Slashdot Asks: Is It Time To Dump Time Zones In Favor of Coordinated Universal Time? (nytimes.com) 598
Last Sunday, those of us in North America, Europe and some areas of the Middle East rolled back the clock an hour in accordance with Daylight Savings Time (DST). The tradition -- first imposed in Germany 100 years ago -- has been around for so long that many of us fail to question its significance. What is the importance of Daylight Savings Time? Is it still relevant in today's world? Is it time to dump time zones in general? James Gleick makes the case via the New York Times for switching to Coordinated Universal Time, or U.T.C.: When it's noon in Greenwich, Britain, let it be 12 everywhere. No more resetting the clocks. No more wondering what time it is in Peoria or Petropavlovsk. Our biological clocks can stay with the sun, as they have from the dawn of history. Only the numerals will change, and they have always been arbitrary. Some mental adjustment will be necessary at first. Every place will learn a new relationship with the hours. New York (with its longitudinal companions) will be the place where people breakfast at noon, where the sun reaches its zenith around 4 p.m., and where people start dinner close to midnight. ("Midnight" will come to seem a quaint word for the zero hour, where the sun still shines.) In Sydney, the sun will set around 7 a.m., but the Australians can handle it; after all, their winter comes in June. The question has been posed before, but given the timeliness of Daylight Savings Time, we think the question may evoke some new, heartfelt attitudes and beliefs: Is it time to dump time zones in favor of Coordinated Universal Time?
Perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
But first, can we finally kill the pointless, arbitrary, and downright absurd concept of daylight "savings"?
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
But first, can we finally kill the pointless, arbitrary, and downright absurd concept of daylight "savings"?
No, lets start with metric measurements.
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Funny)
"No, lets start with metric measurements."
So do we speed up rotation of the earth, or move it further away from the sun
(to get 100 days to the quarter)
Metric time isn't as easy as length and mass.
Re: (Score:3)
"No, lets start with metric measurements."
So do we speed up rotation of the earth, or move it further away from the sun
(to get 100 days to the quarter)
Metric time isn't as easy as length and mass.
While 365 d/y is fixed, but everything else can be changed.
100 second, 100 minute and 10 hours a day could be easily done. In fact, the french already tried to adopt decimal time : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I'd like this... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like this a lot... [fyngyrz.com]
Re: (Score:3)
"No, lets start with metric measurement"
This has actually been tried, in the heady first days of the metric system: a ten-hour day of 100-minute hours and 100-second minutes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
But first, can we finally kill the pointless, arbitrary, and downright absurd concept of daylight "savings"?
No, lets start with metric measurements.
Even that, in small steps. We could start with the least beloved English units: weight and volume. Ounces, cups, quarts, and bushels can all suck it. If we're honest, probably no one here knows how many cups are in a gallon without looking it up--and we're an abnormally unit-conscious subset of the population. We can kill DST while we make this transition.
Then we can work our way up to the most contentious units. People are not going to give up their inches and miles and degrees F so easily, but they'll eventually come around.
And then, after that, we can go ahead and never adopt the idea from TFA because it's pointless, ridiculously hard to accomplish (and yet only works) on a global scale, and somehow manages to give the abstract notion of time even less meaning.
Instead of doing a bit of mental math or looking up what time it is in London, I have to know what everyone around the globe does at the (now meaningless) hour of 4pm. I touch down in Sydney at 10:45am, great! What do people do here midmorning? Because the moon is almost directly overhead, and the gate agents are vacuuming up a deserted concourse.
I'm trying very hard to think of a problem, big or small, that this nutty ideas actually solves for us. I guess it would save you the step of selecting a city in your time zone when you install a new OS? Sysadmins rejoice!
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Informative)
probably no one here knows how many cups are in a gallon without looking it up
What is the "here" you're referring to? A school for the retarded?
2 Cups = 1 Pint
2 Pints = 1 Quart
4 Quarts = 1 Gallon
Bonus Tip: 1 Pint weighs 1 Pound since 1 (fluid) Ounce of water weighs 1 Ounce.
