or ten!) hours "back".
Re:Horrible from a Jewish perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
Here in Israel, the compromise deal reached (finally!) this year on DST was to start on the Friday on or preceding April 1, which nearly always precedes the Seder. Bear in mind that well over 70% of Israeli Jews, regardless of affiliation, have a Seder of some sort. At least the other side of the compromise was reasonable -- we go back to Standard Time on the Saturday night following Rosh HaShana, thereby making Yom Kippur *seem* to end earlier.
Of course, it's all psychological in the first place...
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.
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.