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Daylight Saving Time Change On Sunday For N. America 277

An anonymous reader writes Just a reminder that DST starts this weekend for most of North America. The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea and want it to stop. If that was done, the main question would then probably be whether to go to Standard time year-round, or "summer" time year-round (more). For the latter, there is some evidence that it helps reduce crime (at least initially); for the former, more northern locations would have sunrise occur 08:30 or later, which would make the morning commute difficult. Some even argue that the U.S. should go to only two timezones. The DST change occurs at the end of March in the EU, so there will be a second round of confusion for trans-Atlantic conference calls then.
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Daylight Saving Time Change On Sunday For N. America

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  • by cashman73 ( 855518 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @11:44AM (#49204507) Journal
    Except for those in Arizona, you insensitive clod!
    • by jabberw0k ( 62554 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @11:56AM (#49204579) Homepage Journal
      Except the Navajo Nation within Arizona, which goes observes Daylight Time, except the Hopi Nation within the Navajo Reservation which doesn't.
    • by duckintheface ( 710137 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @12:06PM (#49204641)

      The easiest solution is to have one time worldwide. Essentially, use the military Zulu time (Greenwich Mean Time) for everything. Then there is no confusion about what time it is and international (and coast to coast) communication would be simplified.

      And while we are at it, let's eliminate the 24 hr day and 60 minute hour which are based on Sumerian arithmetic. Let's use digital (base 10) time. The primary unit would be the Centon (1/100th of a planetary rotation) which would mean there would be 100 Centons in a day and each would be equal to about 15 of your puny Earthling minutes. Millons would then be equivalent to 1.5 minutes and the new second (.001 Centons) would be about the same as the existing second. Easy to deal with.

      The issue of daylight would be dealt with locally. Shops and offices would open at whatever time they choose (just like they do now) but it would probably be the equivalent of the old 8AM or 9AM.

      There. I've solved it for you, so no further discussion is necessary. :)

      • by fisted ( 2295862 )
        Sounds good. Where do I sign up?
        • At the very least..for the US.

          Why don't we just pick one time DST or Regular...and stick with it. I think I've been reading that the change in times has been shown pretty readily that it takes a bad toll on our health. People die because of the changes even....

          Nothing wrong with timezones, that make sense, but it makes no sense in this day in age (we're not all farmers anymore)..to shift the day back and forth twice a year by an hour.

          • I love the late day sun in the Summer. In Winter, dark is dark, who cares.

            • I love the late day sun in the Summer. In Winter, dark is dark, who cares.

              Well, then, let's stick the the DST hours...and freeze it there..then summers would have late hours.

              I lived in AZ and the lack of changing hours didn't affect anything poorly, in fact, it was nice to never have to twice a year have your sleep cycle all screwed up for days and have to re-adjust.

              I just think in this day in age, it really makes no sense for the majority of the US to have to switch back and forth twice annually.

          • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

            What makes you think DST makes sense for farmers? Do you think the cows give a rat's ass about DST? Their schedule is linked to the moment the sun reaches it's highest point and nothing else.
            No farmer was ever in favor of DST...

          • but [DST] makes no sense in this day in age (we're not all farmers anymore)..to shift the day back and forth twice a year by an hour.

            WTF have farmers got to do with it? They of all people live their own hours (I live next to a farm).

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          Sounds good. Where do I sign up?

          Set your Wayback Machine for the French Revolution, Paris, France, 5 October 1793. The French National Convention issued the proclamation: XI. Le jour, de minuit à minuit, est divisé en dix parties, chaque partie en dix autres, ainsi de suite jusqu’à la plus petite portion commensurable de la durée.

          There are clocks in French museums with 10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour and 100 seconds in a minute.

      • by Paradise Pete ( 33184 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @12:23PM (#49204759) Journal

        The easiest solution is to have one time worldwide.

        Does that really make it easier? Seems like it just exchanges one problem for another. You might know what "time" it is everywhere, but you don't know when they're working, sleeping, etc.
        "What time is it in China? Oh right, 3pm, same as us. Wait, when do they sleep? Can I call there now?"
        "What, we're having dinner at 2am? And tomorrow we travel to India for an afternoon meeting. When will that be? 9:30? WTF?"