Your explanation just proves the superiority of the metric system. You don't need to do three calculations to convert between say "mL" to "L" it's obvious. If you want to convert cups to gallons, you either have to do 3 separate calculations OR memorise a whole bunch of conversions. How many cups in a pint. How many cups in a quart. How many cups in a gallon.
As for how many cups in a gallon? I would have to do the maths or look it up. Even with your "conversion chart" above. Looks simple maths, but I haven't bothered to calculate it yet.
As for a pint (of water) weighing a pound. It approximately weighs a pound, it's not exactly a pound, and that's another problem. It's not exact.
Now try calculating the number of cups in 1756.4598 gallons. It's doable with some simple arithmetic. However calculating the number of ml in 1756.4598 litres is easy- you just move the decimal place. Simplicity. Much more efficient.
Re: (Score:3)
DST is evil, but it is a separate issue from time zones (because it could just as easily be implemented in a single timezone).
A single timezone would be more inconvenient to most people. While specifying time in a phone conversation would be easier (not that it is difficult to look up the local time on the internet etc), it would be just as inconvenient or worse than the current system in other cases.
For example:
1. Current system allows me to easier determine whether it's day or night at the remote location
Not better in every way (Score:3)
Here's a reason [fyngyrz.com] they aren't better in every way...
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Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For instance, 1g of water is exactly 1ml.
At about 273.5 K and a pressure of 1 atm, maybe.
1.04375 pounds (Score:3)
That makes perfect sense, doesn't it. Except it's not true. A US pint of water weighs 1.04375 pounds. An English pint 1.25 pounds. On the other hand, 1 liter of water is 1kg. 1cc of water is 1 gram.
It would make sense for 1x of water to weigh 1y, and in metric it does.
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a hypothesis: We don't want to. We have the clock-screwing on purpose, as an annual ritual to help give additional temporal structure to our year, and to jar us out of our adaptability to gradual change.
Sure, I sort of noticed that the light had been changing; last week it wasn't as light out when we got home from work, as it had been in months prior. The back-patio beer time was way down from how long it had lasted in June, but there was still time for one or two. It was a gradual change, so it was no big deal. Getting home from work this Monday, though, was anything but a gradual change. It suddenly meant: back-patio beer time is over. We don't do that anymore; be back in the spring.
Begin winter mode. And now it finally hits me: we need to winterize the swamp cooler and heater, take in the some of the plants that might freeze to death, etc. Common sense might reveal all this anyway, but the ending of DST means I don't need no stinkin' common sense! Reality just got right in my face, instead of just creeping another percent toward me.
Re: (Score:3)
The reason that the US no longer does it at the same time as the UK and EU is that George W Bush gave into lobbying from the Golf industry, who turn out to be the only people that notice the difference: if the summer time is longer, people play more golf in the evenings and they make more money.
The entire thing is weird though. A typical work day is 9-5, so you have three hours in the morning and five in the afternoon. Given that most people go straight to work when they wake up (give or take an hour or
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)
Hardly pointless: http://www.popularmechanics.co... [popularmechanics.com]
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)
I see your article and raise you another.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... [www.cbc.ca]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There are some benefits to DST, but the preponderance of medical and energy policy research I've seen shows that DST has a net negative effect.
We have also been living with DST so long, that I'd wager that most businesses have adjusted their hours to open later than they would have otherwise, so the extra hour of daylight after work has effectively been nullified. I have not been able to find a good source of numbers for business opening/closing times before DST was implemented, but according to Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/science/daylight.asp) "far fewer businesses stayed open into the later evening hours, so most people tended to rise and retire earlier than they do today, negating the practicality of shifting an hour's worth of daylight away from early morning." You can't fool the body with a clock change alone. People's circadian rhythms follow light, not a clock. I suspect that a fair portion of the reason that people stay up "later" these days is that the clocks are wrong.
If Ben Franklin wanted to have more daylight, he should have just set his own alarm clock ahead and left the rest of us the hell alone!
