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Update your timezone defs: Russia abolishes winter time (DST)

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Re: Update your timezone defs: Russia abolishes winter time (DST)

#31

Post by aaronblohowiak »

evgen wrote: post #25
gojomo wrote: post #24

Ho-hum. Want to be really forward-thinking? Follow the example of China, which discarded 5 time zones for a single national time in 1949. (We'd then adjust the office/retail hours to mimic local daylight, rather adjusting the numbers on the clock.)

One timezone covering enough longitudinal variation to want five timezones is a dumb idea. Doing the same thing in a country with enough east-west span to cover ten timezones would be an incredibly dumb idea.

What, why? Does waking up at 6 have any different intrinsic value than waking up a 3.5 or 11 ? Ever since time zones, there hasn't been an intrinsic meaning to time (who uses sun dials?) We should all just be on the same time, the whole world around.

Re: Update your timezone defs: Russia abolishes winter time (DST)

#32

Post by arohner »

evgen wrote: post #25
gojomo wrote: post #24

Ho-hum. Want to be really forward-thinking? Follow the example of China, which discarded 5 time zones for a single national time in 1949. (We'd then adjust the office/retail hours to mimic local daylight, rather adjusting the numbers on the clock.)

One timezone covering enough longitudinal variation to want five timezones is a dumb idea. Doing the same thing in a country with enough east-west span to cover ten timezones would be an incredibly dumb idea.

Why are timezones a good idea? 12:00 is not solar noon for essentially everyone.

Re: Update your timezone defs: Russia abolishes winter time (DST)

#33

Post by gojomo »

evgen wrote: post #25
gojomo wrote: post #24

Ho-hum. Want to be really forward-thinking? Follow the example of China, which discarded 5 time zones for a single national time in 1949. (We'd then adjust the office/retail hours to mimic local daylight, rather adjusting the numbers on the clock.)

One timezone covering enough longitudinal variation to want five timezones is a dumb idea. Doing the same thing in a country with enough east-west span to cover ten timezones would be an incredibly dumb idea.

You're assuming your conclusion ("want five timezones"), and calling the alternative 'dumb' and 'incredibly dumb' isn't much of a reasoned justification.

Why is adjusting the clock numbers better than adjusting local practices?

Why does a single time work well for China... and the US armed forces globally?

Shouldn't we be optimizing for long-distance collaboration, now that we have the telecom technology to do so?

Re: Update your timezone defs: Russia abolishes winter time (DST)

#34

Post by pavel_lishin »

furyg3 wrote: post #28

Can we all just have a 24 hour clock based on GMT, no other timezones, and no daylight savings time? It seems a whole lot easier to change our time format just once and get used to it... instead of half of us changing the clocks twice a year, the other not, drawing all these weird lines all over (grumble India grumble), and keeping track of it all.

What do you mean by "we"? First, you'd have to get all of the states to sign off on this, including the weird ones that half-follow and half-don't-follow the conventions. I'm not even sure if this is something the Federal government could just demand.

Oh, and then you also have to convince every other government to implement, too.

Re: Update your timezone defs: Russia abolishes winter time (DST)

#36

Post by pavel_lishin »

andresmh wrote: post #7
orangecat wrote: post #2

Good for them. It makes much more sense to shift government/business hours if needed than constantly mucking with the time and screwing up millions of software installations.

can't the OS's handle the change automatically?

If by "automatically", you mean "after thousands of man-hours have been taken to implement and debug the process" - and then only for so long as the system remains precisely the same.

Like it just didn't, in Russia.

Re: Update your timezone defs: Russia abolishes winter time (DST)

#37

Post by JoeAltmaier »

furyg3 wrote: post #28

Can we all just have a 24 hour clock based on GMT, no other timezones, and no daylight savings time? It seems a whole lot easier to change our time format just once and get used to it... instead of half of us changing the clocks twice a year, the other not, drawing all these weird lines all over (grumble India grumble), and keeping track of it all.

No! Even better! "Metric time" - a minute has 100 seconds, an hour 100 minutes, a day is 10 hours (100,000 seconds). Makes perfect sense on a space station so we'll have to face it sooner or later.

Re: Update your timezone defs: Russia abolishes winter time (DST)

#38

Post by rdl »

evgen wrote: post #25
gojomo wrote: post #24

Ho-hum. Want to be really forward-thinking? Follow the example of China, which discarded 5 time zones for a single national time in 1949. (We'd then adjust the office/retail hours to mimic local daylight, rather adjusting the numbers on the clock.)

One timezone covering enough longitudinal variation to want five timezones is a dumb idea. Doing the same thing in a country with enough east-west span to cover ten timezones would be an incredibly dumb idea.

USSR did exactly that, historically (there was one time; Moscow time).

Re: Update your timezone defs: Russia abolishes winter time (DST)

#39

Post by pavel_lishin »

wtn wrote: post #5
gbhn wrote: post #4

That's a great precedent! I hope the US abandons winter time, too.

More likely this will deter Congress from taking action, out of spite.

You simply have to present it to the Right in the way they can hear it.

"Are you gonna let a bunch of commies beat you in the modernization of time? We didn't land the first man on the moon just so we can be beaten out by savages with beet-powered potatoes!"

Re: Update your timezone defs: Russia abolishes winter time (DST)

#40

Post by arohner »

andresmh wrote: post #7
orangecat wrote: post #2

Good for them. It makes much more sense to shift government/business hours if needed than constantly mucking with the time and screwing up millions of software installations.

can't the OS's handle the change automatically?

Not really. On *nixes, there's a library called zoneinfo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database) that has the list of rules about "if you're in living in California, then DST starts on March 23" or whatever. When a country changes the law about when DST is, that data needs to be updated.

For example, last year Chile gave a month's notice that daylight savings time was changing. (http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/chile-extends-dst-2010....)

That can cause headaches, if you have a mission critical system that needs to be updated, otherwise it may do something important an hour early, or an hour late. For example, Postgres has to be rebooted when the timezone information is changed.

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