BBC Clock Inaccurate - 100 Days To Fix? 487
mikejuk writes "The BBC home page has just lost its clock because the BBC Trust upheld a complaint that it was inaccurate. The clock would show the current time on the machine it was being viewed on and not an accurate time as determined by the BBC. However, the BBC have responded to the accusations of inaccuracy by simply removing the clock stating that it would take 100 staffing days to fix. It further says: 'Given the technical complexities of implementing an alternative central clock, and the fact that most users already have a clock on their computer screen, the BBC has taken the decision to remove the clock from the Homepage in an upcoming update.' They added, '...the system required to do this "would dramatically slow down the loading of the BBC homepage", something which he said was "an issue of great importance to the site's users".
Secondly, if the site moved to a format in which users across the world accessed the same homepage, irrespective of whichever country they were in, it would be "impossible to offer a single zonally-accurate clock."'"
Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure I can trust a source which says "it has been stated that it would take 100 programmer hours to fix" then quotes a paragraph stating 100 staff days. Regardless it is harder than it looks: the BBC doesn't want to get into the business of running a time server, nor trying to automatically determine which time zone any particular visitor to the site happens to be in (by, what, IP address tracing?).
Re:Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Funny)
Come on, everyone knows that public sector workers only work for one hour per day. Programmers are no exception.
Re: Not-so-accurate source (Score:3)
Is the BBC public sector? That is an interesting idea. It is not taxpayer funded. It is licence fee funded.
Re: Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Not-so-accurate source (Score:4, Insightful)
The License Fee MUST be paid if you won a TV set
-- its a tax by any other name
Re: Not-so-accurate source (Score:4, Funny)
The License Fee MUST be paid if you won a TV set
What if I simply bought one?
Re: Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Informative)
The License Fee MUST be paid if you won a TV set
-- its a tax by any other name
Wrong. The License Fee MUST be paid if you use a device to receive and decoder television transmissions, the medium could be Terrestial, Cable, Satelite, or IP.
You don't need a license if you own a TV. You don't need one if you use things like iplayer on catchup. You only need one if you watching live tv.
Re: Not-so-accurate source (Score:4, Informative)
They will try to strong arm you... However, as long as your TV set is not logically set up to view television (not close to a socket or with a cable simply disconnected and laying there for the sake of the visit). You do NOT need to pay a penny!
Technically they have to prove you were using the set to watch TV in a court. As a civil case that's a balance of probabilities rather than beyond-all-doubt.
Basically, if you use it to watch TV (Even if you "only watch sky"), you should buy a license. If you don't you've got my full support against the bully-boy tactics of capita. I despise the few that try to evade paying the license. Just like the tax it really is, avoid it all you want by not using a TV, but don't evade paying it on some technicality.
P.S. In case anyone wonders, sky benefit a lot from the license fee as they poach staff from the bbc, who train a hell of a lot more, and their viewers benefit form the competition, just like a iphone user benefits from android competition
I shudder to think what British TV would be like if it degenerated to the crap that's in America. It's not the content that's bad in the U.S. It's the presentation. The adverts on sky would get far more obnoxious without the BBC.
(disclaimer, I work for the BBC -- not in online though -- views my own etc)
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Are you aware that they impose a mandatory license fee for all households that actively receive the BBC's broadcasts as-live?
If you don't own a TV (or TV tuner card), and only watch BBC shows on iPlayer (but not as-live), then your license fee obligations are the square root of fuck all.
Re: Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Interesting)
The TV licensing chaps often like to think of themselves as some sort of police force, and will often try to threaten or cajole people in either of the above two categories into buying a license anyway, but they don't have a legal leg to stand on. They can't demand you buy a license or enter your home without permission or a warrant. IME, warrants are very rarely issued to the TV licensing chaps because the judges know they like to throw their weight around and bully people.
I don't know where you're hearing that from. I've gone round with a TV Licencing officer on his rounds through Watford and I've witnessed first-hand how they operate. He never entered a home without permission, he just asked politely and all but one person said yes (the one that said no actually threatened to punch our teeth out - pity we could see the TV tuned to BBC2 from the doorstep...) As far as I'm aware, about 50% of the visits resulted in no follow-up action due to compassionate reasons. The only ones that were referred for further action were people who could pay, but thought they should be allowed to get away with it.