        • It's easier because when you schedule that call to China, there will be no confusion about what time is agreed upon. And it won't be dinner at 2AM. It will be dinner at 14 (Centons).

          • I remember while playing World of Warcraft, you'd have a raid with 20 people, and each of them lived in 4-5 different time zones. That problem seems to have been dealt with rather well using one of two systems:

            - You schedule times based on what time your server clock indicated
            - In cross-server environments (especially PVP) where not everybody had the same server clock, you'd schedule events based on an offset from the present time.

            So for example if it was 3:00 my time and I was doing to be back on the game

          • by sjames ( 1099 )

            But it's not actually easier. I say that because Zulu time is available right now for use in scheduling things across timezones.

        • by Macrat ( 638047 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @01:01PM (#49204971)

          Does that really make it easier? Seems like it just exchanges one problem for another. You might know what "time" it is everywhere, but you don't know when they're working, sleeping, etc."

          You don't know that now.

          You just assume that everyone is on your schedule.

          • by tresho ( 1000127 )

            Does that really make it easier? Seems like it just exchanges one problem for another. You might know what "time" it is everywhere, but you don't know when they're working, sleeping, etc."

            You don't know that now.

            You just assume that everyone is on your schedule.

            People I have known, who worked the night shift, would sometimes be tormented by acquaintances who habitually called them (and woke them up from a sound sleep) at 1100, and who would then make the feeble excuse "I forgot you were a day sleeper." One ingenious 3rd shift worker I knew dealt with the worst offenders by calling their house at 0300 and then saying "Oh, I forgot you were a night sleeper." When I worked the 3rd shift I shut off the ringer on my phone, let my answering machine handle calls, and d

          • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

            You don't know that now.

            He has a pretty good idea, pedant.

            You just assume that everyone is on your schedule.

            His schedule, or one in line with 97% [healthday.com] of the work force?

            • Police officers, hospital workers, truck drivers, and factory workers are among those working the "third" or "graveyard" shift that keeps the country moving along 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They make up 3.2 percent of the work force,

            So yeah, you do have a pretty good idea, based on the time, if people are likely to be working, awake or

        • The solution is actually pretty simple: use Google. To understand what time it is in a different city, use

          time in London

          To schedule a multi-timezone meeting, have the leader declare, e.g., "the meeting will be at 7AM London time", and allow each participant to figure out when that will be for themselves using queries such as

          time in New York when 7am in London

          Our company has been using this method to organize our international meetings with participants from five distinct timezones for some years now. Works like a charm.

      • Me: Ok Sally, where shall we meet?
        Sally: Let's meet at the plaza at 52.
        Me: How long do you think it will take?
        Sally: Well, Harry likes to talk a lot so probably about 2 Cs.
        Me: Great. I have another appointment at 57 so I'll have time for a quick lunch.
        Sally: I've seen you wolf down a burger in 2 Mills so I don't think there will be a problem. (Laughs sweetly)
        Me: Ok, but if I go to Space Burger I'll have to wait in line for a C just to get my order in.
        Sally: Chill Cowboy. You have plenty of time.

      • It sounds like what you want is Swatch Internet Time http://www.pcpro.co.uk/computi... [pcpro.co.uk]

      • The problem with DST is the way we implementing it. When you do a "Fall? Fall back!" nobody complains about having an extra hour to sleep. "Spring? Spring forward!" Sucks for everyone. They are all grumpy because they lost an hour of sleep.

        So my solution would be, instead of turning clocks ahead an hour in the spring, turn them back 23 hours. That day is wasted. Gone.

        Try again later. "User error. Please replace user and try again."

      • by gizmo71 ( 99624 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @02:06PM (#49205329) Homepage

        The issue of daylight would be dealt with locally.

        The issue of date on the other hand becomes a whole lot more awkward. You either have the date change at 00:00 everywhere, which means that for much of the world it changes during the day (it's my birthday! but only until lunchtime!), or in the middle of the night locally, meaning that now I know what time it is anywhere in the world but no idea what date it is.

