Time zones I'm okay with. But DST needs to GTFO.
Time to Dump Time Zones
241–250 of 555 posts
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience it's better to store local time (where the event physically happens) with a named timezone. That way when daylight saving laws change with 3 weeks notice you can adjust without shifting events (cough Outlook). UTC can be calculated easily if needed.
This is a really good point and I don't disagree with it. I'd tend to prefer to store in UTC and store the associated timezone separately.
> I'd tend to prefer to store in UTC and store the associated timezone separately.
This is exactly the wrong approach for calendaring software, because it results in appointments moving in time when governments change the daylight saving time rules.
Storing in a local time (plus time zone) is exactly right for calendaring. And the correct-sounding, but wrong, mantra of "always store in UTC" is why calendaring apps handled the change so poorly.
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because convention dictates that they have to be in the office between 9-5, or because those are the only times that they can actually do the work they are paid to do? I appreciate that factory assembly line workers, shopkeepers and many others have to have set hours, but even so, does that have to conform to the 9-5 standard? An example using Banks, an ancient entity that exemplified the 9-5 ethos: Here in Australia…
> Why on earth don't they do a 'double shift', whereby one smaller team comes in at, say 6am to start the preparation and open the doors at, say 7am and work until 1pm. Another team can come in at 11am and work through to 7pm, doing the cashing up and closing the doors at 6pm. The reason they don't do this is that that would require workers to stay at work later, which would take away from time spent with kids, eatin…
If you check my shift suggestions though - the 'evening team' start at 11am in my example.
I've run my own businesses for over 30 years now, and in almost all cases, we give our employees a choice over their preferred working hours. Guess what? Some of them are 'early birds' and love coming in really early when they feel productive and like the fact that they can leave early and still catch up with friends for coffee or a late lunch at 2 or 3pm.
Some preferred spending their early mornings getting kids ready for school or going to extended yoga classes, running errands etc. and coming in closer to lunch time and working later, leaving the office after 6 or 7pm to avoid the rush hour traffic.
The solution could work to suit the employees as well as the customers. Time to be creative about this, rather than refusing to budge from an outdated mandate.
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#244Hmm...this is an interesting idea. However, the core of the argument seems to be this: > “The economy — that’s all of us — would receive a permanent ‘harmonization dividend’ ”— the efficiency benefits that come from a unified time zone. But this editorial is pretty light on actually supporting that. The basic argument seems to be that it reduces 'translation costs'. But..does it? What about the benefits of being able…
If you want to schedule a conference call at 3, you still have to figure out whether or not that's a sensible time today. The existence of time zones doesn't solve that problem for you.
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
This hits the nail on the head. Abandoning time zones would only make sense if there were no more need for time translation. But you'd still need to translate for the sake of biological clocks, and without time zones it would become more challenging to communicate that translation. I would be in favor of doing away with DST and also eschewing AM/PM in favor of a 24-hour clock. I'm surprised this article didn't mentio…
Yeah agree completely. And keeping zones is important to understand workdays. I wouldn't mind dropping named time zones completely in favor of UTC+Offset, I always end up looking that up, annoyingly. Or just name the zones based on the offset. So NY would be -5. We could for humans write time with the ecoding, similar to ISO-8601, but it would just be 15:30-5 for 3:30pm EST. While we're at it. Can we make all the mon…
Smarch.
From the Simpsons
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#246Maybe I'm the contrarian. I don't mind timezones at all. The thing that throws us for a loop is changing the timezone either temporarily due to some custom (Daylight Savings, Ramadan, elections, etc.) or permanently with little notice (populist tendencies in governments). I maintain timezone infrastructure and what I'd rather see is an international treaty that all changes to country timezones require some standard p…
No, you aren't contrarian. Remove timezones, and it still doesn't help me sort out if it's morning in Italy yet, or if business hours have started. In fact, it's more difficult, since I'd then have to figure out what Italian business hours are.
You still have to figure out what Italian business hours are in the current system. Do they show up to work at 9? 8? 10? I don't know, do you?
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah agree completely. And keeping zones is important to understand workdays. I wouldn't mind dropping named time zones completely in favor of UTC+Offset, I always end up looking that up, annoyingly. Or just name the zones based on the offset. So NY would be -5. We could for humans write time with the ecoding, similar to ISO-8601, but it would just be 15:30-5 for 3:30pm EST. While we're at it. Can we make all the mon…
Your math doesn't work out there though. If we had 30 day months, we would end up with 360 days spread among 12 months, and an extra 5 days leftover. 28 day months make far more sense, would align nicely with your proposed single New Year's day, and have the added bonus of aligning with our 7-day week system quite nicely. This ends up with 13 months altogether, and hey, it turns out that 28 days is closer to a lunar…
That first example (12 30 day months with 5 or 6 days outside months) was actually used in practice in post-revolutionary France (and again during the Paris Commune). I'm not sure keeping 7-day weeks is really a plus -- the French Revolutionary calendar used 10-day "decades" which align with the metric system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get the impression Americans don't use 24-hour clock much. In Europe it's pretty much standard if you want to communicate time reliably. Or am I mistaken about the American love of am/pm?
Unlike most of the imperial system, farenheit, etc, Am/pm seems to actually make some sense with analog clocks/watches. In places where you primarily use 24 hour time I guess you're always just translating from the clock in your head?
Nope, cause everyone around means 15, when they say 15.
And everyone "gets" that all numbers after 12 are late-day.
15 only is odd if someone else is expecting to hear 3p
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#249Has anyone else noticed that dialing a phone number to call or text someone is like using their IP address to send them an e-mail?
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#250China has one time zone. People outside of Beijing and the eastern Chinese seaboard don't experience sunrise until as late as 10 AM in some places. I don't find that terribly sensible, frankly. It might make scheduling communication easier, but I agree with a lot of the other comments pointing out that 9 AM actually means something to people as far as time of day goes.