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO, we should get rid of standard time. Why? Nearly everybody is awake at sunset, but not so with sunrise. As a corollary, in most places below the Mason-Dixon line, this gives you at least an hour of daylight once you get home from work to spend doing things outside with family. Yeah, I get this doesn't help when you're up north.
Perhaps not (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps not (Score:5, Funny)
60 is a great number, evenly divisible by many factors. 10 is terrible. I propose we switch from counting in base 10 to a much easier system such as counting in base 60. We will need more digit symbols but that's a small price to pay for easier arithmetic, and we didn't have any good use for Zapf Dingbats anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
Six tentacles so we can count to 60 in TEN increments?! There you go thinking in tens again, you decadigitist!
Sixty tentacles would be ideal, or 30 on each hand. Plus it will prepare us for when Cthulhu takes over in 2020 (after a tight race against Hillary)
Re: (Score:3)
Permanent DST works better in the Northeast (or North in general) than the South. Arizona has permanent standard time, and the evening darkness allows for outdoor exercise after school/work without people dying of heat stroke. Riding your bike is comfortable going both to and from work despite the desert climate.
Meanwhile up North, when DST ends it gets dark far too early. The sunlight that had warmed the car and house during the day is long gone; for the house this means the heat has to work that much harder to get back to a good temperature, than if you were getting home while the sun is still out. The black ice on the roads is harder to spot and more treacherous for both pedestrians and motorists than if people were travelling with a little sunlight.
If the North went to permanent DST and arizona stayed on permanent standard time then they would just be in different time zones then. It works fine in both situations. What you really should be optimizing is usable evening hours in both places. I would much rather drive to work in the dark than I would get home in the evening and not be able to do anything because it's already dark. For people with office jobs, it sucks to burn all the good hours inside only to get outside once the sun goes down.
Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary is so fucking stupid, I'm not reading the article.
This moron wants to change the numbers, but wants to continue to call 12:00 "midnight" and "noon"?
As an Australia, I say "Get fucked, you cunt". The fact that our Winter comes in June is completely irrelevant.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, this. OK so I know it's 8AM on the US west coast where my daughter lives, and in Japan where my MIL lives, and in the Czech Republic where my parents are. That still doesn't tell me a damn thing about what time it is over there - can I call them? Are they home? At work?
This is an idiotic solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
It's like the Tennessee legislature passing a law that pi equals 3.
Re: (Score:3)
Easy. Just force everyone to work 9-5. Then they are all at work at the same time, for optimum collaboration. And all at home at the same time. Easy.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, this. OK so I know it's 8AM on the US west coast where my daughter lives, and in Japan where my MIL lives, and in the Czech Republic where my parents are. That still doesn't tell me a damn thing about what time it is over there - can I call them? Are they home? At work?
This is an idiotic solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
It's like the Tennessee legislature passing a law that pi equals 3.
And... if we all have the same times on our watches you STILL won't know what time they get up, what time they go to bed, etc.
Or were you proposing we all adjust our lifestyles to match your own personal agenda?
Not all jobs are 9 to 5 (Score:2)
Not everybody works from 9 AM local time to 5 PM local time. You'd still have to do as you do today: memorize each contact's work hours.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
1) We align everyone to London time, but day to day operations still occur according to daylight hours - people sleep during dark hours, work during light hours. So I still have to remember that it'd be impolite to call New York before (my) lunchtime, or Sydney after my breakfast. I'd still have to refer to a list of what hours are office-hours in various
2) We align everyone according to London, and day-to-day operations occur according to the clock. West-coast USA should probably get up at midnight if they want to get to work on time. Australians finish work at dawn, so can enjoy a few hours of daylight before heading to bed at noon. My code would depend on one library less, but we've severely reduced quality-of-life for three quarters of the planet.