I love the BBC, especially all the various documentaries and the occasional drama. But no-one else in our house watches live TV either and didn't see the point in paying the money, so to get all those BBC4 documentaries I like so much, I scour iPlayer to watch them after they've been broadcast and buy the DVD if and when they become available.
i.e. people like you.
Re: Not-so-accurate source (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Informative)
No you don't. You only need a license to watch or record broadcast TV live (or near live - a few seconds diff)
So:
live retransmitter sites - license required.
on-demand sites - NO license required.
iPlayer to watch something live - license required.
iPlayer to watch something broadcast yesterday - NO license required.
http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/playing_tv_progs/tvlicence [bbc.co.uk]
Re: Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Not-so-accurate source (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Not-so-accurate source (Score:4, Informative)
That's not enough you have to own nothing capable of receiving tv signal and thanks to tv channel repeater sites that includes a computer.
Nonsense, I don't have a TV licence, but I do have a computer. The ONLY stipulation is that you don't watch programmes as they are being broadcast. You are still allowed to watch them later on iPlayer without having a licence.
Reference [tvlicensing.co.uk]
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No, "programmer hours" versus "staff days". As everyone who has worked in a large organisation, public or private, knows it is vitally important to have numerous committee meetings and consult all stakeholders to make sure all possible solutions have been investigated and a clear approach decided before any programmers get involved.
Re:Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of a joke.
A guy applies for a public sector job. The interviewer asks him if he drinks any coffee, guy says "no, I'm not allowed to have coffee because of the surgery I've done in the past. You know, when I fought in Iraq, a bomb exploded and mangled my balls, so they have been removed."
The interviewer remains silent for a minute then says "OK, you're hired, you will come to work at noon every day and leave at 4 PM".
Applicant protests: "Look, I know work starts at 8 AM and I don't want to be advantaged because I'm invalid".
Interviewer says "No, it's nothing like that. See, we come to work at 8 AM, and have our coffee until 10 AM and then we scratch our balls until noon. So there's nothing that you CAN do until noon, no point in coming in at 8 AM."
Re:Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Insightful)
Display the time in GMT. State that the time is in GMT. Offer a drop down menu showing "-12h" to "+12h", save the option in a cookie. Or don't. No one from the licence fee paying British public would mind if it only showed British time.
Use someone else's time server. There are plenty to pick from. No need to run your own.
It took me 2 minutes to type this. Who wants to implement it by Friday?
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I can't see anyone going to even the small amount of effort needed to set their time zone on the BBC web site clock when there's one in the bottom right hand corner of their screen at all times.
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...there's (a clock) in the bottom right hand corner of their screen at all times...
That's not a clock, that's my workspaces! The clock is in the TOP right corner.
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Damn right! And it's 24 hour and has seconds too.
Re:Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Informative)
It's a cop-out, nothing more.
Display the time in GMT. State that the time is in GMT. Offer a drop down menu showing "-12h" to "+12h", save the option in a cookie. Or don't. No one from the licence fee paying British public would mind if it only showed British time.
Use someone else's time server. There are plenty to pick from. No need to run your own.
It took me 2 minutes to type this. Who wants to implement it by Friday?
Hmmm
GMT is only "British time" for half of the year. From the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October, we are on British Summer Time, which is GMT + 1. Given how many people get confused over summer / daylight savings time, I am sure that setting the BBC clock to GMT all year round would generate a lot of complaints.
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Wrong! A time zone don't change; it is defined by its UTC offset. When you go to DST, you change by changing your time zone. Here on the East of the US, we do it by changing our zone from Eastern Standard Time (EST, UTC -5 hours), to Eastern Daylight Time (EDT, UTC -4 hours). In Britain, they do it by changing their zone from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT, UTC +0 hours) to Brit
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Sigh. The fact that you think British time equals GMT speaks volumes to your lack of understanding of the complexities of time.
(And what is "British time"? Do you mean UK time? What about overseas territories?)
More importantly, if the clock on the user's own computer isn't "good enough", what is? Just agreeing on the requirements could easily take 100 staff days.
The US government has http://www.time.gov/ [time.gov] which has most definitely taken 100 staff days to create, plus on-going maintenance.
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I get tired of the "experts" here coming up with what they think is the obvious solution - different to everyone else's and mostly just made up BS.
Please Slashdot, if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, STFU!
