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Time zone news

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Re: Time zone news

#61

Post by Roodgorf »

harryh wrote: post #55
Roodgorf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it wouldn't exactly follow the lunar cycle as the parent mentions, there are already proposed calendars similar to what you mention[1]. Of course, with any calendar readjustment come just as many drawbacks, as the wiki entry mentions some. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar

I'm disappointed that this wiki page mentions no drawbacks to my plan to slow down the rotation of the earth. I've no idea what they would be, but I'm guessing that this might come with some negative repercussions.

If Wikipedia doesn't know about it, it's probably not important. In light of this new information, I hereby pledge my support for these reformations.

Re: Time zone news

#62

Post by jerf »

Navarr wrote: post #12
DanAndersen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our timezone/calendar system is convoluted, but that's because there are inherent issues with any calendar reform. I recommend looking at the following articles: http://qntm.org/abolish ("So you want to abolish time zones") http://qntm.org/calendar ("You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform")

All of these are valid points but when we get the ability to force the earth's rotation, orbit, and the moon's orbit to specifics then I WILL SHOW YOU.

That's just a special case of http://qntm.org/destroy .

qntm's got you comprehensively covered here.

Re: Time zone news

#64

Post by mosburger »

ghaff wrote: post #18
bostonpete wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Northern areas, there's a lot of practical value that gets overlooked. In Boston, the sun is rising close to 5:00 AM as it is at the height of summer. Without daylight savings time, it would be rising at 4:00 AM. I think most people would rather have extended daylight late in the day than have all that extra sunlight wasted when we're sleeping. The counter to that is -- well, let's always stick with daylight savin…

You're backwards. The problem with year-round daylight savings in Boston (which, personally, I'd prefer) is kids going to school in the dark in the winter. Boston's both relatively northernly and very far east in a timezone because eastern time wraps up the northeast-jutting coast of the US to avoid New England being in its own timezone. [Edit: It wouldn't be in its own timezone; it would be in Atlantic time, which i…

We actually contemplated (in the state legislature) moving to Atlantic time in Maine a few years ago. I'm glad they didn't because we have enough business barriers as it is without adding that into the mix, but it might not be bad if all of New England did it together.

Re: Time zone news

#65

Post by MichaelGG »

nulltype wrote: post #41
bkjelden wrote: post #37

I always joke that time zones and character encodings more or less guarantee programmers will always be able to find jobs.

Unicode hurts workers, families, & community! Shame on the Unicode Consortium! If we got rid of DST and didn't change the rules too often, time zones wouldn't really be that big of a deal.

It'd still be an issue, because people lose their minds when thinking about time zones. Example: .net XML serialization. The PM wanted to "do the right thing" and thus would encode all dates in XML with an offset determined by looking at some local setting. Hence the exact same code would produce a different XML document depending on the selected time zone.

They 'fixed' it by using a couple bits of the date to note if it was UTC or 'local'. But for a version or two, there was no way around corrupting data. The PM lamented the fact, saying "if only machines all had GPS, then we'd know the right offset to use", further demonstrating the lack of understanding.

Some folks just can't resist thinking in local time, instead of letting the dev handle time zones additionally.

Even the great tzinfo database is weird. Instead of using the names of time zones, it uses a random city. Which means if a time zone does split up in the future, you might end up with an incorrect timezone. (Like if I select Denver, but Denver switches to New Mountain Time, but my city doesn't.)

Re: Time zone news

#66

Post by scrollaway »

jarcoal wrote: post #25

Situations like Turkey's DST extension reminds me why storing dates in UTC with no further information is not good enough.

It is good enough. When converted to the local timezone, the library would know to offset the date properly - it just has to be told to do it. I don't see the problem.

Re: Time zone news

#67

Post by scrollaway »

0x0 wrote: post #35
mildweed wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain the complication you're thinking about? And what additional information you'd store?

Lots of events needs to be scheduled in local time. If your calendar app stores a given UTC timestamp for your meeting with a customer on friday at 5PM and the time zone rules database change inbetween, you're going to have an angry customer.

And what would meta-metadata about the datetime solve? What you're looking for is faster updates to timezone libraries. And for governments to stop being idiots — "I'm delaying DST because it inconveniences me", pah, what a load of garbage. It's a symptom of how much DST sucks. If anything, this couldve been a good occasion to repel DST in turkey.

Re: Time zone news

#68

Post by vorg »

Mz wrote: post #57
diminish wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All space time clocks may run at GMT+00 with no regional differences. Actually we may remove time zones all together too. So the day time of 3pm will be different everywhere. For calendar months and seasons we already have it like that, in both hemispheres. The only issue is backward incompatibility with legacy movies, books who talk about breakfast at 8am. Similarly, a love song which talks about April/May being a s…

Let's get rid of Roman legacy code in our civilization :) I think that's a bridge too far. We can't even rid the world of QWERTY keyboards. :-)

Or Imperial measurements in the U.S., or driving on the left in the Commonwealth countries, or non-Unicode encoding in Japan, or right-to-left writing in the Middle East. Whenever an agreement on anything is reached in most of the world, there's often some conversion benefits for whoever holds out signing up to it.

Re: Time zone news

#69

Post by nulltype »

MichaelGG wrote: post #65
nulltype wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unicode hurts workers, families, & community! Shame on the Unicode Consortium! If we got rid of DST and didn't change the rules too often, time zones wouldn't really be that big of a deal.

It'd still be an issue, because people lose their minds when thinking about time zones. Example: .net XML serialization. The PM wanted to "do the right thing" and thus would encode all dates in XML with an offset determined by looking at some local setting. Hence the exact same code would produce a different XML document depending on the selected time zone. They 'fixed' it by using a couple bits of the date to note i…

I'm sure there's no problem that can't be created by a sufficiently bad PM.

I think you can treat the name of the city as the name of the timezone. Seems like you'd have the same problem either way. If you used "Mountain Time" and then your city switches to "New Mountain Time" you still have the incorrect timezone.

Instead of cities it could use polygons on the surface of the earth, but that's starting to get complicated at that point.

Re: Time zone news

#70

Post by jcranmer »

mikestew wrote: post #54
protomyth wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people would quit repeating the farmer myth. No farmer I have met wants daylight savings time. Look at Indiana for some perspective. Farm animals do not have watches.

Just because Indiana doesn't have DST now (for most of the state, anyway) doesn't mean they've always never had it. There was DST when I was growing up in the 70s, and they got rid of it long after agriculture was no longer the primary industry in Indiana. Having grown up in Indiana farm country, I'm of the opinion that "DST because farmers" has always been a myth. One gets up with the sun no matter the time. You qui…

The main justification for DST is that it saves energy. The actual evidence of this claim is rather mixed, although even reports that show that DST saved energy aren't necessarily finding that the reduced costs make up for the mere cost of having to switch clocks twice a year (which itself isn't particularly well-quantified).
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