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Time to Dump Time Zones

nytimes.com

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Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#411

Post by galfarragem »

filmor wrote: post #387
Asooka wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having Sunday as the first day would mess up our week, because we call Tuesday, Thursday and Friday second, fourth and fifth respectively. If you really want 1st each month to be first day of week, either America will have to adopt Monday as first, or vary the day of week by region.

Wednesday is called "Mittwoch" in German, which is a shortened form of "middle of the week". Only works if Sunday is the first day of the week, though the common convention is also having the week start on Monday. Confused me quite a bit as a child :)

The same in Portuguese: Monday = Segunda (Second); Tuesday = Terça (Third) and successively till Friday = Sexta (Sixth).

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#412

Post by [deleted] »

filmor wrote: post #387
Asooka wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having Sunday as the first day would mess up our week, because we call Tuesday, Thursday and Friday second, fourth and fifth respectively. If you really want 1st each month to be first day of week, either America will have to adopt Monday as first, or vary the day of week by region.

Wednesday is called "Mittwoch" in German, which is a shortened form of "middle of the week". Only works if Sunday is the first day of the week, though the common convention is also having the week start on Monday. Confused me quite a bit as a child :)

[deleted]

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#413

Post by uryga »

barnacs wrote: post #218
uryga wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you care about his availability, I'd say his local time is a pretty good predictor :) I used to like the idea of asynchronous messaging and thought it was the future of telephony/voip. But honestly, async is pretty annoying, because you have to wait ;). I guess what I'm trying to say is, synchronous things are easier for us. It's pretty gard for me to keep track of all the async text conversations I've got going o…

If you have to _guess_ someone's availability, then their local time with some knowledge about their lifestyle is probably the best indicator. But technology allows us to communicate at almost light speed, so we don't have to guess anymore. I can just try calling and if it doesn't work out then we can at least use async messages to schedule a syncronous session. Eventually, if it's a regular thing, you will learn whe…

Fair. I didn't mean to diss async comms in general - they're still useful. Just took the opportunity to get a few of my thoughts out.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#415

Post by programmer_dude »

eutropia wrote: post #259
bluejekyll wrote: post #160

Earlier 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…

http://www.mithrandir.com/Tranquility/tranquility.html I think you're proposing this, 13 months named for scientists, one day outside the year.

The 0th month should be dedicated to Aryabhata: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryabhata#Place_value_system_a...

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#416

Post by Sacho »

baddox wrote: post #165
ajmurmann wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to go running before work. That was really annoying this spring because it finally was bright early enough to do that and then DST came and ruined it and made me wait another few weeks.

It's clear that no system of time is ideal for everyone.

We could get rid of DST and allow companies to decide for themselves whether to shift their working hours. Further changes to working hours can then occur naturally as cultural sensibilities shift, without requiring a massive overhaul of timekeeping tools.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#417

Post by lorenzhs »

iagooar wrote: post #346
roel_v wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Verbally, speaking with USians, 15.00 is always pronounced "3pm"." It's like that everywhere in Europe. Nobody says 'see you at fifteen'. 24 hour clock is merely for writing things down. I mean it would already be an improvement if the US would catch up with that, just saying that a 24 hour clock isn't said out loud as such. (not disagreeing or anything with you I guess, just adding some information).

> It's like that everywhere in Europe. Nobody says 'see you at fifteen'. And, as always, trying to generalize over a whole continent doesn't work out. It's perfectly fine in German or Polish to say "see you at fifteen".

It's uncommon in personal settings, though, at least in German. If you call your doctor to make an appointment, they might ask you if "fifteen thirty" suits you, but when fixing a time for meeting your friends at a café you'd say "halb vier" (half four, which is 15:30 in Germany, but 16:30 in the UK. Yay confusion!)

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#418

Post by [deleted] »

m_eiman wrote: post #357
Houshalter wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

28 is perfect because it's divisible by 7. So every day lands on the same day of every month and every year. Every 1rst is a Sunday. But really, while we are on the topic of reform, is there any particular reason the week should be 7 days? Or that there should be a week at all? Time keeping is also weird. Base 24 and 60 is so arbitrary. Make it base ten, and you can express date and time easily. Right now is 6.976. T…

Every 1rst is a Sunday. Except the week starts with Monday. At least in the civilized world…

[deleted]

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#419

Post by tancybertitan »

Stop upvoting stupid posts. Time zones is a perfectly sound way of calculating the current time on anywhere on the planet. We should just try to improve it by removing skewed concepts like daylight saving and non uniform time zones. Saying that we need to get rid of the concept of time zones is saying we need to get rid of the metric system.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#420

Post by billsmithaustin »

darawk wrote: post #17

Hmm...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…

The article makes a good case for why you might not have a good idea for what it means for my friend on the other side of the country to wake up an 9. In the United States, for example, there are states that opt out of Daylight Savings Time. A Google search could tell me what they are but I haven't memorized them. And even at that, if my friend was making a point about how long the sun had been up (or down), I would to mentally translate after checking a sunrise/sunset calculator.

When I need to synchronize with someone else, time zones get in the way. When I need to describe an experience relative to where I am, I might want to refer a time calibrated to exact my coordinates on the Earth. That was hard in the 1800's but would be easy today now that everyone carries a GPS receiver in their pocket. The same for reporting time relative to sunrise.

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