How fucking hard is it really to have accurate time displayed on a webpage ?
I haven't tried it myself, I don't claim to have the ultimate solution, but it does appear to be a no-brainer.
Um, WTF? Did you even read what you wrote?
It turns out it is actually difficult to get time zones right, especially when you need to coordinate between web clients and servers. I know -- I've done it. The amount of time we spent debugging it (after we thought several times that we had everything figured out) was ridiculous.
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It's a cop-out, nothing more.
It's a fit of common sense.
What is the use case of a clock on a website?
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It's a cop-out, nothing more.
Sheesh... It's a freaking clock!!
Yes, it's a cop-out, but why is this even a story on Slashdot? And what is the point of duplicating clock functionality that's already on someone's computer anyway?
It took me 2 minutes to type this. Who wants to implement it by Friday?
Again, what is point of doing that on the bbc web site?
Re:Not-so-accurate source (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure I can trust a source which says "it has been stated that it would take 100 programmer hours to fix" then quotes a paragraph stating 100 staff days
I think that's 100 programmer hours to fix the problems, and 100 staff days to field calls from a nation whose hobby is complaining about things that don't matter.
Re:Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Funny)
I think that's 100 programmer hours to fix the problems, and 100 staff days to field calls from a nation whose hobby is complaining about things that don't matter.
Dear Points of View,
I would like to raise two problems with JamesH's post of the 6th of June. Firstly, he mistakes us for "a nation", despite the constitutional recognition of our 4 different nationalities within the united state.
Secondly, he alleges that we tend to complain about things that don't matter, which is a scurrilous accusation with no foundation in fact.
Yours faithfully
Disgusted
Tunbridge Wells
Re:Not-so-accurate source (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't talk about "a constitution", though, did I? The lack of a so-titled single document doesn't mean that there is no notion of "constitutional law" in the UK. Possibly the most important documents in UK constitutional law are the acts of union, which define this term "constituent country".
You might as well claim that I'm not from the UK on the grounds that I'm not writing in Welsh, the only language in the UK that has any official recognition in law....
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BBC doesn't want to [...] automatically determine which time zone any particular visitor to the site happens to be in
How do they handle this for their TV broadcasts?
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Their TV broadcasts (and the live streams of the channels) occur in a single timezone.
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And then what about their radio broadcasts, which are worldwide.
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The TV broadcasts are at least ostensibly only to be received in the UK. Leakage happens but obviously anyone receiving the signal has no expectation of a standard of service, and therefore the BBC's accuracy requirement doesn't apply. The World Service is a global broadcast and is formatted as such, e.g. it doesn't include explicit time references.
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Err, explicit local time references. Obviously they have a schedule.
BBC broadcast services and timezones (Score:5, Informative)
The BBC domestic services only use GMT/BST (Greenwich Mean Time in winter, British Summer Time in summer). One time zone. Although they can be received in other countries in other timezones - for example BBC1 and BBC2 domestic TV channels are provided on cable in the Netherlands - no reference is made to those other timezones.
The BBC's overseas services primarily use GMT but are broadcast regionally (e.g. "Middle East", "West Africa") where they may optionally mention secondary timezones on-air. For example, the BBC World Service's South Asia radio broadcasts may say "It's eleven hours GMT, fifteen-thirty hours in Delhi."
The BBC has no European radio service any more. European relays of the BBC World Service, including the relay on Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) radio inside the UK, use the African stream. This primarily uses GMT but occasionally additionally references a secondary timezone in a major African city such as Johannesburg or Lagos. There is a specific African breakfast news programme on the BBC World Service's African stream, presented jointly from London and Johannesburg, tailored around the morning hours across several African timezones.
Live presenters on the BBC World Service may also announce the time as simply "minutes past the hour" without referencing which hour they're referring to, for example "It's twenty minutes past the hour". These are particularly prevalent for African streams. These "minutes past" timechecks are avoided in regions with timezones that are offset by 30 minutes, such as India.
BBC overseas TV timezones fit into two categories; regional and worldwide. Worldwide services such as the BBC World news channel or BBC Entertainment do not usually reference the time as spoken word, but instead represent the time using on-screen graphics. The graphics will show GMT plus a selection of 3-5 timezones appropriate to the region the stream is broadcast to. For example, the European stream of BBC World will use GMT, Central European time and Moscow time. These are typically shown as full-screen text announcements for future programming (e.g. "Hard Talk, Mon-Fri at 08:30 GMT, 10:30 CEST, 12:30 Moscow" for the European stream). Where programming is shared between regions, they may either use opt-outs for regional time displays or use a more general subset of timezones (e.g. GMT, EST, India; very rarely, GMT is omitted in favour of CET).