3) We don't align everyone to London - we change nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
I will add a related story: as a contractor I worked in a place that needed constant coordination from another place with a 5 hour time difference. So the powers that be decided: "simple, we'll put them on the same time as us". Except that now we had to wake up and start work in complete darkness right at the time when it was the coldest time of day. And when I say 'cold' I mean it, it was -50C after breakfast when you where supposed to be working outside. And it would be a balmy
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, this. OK so I know it's 8AM on the US west coast where my daughter lives, and in Japan where my MIL lives, and in the Czech Republic where my parents are. That still doesn't tell me a damn thing about what time it is over there - can I call them? Are they home? At work?
This is an idiotic solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
It really helps all the people living at the exact North Pole.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, this. OK so I know it's 8AM on the US west coast where my daughter lives, and in Japan where my MIL lives, and in the Czech Republic where my parents are. That still doesn't tell me a damn thing about what time it is over there - can I call them? Are they home? At work?
This is an idiotic solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Not really. We simply add or subtract a fixed mount of time to determine if it's OK, we could even call them Time Zones...
Re:Nope (Score:4, Interesting)
shifting the clock by 1 hour doesn't do a damn thing other than cause headaches
And heart attacks, as a recent study shows. They measured a statistically significant spike on the few days after the clock is turned forward.
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Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
No, it makes perfect sense. When you travel instead of having to adjust your watch (or have your cell phone automatically adjust for you) you just have to shift your entire time-related worldview! Simple!
These articles always seem like they're written by one of those people who will be born, live and die all within a 100 km square area.
Says Greenwich Citizen (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Easy to root for, as a citizen of Greenwich, England, where no changes will be made.
Not quite, we'd have to ditch British Summer Time. We are only on UTC in the winter months
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
There really isn't a good place anywhere else https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If you are interested in why the meridian is in London you should do some reading, but everything else would have put the date line in a stupid place, Greenland and Iceland are part of Europe and islands are usually related to the continents they are near (the Azores and Canarys). Those few people who do live close to the date line choose the side which makes most sense to them (UTC+14 anyone) based on who they deal with most oft
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't agree. You'd lose any idea of what a certain time of day actually means to others. It's 2 am where you are? Why are you still up? Aren't you tired? No, now I need to know where you live and figure out what time of day... oops, can't do that anymore... figure out where the sun is positioned in your part of the world. Wtf? Wasn't that what sundials and later clocks were for in the first place? Like you say, animals live by the sun, and so do we. I don't care what the *actual* time is where you live, I only care about what part of the day it is so I can adjust my communication with you accordingly.
The only thing I want is that when people *publish* times, like for international events, they (also) use UTC. It just happens too often that people will say : the live stream will start at 7PM PST and then I have to go look up what the heck that is in my local time zone. With UTC that would be solved, you'd only need to remember your offset to UTC and that's it. (Btw, they could even just mention *their* offset to UTC, eg: 7PM PST (UTC-8), because really Americans' we here in Europe have no idea what all those abbreviations mean ;) )
Re:No. (Score:5)
Well what gets me is e-mails that go out that say "Conference call at 4pm EDT" and well its November 8th today. So I have to wonder does this person really mean 4pm EST? or do they mean 5pm EST? I don't know if they are mistaken about their time zone. If everyone would just agree to provide both UTC and local time when they are communicating with folks in multiple timezones it would be possible for people to "correct" errors.
Re: (Score:3)
Because when clocks go back an hour the same "hour" happens twice.
If you're arranging things chronologically and it's on the day the clocks go back an hour, your events will be out of order, and also you won't really know what things happened in which hour.
Or, if you have multiple offices in multiple time zones and try to merge data you could have problems if people aren't watching out for time zones. UTC for coding should be standard practice. Display it in local time but store it in UTC.
Re:No. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not entirely. I've been working in the military weather business for 25 years, and while I mostly think in terms of UTC I still have problems with mapping UTC to local "events" like noon and midnight (although these days it's *mostly* a consequence of DST messing up the offsets). If I still have trouble with it, people who've used local time (with a 12hr clock) their entire lives are going to have a hellish time adapting.
