Extra Daylight Savings May Confuse the Gadgets 933
CrimeDoggy writes "In the energy bill to be signed by the President today (August 8), changes are to be made that extend daylight savings time. The bill would start daylight time three weeks earlier and end it a week later as an energy-saving measure. Many devices such as VCRs, cell phones, and watches would still operate on the previous schedule, potentially causing problems."
Living in AZ (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:5, Interesting)
Internet Time [wikipedia.org]
Re:Time for a change... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:1, Interesting)
The one thing which I am strongly in favor of is to put an end to daylight savings time. That is an entirely unnecessary and provably not energy conserving complexity which sounded like a nice idea but isn't.
incredibly dumb theory (Score:2, Interesting)
What if the whole "this will save power" is just an excuse? Isn't 2007 when we are supposed to be switching to all digital broadcasts and isn't the broadcast flag supposed to be coming out around then (if Congress passes it since its out of the domain of the FCC now)? What is this is all a ploy to irritate people because their VCR's (which they don't use much anyway, anymore) and TV's are out of synch for a few weeks, so they have to go out and buy new equipment? I'm sure most people won't care, but this might be one little more annoyance that would push Joe Q. User to upgrade his equipment, and further lock himself into the media conglomerates will?
[Puts on tin foil hat.]
Re:Time for a change... (Score:2, Interesting)
I, for one, prefer to shift gears with my right hand.
Re:Moral travesty (Score:4, Interesting)
And while every other aspect of the gregorian calendar can be described in just a few lines of code, the daylight-savings time requires a 450KB database [twinsun.com] just to find out which timezone you're in, with entries like "during the second world war, London experimented with double daylight-savings time..." (admittedly most of that 450K is comments)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Interesting)
60 and 24 at least have some nice numerical properties:
60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15 and 30.
24 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 12.
Try that with 100: 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25 and 50. Much less flexible.
Re:Daylight Savings Time.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
There are several studies that show Daylight Saving time saves lives (pedestrians and automobile traffic), reduces violent crime, and saves electricity.
Here's one example. [hoosierdaylight.com]Re:Time for a change... (Score:1, Interesting)
We used to have a different time in every town, because each town would set its church or town hall clock separately and people would set smaller clocks by observing the large ones. Efficient transport and telecommunications got rid of that idea, but in the process people moaned endlessly that it would upset things.
Then countries each had their own time standard. You'd travel due south for a few hours and find that time had changed by fiat because you'd entered a foreign country. Again people said that fixing it would cause confusion and it was a waste of time to try... but look where we are now.
In the larger scheme of things time is not absolute and allowances must be made. But on a small piece of rock floating in space it's stupid to create multiple "zones" of time and separately maintain them. Of course most Americans are asleep when the French wake up for work, and so what? Should lazy people have a separate timezone? Should +1 offset TV channels show a clock that's an hour behind everything else? Of course not. One planet, one time.
Re:Please just drop it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Here in Dayton, Ohio, we're almost as far west as you can get in EDT (not including Michigan and half Kentucky.
The last school day that will be during DST in 2006 will be November 17th. Twilight will begin at 7:55 am, the sun will rise at 8:24 am, noon will be at 1:22 pm, and the sun will set at 5:20 pm.
Without DST, the same day would be sun rise at 7:24 am, noon at 12:22 pm, sunset at 4:20 pm.
When the kids go back to school on January 4th, without DST, the sun will rise at 7:58 am, noon at 12:42 pm, sunset at 5:25 pm.
I don't see it being that much of a difference. And actually, without DST, with the sun setting at 4:20 pm, you probably have some kids going home in the dark. Especially if they're in after school activities (something which I'm sure being a fan of doing things "for the children" you will support).
So they either go to school in the dark in the morning, or they come home in the dark at night.
Re:Time for a change... (Score:4, Interesting)
ex.
0 3
2f = 2 3
just my 2c, but made math hella easier, and helps even more with higher dimensional math because you can visualize and manipulate halves and quarters much better than 2/5 and 7/10.
Re:Please just drop it. (Score:3, Interesting)
It can be hard to justify a the cost of a $3.00 spiral to a $0.50 incandescent bulb, though. Mine have been going strong for 2 years now, rather than replacing them every 6 months or so.
Only another year and you'll break even...
Ignoring the energy costs of course
The REAL point of DST changes: Retailers (Score:3, Interesting)
As a large retailer, we know that core shopping happens during daylight hours. As the sun sets, people start clearing out of the retail stores.
In most parts of the country, retail stores open at a fixed time, either 9AM (or 10AM in some areas). Almost no stores open at "sunrise".
Therefore, core shopping hours are from a 9AM until sunset. Maybe the store is open until 9 PM, but in general shopping activity slows way down at sunset. This is just a known fact in the retail industry.
By changing the clock, sunset can happen later relative to clock time. Therefore, if we add a month of DST, we add about 30 hours of prime-time shopping to our annual retail calendar!
To a retailer, this is huge news - this is almost like adding 3+ full shopping days to our calendar at almost zero cost.
My management was amazingly happy by this rule change.
Re:Moral travesty (Score:2, Interesting)
Heh. My last employer offered flexible scheduling. We could work a 8-hour day anywhere between the hours of 6am and 7pm, with our supervisors prior approval. One of my coworkers decided this was a great idea and submitted a request to change his schedule to 7-7. When our boss ponted out that he was requesting a 12 workday, the guy replied with a dead serious, "yeah, I know. I plan to take a 3 hour nap after lunch everyday." Come to find out, he was also a DJ for a AM station and worked 11pm-3am several nights a week.
I already worked a 10-11 hour day, so I should have just closed the door and napped anyway.
Re:Time for a change... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/driving%20