Regional overseas TV services such as BBC America or BBC Arabic will use whatever timezones that region uses and will cope with it just like local domestic services. They will not generally use GMT.
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They don't have to run a time server, they just need to keep their time server updated; once an hour from is probably enough. There are also a variety of cheap hardware add-ons (even for Windows) that pull accurate time from radio beacons or GPS.
As for the time zone to display, they ask the browser for its configured time zone and use that. Presumably, that's what the user considers his time zone.
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Why would they need a hardware addon when we have NTP for this kind of thing?
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Getting the right time these days is easy, you have NTP [ntp.org], GPS, DCF77 [wikipedia.org] and Time from NPL [wikipedia.org] to name a few sources in Europe.
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the BBC doesn't want to get into the business of running a time server
Then they're pretty damn lazy. It's very easy, especially with the kind of money the BBC has, to do just that.
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And they could run a burger joint easily too, but they're a publicly-funded organisation, they're not permitted to throw money at activities outside their remit.
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And they could run a burger joint easily too, but they're a publicly-funded organisation, they're not permitted to throw money at activities outside their remit.
Probably not the best [express.co.uk] example.
Re: Not-so-accurate source (Score:2)
Shit waste of money that should go on making radio and TV programmes.
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trying to automatically determine which time zone any particular visitor to the site happens to be in (by, what, IP address tracing?).
This might help: getTimezoneOffset documentation [mozilla.org].
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Right now their problem is that people with their clock incorrectly set will see an incorrect time.
They probably don't want to change that into a situation where people with their timezone incorrectly set will see an incorrect time.
(as that will probably largely be the same group of people)
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title="The correct time according to your computer's timezone settings"
That wasn't so hard.
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The timezone thing is a legitimate concern, but there's virtually no reason to not have ntpd running on your servers anyway. Depending on their level of server (non-)automation, it could conceivably take a non-trivial amount of time to set that up if it wasn't already, especially if there's software logic that doesn't like time running in reverse should it have to sync up in that direction.
Re:Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems simple until you start working through it. First you have to start tracking every goofy fall/spring variation in the world so you don't display a time that's an hour early or late. Then, do you just trust that the user has the correct time zone entered on their computer? Maybe they're travelling 3 time zones away. Do you use ip geolocation to get their approximate physical location and display that time? Say you do that. What if they're in NYC and surfing through their company VPN in Los Angeles? I guess on a tablet or phone, you might be able to get the location from the GPS. Wating for location fix...waiting for location fix...waiting for location fix.
At some point during the discussions, someone pointed out that it's a silly thing to worry about since any device accessing their website already has the time displayed or available at the gesture of a mouse or finger.
Re:Not-so-accurate source (Score:4, Informative)
Further [infiniteundo.com] reading [infiniteundo.com] on dodgy assumptions about how computers handle time.
Re:Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why would a web site visitor want to know the local time of the page they're viewing?
Re:Not-so-accurate source (Score:5, Insightful)
GMT and UTC are important time references globally. I can see value in using them. And anyway, GMT isn't always local time in the UK.
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Why would I want to see the time of ANY time zone on a webpage that I don't view for that specific purpose (because, say, I want to sync my clock).
Every computer user already HAS a clock.
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Its a fair point, but the BBC world service on radio always announces the time in GMT (pointedly not using the French UTC), so it is sort of appropriate for the BBC web site to also report the time.
Re:Not-so-accurate source (Score:4, Informative)
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CO-ordinated UNiversal Time
ONE! One hour! Ah-ah-ah! *lightning*
TWO! Two hours! Ah-ah-ah!
Just saying.
They are waiting (Score:5, Funny)
For a new Time Lord!
100 days? (Score:5, Interesting)
It took one large Luxembourgish bank nine months to change SUPPORTED_OS = MAC into SUPPORTED_OS = Linux32 in a configuration file in a jar named LuxTrust_Gemalto_CryptoTI_Adapter_LIN32_1.4.jar (yes, they did indeed accidentally put the Mac config file into the Linux jar... it's that stupid...)