And midnight is particularly problematic... having the hour increment throughout the day and only rollover when most people are asleep is actually conceptually simple and convenient.
Re: (Score:3)
Think about the number of people who were still writing "2015" back in March. Now think about how they would cope if mid-afternoon we went from the 8th of November to the 9th of November.
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Re: (Score:2)
There is no reason at all we can't still have "time zones" and use UTC. Things like computers could still have a "local offset for when sun is directly overhead" to use for adjusting things like alarms and things that should run end of business day etc.
All he needs on his phone is a little tick box on the alarm settings tab with something to the effect of "adjust for regional daylight hours"
Re: (Score:2)
That's just what you're used to. After a few months on being on GMT, it'll be second nature to say set your alarm for 12PM to get up on the East coast - what was 7AM.
This time zone crap is just an archaic hold over from the days when railroads ruled. And we live in a 24/7 world these days where I'm dealing with folks all around the world.
I can see this whole thing devolving into a metric time argument.
I deal with civilian, military and UT all the time. Conversion is simple. 5:00 p.m. local is 1700 hours is 2200 UTC. Its actually a help to determine which world I'm operating in, and is instantaneous.
This is a tempest in a teapot, and going all UT wouldn't affect me a bit, but would be terribly disruptive to a lot of people. Its just another effect of our living on an oblate spheroid, and a distortion feature like when we make flat maps
Re: (Score:2)
Which solves what exactly? (Score:4, Insightful)
No more wondering what time it is in Peoria or Petropavlovsk
Except, you'll no longer know what that time means, wow its 11am does that mean people will be at work in Petropavlovosk?
NO NO (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, kill Daylight Savings.
Ah, the perennial DST debate. While getting rid of it appeals to some nerds, it also has practical arguments in favor of it just like time zones.
Yes, the energy savings it originally was created for may no longer materialize. But there are lots of social benefits. What percentage of the population would actually get up at 4:30 or 5am in summer to make use of the early morning sunlight before work? Some, but not a lot. Most people really want that extra time in the summer to spend outdoors in evenings
Re: (Score:2)
Since that's not going to happen, just pick a time standard and quit changing it twice a year. Since I live on the eastern edge of a time zone, standard or daylight saving would be about a half hour off local time either way. However, if I were on the western edge of a timezone, I would not want year-round daylight saving time
Hell, no! (Score:2)
Some people can't change (Score:2)
People in some countries are really entrenched in their ways, despite the clear disadvantages.
It's 2016 and the US still hasn't adopted the metric system. Hell, they even have their presidential elections on a Tuesday, no holiday or anything.
Re:Some people can't change (Score:4, Interesting)
It's my understanding that elections on a Tuesday were chosen because at the time, they were the weekday on which employees were least likely to receive a weekly paycheck, reducing the risk of employers withholding an entire week's pay as a penalty for voting. Using a weekday instead of a weekend day also avoided preferring the Sabbath regulations of one religion over those of another. And nowadays, if elections were on a Sunday, people would have no way to get to the polls in cities that lack the funding to run their public transportation on Sundays.
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It's 2016 and the US still hasn't adopted the metric system.
Let's just go all the way to Metric Time then.
80 past 2:00 on April 47
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People in some countries are really entrenched in their ways, despite the clear disadvantages. It's 2016 and the US still hasn't adopted the metric system.
Actually, we use both. And the reason why is all of that WW2 metalworking infrastructure has to wear out. But modern equipment can be either metric or 'murrican. My shop equipment is metric, my tools are both. I even had a Whitworth set of tools some years ago.
Hell, they even have their presidential elections on a Tuesday, no holiday or anything.
Do you get pissed off at the direction the toilet paper comes off the roll if it isn't put in the holder "correctly"? Chillax bro', the umbrage ain't worth it.
Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
It only requires cooperation of the entire world and asks people to change. hahaahahahahaahah
oh what a great idea! (Score:2)
If only people didn't, you know, travel...
Some mental adjustment (Score:5, Insightful)
Some mental adjustment will be necessary at first.