        That would seem to be a harder problem than simply agreeing times in UTC, which we could do today, and people just doing the conversion to/from their local time as necessary.

        And don't even get me started on people who thing that GMT is the same as UK time all year long...

      • One problem with that is that the Earth wobbles on it's axis, so figuring out how when a rotation started and stopped is different every day and depends where you put the marker and your plane of reference. Another problem with that is that the Earth's rotation is slowing down, so as time goes on, centons will get longer relative to a fixed time source.
      • I am reminded how Elijah Baley was reduced to tears and asking whether the sun would be out when he landed on Solaria. The Naked Sun [wikipedia.org]

        I don't find the geek's willingness to divorce himself from the natural cycle of day and night and the change of seasons particularly healthy --- nor do I share his obsession with reducing everything to base 10.

    • We"ve been saving daylight for months here in the southern hemisphere.

      Is there a postal address in Phoenix we can send the excess?

  • The majority? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by markalot ( 67322 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @11:44AM (#49204509)

    > The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea....

    Do you have a source for this?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Those who dislike it naturally believe that most people agree with them. Those who like it also naturally believe that most people agree with them.

      Either way, we get to have this discussion on slashdot at least twice a year!

      • by paiute ( 550198 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @12:09PM (#49204657)

        we get to have this discussion on slashdot at least twice a year!

        Good thing, too - t's the only way I remember to set my clocks.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

          I don't bother changing my clocks twice a year. Some auto update, the others I just remember that they are an hour out.

      • Yeah, most people don't care. Or think they don't. They still have to waste time adjusting to it, though.

        Only morning people actually like it, because they get to be extra smug for the following week while their co-workers, friends, and neighbors adjust.

        • Yeah, most people ....... still have to waste time adjusting to [DST], though. ...... Only morning people actually like it, because they get to be extra smug for the following week while their co-workers, friends, and neighbors adjust.

          Adjust ? Perhaps it is different in the US, but in the UK I can honestly say that I have never heard anyone complain that they found it hard to "adjust". They might complain about the flaff to adjust their clocks, but that is about it.

          The change only affects Sunday, and I and most people don't give a shit about the time on a Sunday morning. I just get up when I wake up. You then have a whole day to "adjust", if you need it.

        • Yeah, most people don't care. Or think they don't. They still have to waste time adjusting to it, though.

          Only morning people actually like it, because they get to be extra smug for the following week while their co-workers, friends, and neighbors adjust.

          As someone who has spent my whole life living under a system of DST I actually quite like it. Here in the UK it means that for the winter months i do not have to wake up while it is still pitch black outside in order to get to work for 8:30. It does mean it is dark when I am driving home but who cares then? it probably would be anyway actually as with the clock change it gets dark at about 4ish.

          As to getting used to it? Wow, it is only one Saturday night that is either longer or shorter, half the time I don

          • The period where you're claiming to benefit form savings time, you're actually under standard time....

    • Re:The majority? (Score:5, Informative)

      by houstonbofh ( 602064 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @11:55AM (#49204575)

      > The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea....

      Do you have a source for this?

      Listening to perople bitch about it this time of year is a good one. But this also works... http://www.timeanddate.com/tim... [timeanddate.com] See "Losing U.S. popularity - According to a Rasmussen Report from 2013, only 37 % of Americans see the purpose of DST compared to 45 % the year before."

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by edibobb ( 113989 )
      Yes, the source is unsourced articles that come out twice a year shortly before daylight savings changes, each with the same trivial commentary. I'm in the other majority, the one that prefers daylight savings time.
      • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        Well, thanks for coming out of that closet, now we know yet another root of this problem ;).

    • > The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea....

      Do you have a source for this?

      This...

      Most people don't think about this. Most people are happy with the current system simply because it works.

      Any new system would have it's own pros and cons and there is no guarantee that it would be any better than what we have now, just different. Also, Changing to another time system would cause a disruption in business, markets, and lost productivity in adjusting to the new system.

      So, we come down to the crux of the question. Is it worth it? My thought is that, No, it's not...