Another bank [www.bcee.lu] is celebrating the first year anniversary of this same bug right now as we speak :-) (unfixed yet, of course)
Reason for the slowness (in both cases): when fixing such a mixup, according to their procedures, the entire test suite (... which incidentally, didn't catch this bug in the first place...) needs to be re-run, and this takes weeks, and so they shy away from the expense.
So we end up in the paradoxical situation where the presence doesn't reduce the number of bugs seen in production, but actually increases it. Rather than catching bugs early, the test suite instead perpetuates existing bugs...
BBC cannot win (Score:5, Insightful)
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Look at it from a non-technical person's perspective. The BBC has been known for providing accurate time since it's early days when the radio first started playing the famous pips. The Radio 4 news starts with the Big Ben chimes marking 6 PM.
In recently years the accuracy has decreased thanks to digital transmissions being slightly delayed, but it is still within a second or two and the metadata sent with the audio/video stream provides an accurate clock.
Imagine a non-technical person looks at the BBC web s
Re:BBC cannot win (Score:4, Insightful)
Really?
Do tell how they do that - getting the server clock is trivial, making sure your JS is keeping time accurate between requests is pretty much impossible.
Figuring out what time to show is bloody hard, especially since the people complaining are those who in the first go didn't manage to set up their computer correctly.
Oh, and a script pulling the time at intervals from some server(s) is going to be expensive; remember the massive amount of users and data the beeb handles.
I think they did the right thing.
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Or they could just (Score:2)
Requirements, requirements, requirements. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh. I thought this was a website that was supposed to be populated with technical, computer literate people, even programmers.
The end user requirement: "Show the time"
They mean "Show the correct time for my current location"
This is easy: Every (ok, perhaps there's someone still using an old IBM PC computer where you have to set the clock at boot) browser is running on a machine that has a local clock. So we'll use it to display the time.
Some end users then start complaining that the time on the BBC website is wrong.
There's two obvious reasons for this: 1. The user has taken the iphone/ipad whatever on holiday and haven't updated the timezone or 2. Their local clock is just plain wrong.
OK. So we've now established that the end user is incapable of correctly determining and setting the correct time and timezone on their machine. So we, as a programmer, have to do this for them. Cookies, asking the user, etc obviously aren't going to work. If they cannot get their own clock right then they're not going to get the website configuration right either.
This is hard, hard, hard to solve. IMO it's impossible - what do you do about people coming through proxies in different timezones?
The BBC have made exactly the right decision - the old solution was the correct one. PEBKAC. TPTB have decided that the correct solution wasn't good enough. So don't waste any more time or money trying to hack together something just to satisfy end user requirements that are fundamentally broken. End users can use the clock on their machine anyway and they won't complain to the BBC if it's wrong (presumably they complain to Microsoft instead)
Tim.
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I have two simple solutions:
1. Ask for clarification on use case for a clock taking up space on a tv homepage
2. Put task on hold while waiting for feedback
3. Let task rot there.
or if #1 didn't work out or you're intrested in an actual solution
1. Show client RTC on website
2. link to ntp client below the clock. Text: make this clock more accurate
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The time at the BBC is an institution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Time_Signal [wikipedia.org]
The right to read out the time on the Today programme has been auctioned for charity.
People in the UK expect the time from the BBC to be right.
Unfortunately, the internet has meant that there are now variables that the BBC cannot control for.
Tim.
Is that HONESTLY a problem? (Score:2)
Now, I know that some people have more time than brains on them, but whoever reported this sure must have taken the cake. High level exec or marketing/PR? Where does the waste of precious oxygen sit that considers this something the BBC programmers' time should be clogged with?
Some people just have no reason to exist and waste precious office space, so they have to notice something as important as this and cause a huge stink about it as if anyone but them cared. "I am a nuisance, hence I exist" seems to be
They should open the challenge up (Score:2)
It seems quite feasible to create a JS lib that makes a request over HTTP to a server running some time module and receives the exact value in response. The JS could provide APIs to show that time and calculate various timezones. About the trickiest thing would be dealing with the roundtrip delay of
GMT is dead, long live UTC (Score:2)
GMT died in 1972 [wikipedia.org], so can we put this to bed already please?