That's the understatement of the year. I've rarely read a more nerd-centric, normal-human-ignorant proposal. I suppose some things have to be written to scare the spiders away from keyboards. But giving them attention and consideration is a step beyond reasonable.
If you haven't managed to convince people in the USA to switch to metric, which is in use in the rest of the world, easier and more convenient, good luck making them wake up at two p.m. Oops, sorry, there won't be any a.m. or p.m, of course.
Re:Some mental adjustment (Score:4, Informative)
The USA is metric in almost everything that matters: engineering, science, and medicine. The only place you see non-metric units extensively used is in weights and distances expressed in terms for ordinary citizens. But specialized fields made the transition long ago.
Of course, that doesn't change the fact that forcing everyone to switch to UTC would be the most hare-brained idea in history of timekeeping.
I already switched to UTC a couple of years ago (Score:2)
I don’t have any trouble with going to bed around 04:00 – 05:00 and waking up around 12:00 – 13:00 hours (depending on the season.) Sometimes it’s a chore to convert between UTC and the local time everyone else still uses, but I work with computers most of the time, and it’s been very convenient not to have to do any mental conversions for system clocks.
Re: (Score:3)
Some mental adjustment will be necessary at first.
That's the understatement of the year. I've rarely read a more nerd-centric, normal-human-ignorant proposal.
As a presumed nerd, I have no problem mentally using any or all of the mishmash of times, local civilian, local military, or Universal time. At the same time. DST or no DST as well.
But you are correct in that this "issue" is one that some rigid people that want to apply some rationale (don't call it logic folks) to time.
Of course if they were to have their way of UTC only, the next argument on their plate is the metric clock, maybe a ten hour day built of 100 minutes for each hour.
But giving them at
Re: (Score:3)
The day starts at sunrise (Score:4, Interesting)
When? (Score:5, Informative)
Last Sunday, those of us in North America, Europe and some areas of the Middle East rolled back the clock
No they didn't. The USA now changes its clocks at a different time from most of us. The end of "Summer Time", to give it the English Language title, is in the morning of the last Sunday in October. This year, that is the 30th. The USA changed a week later because GW Bush thought it would be funny to make the USA non-standard in yet another way.
The planet? Convince a single country first. (Score:2)
So, you want to change the world, eh?
As a test, how about you first convince a single country to get in line with that whole Metric and Celsius thing to get an idea of just how fucking stubborn humans can be.
Then you can try and teach the rest of the planet where Greenwich is, and why their time is the "right" one.
Good luck.
Entirely too logical (Score:2)
Much like the US finally switching over to metric - it makes too much sense and thus will never happen. Only in this case the insanity is global.
Earth-centric nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
We should be using Stardates. The concept of a 24 hour "day" is quaint and antiquated.
Say it with me... (Score:2)
It's turned out to be pretty useful for globally coordinating activities carried out by lumps of silicon. It's almost completely useless for the meatbags that use them.
Re: (Score:2)
At the time the only other world power was France, and Nelson kicked their asses, twice.
Otherwise, it'd be a line through some landmark in Paris.
Use statistical methods: Time Zones win (Score:5, Insightful)
UTC has one big win: co-ordination of an event between different time-zones.
*Every* other use of time is either neutral or heavily in favour of Time Zones. Since for the vast majority of humans, co-ordination of non-local events is a trivial amount of their references to time, Time-zones win hugely.
This aside from the obvious problems during travel. Set your watch once (if your phone doesn't do it for you) when you arrive at a new time zone? Or learn the scores of "usual times" for meals, business hours, etc. for the new location.
Whatever was wrong with local solar time? (Score:4, Interesting)
Changing everyone to use UTC all the time in order to obviate the problems with Daylight Saving Time is offering a cure rather worse than the disease. Nothing is all that wrong with the system of timezones, defined so 12 Noon is more or less in the middle of the day for everyone. By itself and for certain technical purposes UTC is a good choice, in the same way that base-16 number encoding is, but for everyday civil use it doesn't do the job well. Local time and base-10 works much better there.