    • How about this one? [nj.com] 77% in favor of abolishing it. I believe that constitutes a majority.
  • Oh really? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mean pun ( 717227 )

    The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea and want it to stop.

    I know some people don't like it, but a majority? I really doubt it. Citation?

    • Re:Oh really? (Score:5, Informative)

      by houstonbofh ( 602064 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @11:57AM (#49204585)
      http://www.timeanddate.com/tim... [timeanddate.com]
      "Losing U.S. popularity - According to a Rasmussen Report from 2013, only 37 % of Americans see the purpose of DST compared to 45 % the year before."
      • http://www.timeanddate.com/tim... [timeanddate.com] "Losing U.S. popularity - According to a Rasmussen Report from 2013, only 37 % of Americans see the purpose of DST compared to 45 % the year before."

        Only 37% see the purpose. That to me doesn't clearly show how many people dislike it. You can still see the purpose and not be in favor of it. I expect that if they had phrased the question correctly, they would have more people against it, as seen in other polls.

  • Go to 30 minutes forward year-round.
  • Although I don't think Canadians are insensitive clods.
  • Keep it as is (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @11:46AM (#49204521)

    DST is not a bad idea. Who the hell is going to wake up at 4:00 a.m. in June? Who is going to do anything enjoyable or productive in the wee hours of the morning when they've still got a looming commute to work?

    Stop all the damned whining and enjoy the sunlight while you're actually awake.

    • Re:Keep it as is (Score:4, Interesting)

      by demonlapin ( 527802 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @11:55AM (#49204573) Homepage Journal
      DST is nothing more than collectively agreeing that we will get up and go home an hour earlier all summer long. Hence the traditional opposition in farming areas - farmers work on the sun, not the clock, and if every store closes an hour earlier, it is more difficult for them to get there after the farm work is done but before they close.
      • by OzPeter ( 195038 )

        farmers work on the sun, not the clock, and if every store closes an hour earlier, it is more difficult for them to get there after the farm work is done but before they close.

        By that same token, if the store shuts 1 hours earlier, they are then losing their customers who are farmers. So it would behoove them to stay open an hour later and make the money the would otherwise lose.

        • So, now they have to have special "summer" and "winter" hours, which they may or may not have needed to bother with without DST. Exactly what is the benefit of monkeying with everyone else's time?

      • Don't Keep it as is (Score:4, Interesting)

        by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @12:28PM (#49204789)
        Here in Minnesota, we have large stores like Mills Fleet Farm and Wal-Mart that have extended hours, if not open 24 hours, and stock items that typical farmers need for maintaining Livestock and doing various repairs. This can also be supplemented with Amazon orders that can be delivered directly to your home. There is an ever decreasing need for DST changes just to support farmers. Also, we have had the electric light for more than 100 years now. I think it's time to change. Farmers will be able to adapt. If they can't, then maybe they should be replaced with robots.
      • by epine ( 68316 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @12:30PM (#49204793)

        an hour earlier

        An hour earlier than what?

        Humans have been phase-locked to the mean solar day for just over 200 out of the last 6 million years.

        1883: Railroads create the first time zones [history.com]

        Not even the sun is phase-locked to mean solar time. There's this little detail called the Equation of time [wikipedia.org] whose discovery dates back to the Babylonians, which governs annual variation in apparent solar time. Apparent solar time just happens to be the primary zeitgeber on circadian rhythmicity in all mammals (that I've heard of) and a great deal more.

        The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea and want it to stop.

        Majority of what population? People living north of the 49th? I doubt it.

        Majority of people who wish pi was equal to 3 and that the earth's orbit were circular? Almost certainly, even though I don't think these two simplicity boners are conceptually compatible.

        • Humans have been phase-locked to the mean solar day for just over 200 out of the last 6 million years.

          --- which is just another way of saying that humans were essentially home-bound for about 6 million years.

  • by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @11:49AM (#49204539)
    The older I get the longer it takes me to re-adjust my internal clock. Pick one or the other and stick to it.
  • by jader3rd ( 2222716 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @11:50AM (#49204543)
    I thought the problem was that half of all people still think that it's doing them some good.
  • Is this why we come to Slashdot? Because we don't know what ntp is, or how it works, so we don't really have to think about it a whole lot? I can't see how this qualifies as news for nerds. What a waste of a front-page article.