100 days (Score:4, Funny)
100 person days have been spent reading and commenting on the ./ article. (101 now)
Re:100 days (Score:5, Funny)
I assume it took me about a day to write that comment. its hard to tell without a clock on this web page.
Rule #n of programming (Score:2)
Time is easy. Until you have to bother with it in your code. Then it becomes a nightmare.
Everyone has a clock (Score:2)
I have never understood why so many people are so keen on putting a clock onto a website. Everyone has a clock [allinthehead.com].
A paranoid attitude towards complaints (Score:2)
the BBC Trust upheld a complaint that it was inaccurate
OK, so it's inaccurate - that just puts it in the same class as every clock in the world, excluding the global standards (and even they don't agree when you get down to small enough time divisions).
This is a systemic problem with the Beeb. They take every complaint or criticism "personally". If a programme draws a few complaints then an apology gets issued. If an interviewee uses a "bad" word on live TV an apologist instants says sorry. The corporation seems to have this view of itself as being infallible
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So your algorithm for determining the time on the local computer is
local time = (local time - remote time) + remote time
?
You realise that simplifies to:
local time = local time
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It is harder than that, ntp is hard. ntp takes hours to stabilize before it will believe it has a decent idea of the time.
How do you know how long it took to get the time request from the BBC over http?
Do you think you might get two side-by-side PC's showing different times (out by 10 seconds) depending on link contention when they made their request?
BBC cannot solve this problem.
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Considering that cheap spammy ads are able to determine your location so they can offer HOT, SEXY LADIES IN YOUR AREA, I think the BBC can manage.
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And why would they waste time an effort over something so ultimately pointless? It's actually amusing hearing everyone rip on the BBC for not wanting to waste money on a worthless webpage clock.
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The BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22768861 [bbc.co.uk]
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Not seeing it here in Australia. Maybe I have to browse anonymously.. or maybe us Aussies are being cut off at last. No more allowance from auntie!
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GMT, that would be the wrong time even in the UK.
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C is for Corporation. It stopped being a Company at the end of 1926.
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Why show the local time on a web site? The gripping hand is, aside from being a cute widget, there's little reason for a clock to be there.
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The scheduled content is only available in the UK, where a single timezone applies. For example the iPlayer is unambiguous about the current time because there is no ambiguity about what time zone the viewer is in.
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Of course this is true when you see a clock in the picture, but when I tune to the BBC and press the info button on my remote, I still see the overlaid clock in local time.
And when I press the EPG button to see their schedule, I see the schedule expressed in my local time. So "the nine o'clock news" airs at 22:00.
This is possible because this data is all transmitted relative to UTC and my receiver translates it to local time. And it only works because I cared to set
the timezone for my receiver when it wen
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There are several things involved:
Firstly, they need to get user's timezone. There are javascript methods to do this, but are not always reliable, especially if they don't want to depend on the client having javascript support. Of course, they could always just ask the user to pick the timezone, so that issue could be solved. E.g. Formula 1 [formula1.com] solved it nicely, though I am not sure which method exactly they use (their javascripts are not obfuscated, but I can't be bothered).
Bigger issue, in my opinion, is show
Re:LMGTFY (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LMGTFY (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow what a nothing issue. It's not accurate because it's tied to the machine I view it from??? Then it's the fault of the end user. The BBC have taken the correct approach to this issue they've decided we're too stupid to have a clock!! The scary thing is I suspect that in general they are correct.
The point is that they've done this in response to formal complaints... which means that yes, in some cases the users *are* too stupid to have a clock, and not only that, those same stupid people are willing to kick up a fuss about it and raise complaints.
Re:LMGTFY (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that the vast majority of computers already display their time on the screen; it is reasonable to assume the only the purpose of an additional clock on the BBC website is to validate its accuracy.
n.b. a large proportion of the population grew up setting their watches to the BBC's pips, it is also natural to consider them an authority on the subject.
Re: (Score:3)
And it may actually take a 100 days if you actually have to bother with testing it in all sort of scenarios, time zones, browsers en daylight savings time etc.
Send UTC and let the browser format and adjust to the local. VERY easy, almost no testing.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
The BBC decided the best course of action was to pull the clock and then the petty, stupid complaints about it would stop. Now they're going to start getting the complaints about "I always go to the BBC website to find out what the time on my computer is, but you've removed the clock.."