If the Daylight Saving is the problem then the solution is to get rid of that then? Stay on local solar time as the existing timezone stipulates, and do not turn the clocks one hour back and forth every few months. The easiest solution is the negative one, in that it means not doing the stupid thing anymore.
No sense besides technological (Score:2)
The only reason I see for this would be from a procedural point of view (read: programming). No schedule-accustomed mind would ever feel right rationalizing the same hours for every different places, where they now do the same things at somewhat specific hours. A guy would think bedtime hours in Paris are like 10pm, then travel to the US and have to calculate a new bedtime hour - and every single other schedule that matters. This is exponentially irregular, and our brain is not fond of a high number of irre
Damned Timewasters (Score:2)
Please kill daylight working hours instead (Score:5, Insightful)
Sunrise: 08:23
Sunset: 15:43
I arrive at dawn and leave at dusk, work all day inside in an office. Fortunately it has a window, but when I get off work it's dark. I'd rather work 00-08, leisure time 08-16, sleep 16-24 but it's hard when everybody else is on a different schedule. Any "savings" is bullshit because I spend just as many hours in the dark in the evening, it's just a question of where I spend them. I suppose it's different in construction or agriculture but they're the exception not the norm anymore.
I think we should do this (Score:5, Funny)
ISO 8601 (Score:2)
The vast majority of humanity... (Score:2)
I personally interact with 4 timezones around the world daily.
it's easier for me to think "it's 8am in Sydney, I can now call him", than "it's some time in the morning in Sydney. now, when do they have midnight? now plus 8.."
Another DST time change (Score:3)
Next up.... (Score:2)
No. Timezones make perfect sense. (Score:3)
No. Time is for humans. And timezones make perfect sense.
One look at my smartphone and I know wether my sweetheart in Moscow is having lunch or gearing up to leave work for home.
Or perhaps ready for some longer chat or Skype session.
Timezones are for humans. Everybody who needs something different should use UTC or Beats or whatever. And it's very easy for them to do so.
Summertime, OTOH, that's a thing we should get rid of IMHO.
The value is negligible vis-a-vis the hassle it causes.
Trantor (Score:2)
That's all
No (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Obligatory Woody Allen quote (Score:2)
Not that different from imposing Coordinated Universal Time to the whole world.
Funniest thing I've seen all week (Score:2)
solution for a problem that doesn't exist (Score:3)
Yes, society is becoming more global, and we are having more meetings with people in different time zones. But we also have computers that can very easily figure out the local times. I know that it would be reasonable to schedule a meeting between 9am and 5pm local time. If we all use a universal time, it'll be much harder to figure out who's in the office and who isn't. Likewise, every time I travel, I'll have to figure out what the appropriate time is to wake up, start work, eat lunch, etc.
The number of conveniences created by a universal time would be offset by the much larger number of inconveniences created.
Larger time zone and no DST (Score:3)
We should have larger (maybe 2 hours wide) timezone, so there would be only 12 of them instead of 24. Also, let's first kill the half and ¾ time zones.
Let's get rid of DST. We could just keep summer time all year.
The answer to the question (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Eliminating time zones would be even more disruptive, for even less reason, than the accursed Daylight Saving Time. What we should do is eliminate DST world-wide. DST time changes cause automotive accidents, decreased productivity, and biological clock disruptions. Time zone differences are a minor inconvenience - and with modern timekeeping devices such as phones and computers, knowing the correct current time in some other part of the world is trivial. So again, do away with DST and keep time zones.
Kill DST for good! (Score:3)
Timezones are pretty much inevitable. The planet rotates.
Re: (Score:2)
It's hard to take the article seriously when they don't even know about the two weeks difference between Europe and America ...
Re: (Score:2)
the more problematic "Daylight Saving Time"????
Use the, English Language, "Summer Time" then.
Re: (Score:2)
Is it Summer Time in springtime?
Re: (Score:2)
It's Springtime for Hitler and Germany.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It's broke.
Re: (Score:2)