  • Whatever system people use to measure the day, it makes no difference to when the sun rises or sets, or passes its meridian, for that matter. All such schemes are essentially arbitrary, the only important factor being whether a scheme can identify a point in time in some convenient and mutually intelligible way.

    • by DamonHD ( 794830 )

      And changing our entire frame of reference twice a year in some places at vaguely similar but not the same dates, to me does not meet that test.

      We have things called computers and calendars these days with which we could adjust the running hours of our businesses, schools, etc, *if necessary* to the seasons.

      My local graveyard manages it.

      I run as much as possible on UTC.

      Rgds

      Damon

  • by pubwvj ( 1045960 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @12:41PM (#49204861)

    It doesn't matter which we go with, let's just pick one and stick with it year round. The natural cycles make it so that sunrise and sunset change dramatically from December to June. They can't legislate away the tilt of the Earth so let's start by accepting nature and science and do away with this nonsense of changing the clocks.

    • by Isaac-1 ( 233099 )

      I suspect a large part of this trend is due to an ever increasing population in the southern part of the US (from CA to FL, not just "the south") as the seasonal variaiton on length of day light is less the closer to the equator one lives, making it a more and more trivial topic.

  • permanently spring 3 hours ahead

    so we wake up and have dismal darkness in the morning (6AM=3AM). lunch means the sun came up just an hour or two ago (12PM=9AM)

    but here's the winning point: when we go home (6PM=3PM) we have glorious sunlight all evening with our friends and family

    until we go to sleep at midnight (12AM=9PM), the sun setting with us

    but really, i just wish the usa would finally go metric like the rest of the modern fucking world

  • My main gripe about the changes back and forth are when they occur. Early March is too early to Spring Forward, even down here in the south, and early November is too late to Fall Back. I am old enough to remember when we DID go DST all year. I think it was in 1973 during the first oil embargo, and the idea was to save energy. Not really sure how, or if, that worked at all. I do know that in central Ohio, where I was at the time, it stayed dark until pretty late in the morning, and everyone was talking
  • We are so far east in the Eastern time zone that when we go to Standard Time, we get to see no sun whatsoever in the winter if you work a daytime job.

    We really should be in the Atlantic time zone, along with the Maritime Provinces but that makes too much sense.

    --
    BMO

  • This shouldn't be a posted story, it should be a Poll question, and we'd comment on the Poll as per usual.

    I'd prefer 'DST' all year 'round. A little extra daylight at the end of the day is a good thing.
  • I agree with the article proposing a year long DST. I really look forward to setting my clock an hour ahead and getting an extra hour of daylight in the afternoon. I love the really late sunsets in summer. I'm not a morning person, and the dark mornings don't have much of an effect on my emotional state. And really, even without DST in the winter, most off us in the midwest wake up and go to work in the dark. Sunrise is just really late, and it sucks coming back home in the dark.

  • Never mind just America, let's work to scrap DST worldwide. DST (or daylight saving time) is a great source of confusion. It complicates administration, as well as making life tough for programmers and every day people who need to make sure their clocks are reset twice a year.

    However, if we scrapped DST (along with 15 or 30 minute offsets), we would only have 24 time zones - one for each hour! This is a reduction from the hundreds [unicode.org] we currently have in use around the world. Each location would simply be a
  • DST assumes you're working outside and will have some benefit from the sunlight. I'm up roughly 16 out of every 24 hours, even though the sunlight here varies from 4,5 hours to 20.5 hours of the day. What it usually means is that in the winter I work through all the natural light hours in the office during the day and stay up during the pitch dark hours of the evening in artificial light. Why? I'd much rather work in artificial light at the office and have the opportunity to choose between being in or out d

  • Maybe it made sense last century, but not anymore.
    With modern efficient lighting (CFL and LED) there is no significant 'savings' of electricity.

    Hours of work are no longer limited to 8:30a to 4:30p

    I work night shift you insensitive clods

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