Given how difficult it's been to get the US and the UK to adopt something as simple as a sane measurement for distance, it's weird that so many people think that it's even vaguely possible to get them to change measurements for something as complex as timekeeping...
Time to Dump Time Zones
431–440 of 555 posts
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://www.mithrandir.com/Tranquility/tranquility.html I think you're proposing this, 13 months named for scientists, one day outside the year.
Yes. Perfect. I've never seen that before. Thanks for sharing. It will never sell in the US though, the mere inclusion of Darwin will make it a political nightmare as people would be convinced we're atheists trying to kill their god.
Introduce it as a means to purge the name of non-Christian gods from their current months and days, and suggest any opponents can't be monotheists after all given that they give other deities such a prominent position in their lives.
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#433Hmm...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…
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…
Agreed. DST is just plain silliness for no gain. In a century everyone will have a hearty laugh at the superstitious timekeeping ritual of their ancestors.
And the 24 hours clock is just a matter of notation. In large parts of the world it's the default one for specifying time.
I've worked in several companies with global offices and time translation was never an issue. Of course you'd need to accept the fact that people in other parts of the world would be in the office at different times of the day. But there is no "tech fix" for that.
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think his error is in assuming that the zenith should correspond to the midway point of your workday. Which is entirely not true: Our society is organized around getting to work first thing in the morning, and having some sunlight left after work hours for social activities.
I see even bigger error in his argument based on when "the Sun comes up" since it's dependent on the latitude even in the same time zone. He should ask somebody living close to the North pole. http://geography.about.com/od/physicalgeography/a/longestday... "Reykjavik, Iceland Earliest Sunrise: 2:55 a.m. from June 18th through June 21st." (Reykjavik is 64° N) "London, United Kingdom Earliest Sunrise: 4:43 a.m. from Ju…
Yeah, I grew up in Oslo, Norway, and found his idea that the sun rising around 4am in summer was something unusual very strange. To me, sunrise occurring well before I wanted to wake up in summer was the norm.
But then we also have far longer periods of sunlight during the summer.
What's annoying me even now in London is that sunset still comes too early during the summer (during the winter, on the other hand, I definitively appreciate the longer days here vs. Norway)
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Perfect. I've never seen that before. Thanks for sharing. It will never sell in the US though, the mere inclusion of Darwin will make it a political nightmare as people would be convinced we're atheists trying to kill their god.
Or, we use Latin names of numbers. So, Unusber, Duober, Tresber, Quattorber, Quinber, Sexber [rename as necessary for America], September, October, November, December, Undecimber, Duodecimber, Tredecimber.
These would be better names from a purely phonological point of view: Unusper, Tresper, Quattober, Sexper. That way you don't have awkward clusters of both voiced and unvoiced consonants. The -ber affix having originally come from mensris (-mens-ris > *-membris > -ber), devoicing the initial 'b' to 'p' in those circumstances is reasonable enough. 'Quattober' is a simplification that makes it fit the pattern better.
Alternatively, you would rely on the ordinals, dropping the -us ending and replacing it with -ilis as in Sextilis and Quintilis.
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your impression is pretty much spot on. We have "military-time" and "24-hour time" available to us in all of our application configurations, but no-one seems to use it. I do because it helps me do time-zone translating transforms to/from UTC in my head more easily, but also because I keep failing to see that little "PM dot" or set the "PM Flag" whenever dealing with times in various applications or alarms. Verbally,…
"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'.
Europe is not one country. In Sweden it's perfectly normal to say that.
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#437Hmm...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…
Perhaps Hackers News is the wrong audience to suffer this problem, but coordinating meetings between companies (i.e., sales calls) is a mess. When a call winds down and you've got two people on the phone coordinating their calendars, there's this hilarious, awkward dance that happens. "Great, sounds like we have a plan. When should we touch base again?" "Let's aim for Monday. How's your afternoon?" "Monday is no good…
I've resolved that by pointing to my Calendly page and have people pick the time themselves. Of course that doesn't work well if there are multiple parties, but even then it helps to point them at it to find out when I'm available (giving shared access to the actual underlying calendary would work too, of course, but my Calendly page shows specifically when I have decided I'm free for meetings)
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not outdated. Of course, if the only thing you do is programming and you never intend to leave the house, then it may be outdated. Otherwise, most establishments still have working hours - that may not be exactly 9-5 but pretty close to that framework - and people still have breakfasts, lunches and dinners, and there are a lot of business and social conventions based on those assumptions. Some jobs have the luxu…
I propose that it should be outdated though. Does a lawyer have to be in the office at 8am to finish drafting that closing statement for his hearing next week? Does an accountant have to finish his client's tax assessment before 5pm? I know lots of lawyers and accountants who do that stuff at all hours - exactly the same hours as I do my programming work. 20 years ago, I used to do the whole 'business lunch' thing wi…
You assume that people would be free to chose their schedule, based on their specific constraints.
However that's not how that will work out for the majority. You abolish 9-5 expectation, all fine until you get a boss that is a night owl and he wants you available from 6PM to 3AM AM. Enjoy both not having family time anymore and not being compensated to work what would be a night shift in current society.
You take the example of the lawyer here above. Right now he need to be in the office because his assistants/PA will be in the office at that time and there is no reasonable expectation he can force them to be available at other times.
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#439Earlier 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.
Depends on where you're storing it. If you're using a sensible RDMS like Postgres, there's a 'Timestamp with Time Zone' data type which will internally store the time as UTC but keep track of the offset for you.
Re: Time to Dump Time Zones
#440Dumping time zones might be painful, but in the long run it'd probably be the right thing to do. First, it'd make learning about time as a programmer much easier because you'd inherently know that it's a bit complicated and why epoch time and UTC is a thing instead of storing values like "Sunday 4PM". But more future facing...what are we going to do when we have colonies on the moon and Mars? Things are going to spir…
>First, it'd make learning about time as a programmer much easier
Ok let's change how everybody thinks about time so that programmers have an easier time!
>But more future facing...what are we going to do when we have colonies on the moon and Mars?
IMO this is probably only until then that it'll start to make sense, since we may be living in buried/heavily radiation shielded habitats without any sunlight, there wouldn't be anything preventing the whole planet from having a synchronized, artificial, day/night schedule.