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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)

#61

Post by BrandonM »

zeteo wrote: post #46
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well while we're at it, what's the fetish with 10? We should use powers of 2 for everything :)

I would prefer base-12; it has a lot of benefits. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal, especially http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal#Comparison_to_other_...

Instead of changing our clocks, we could just change our numbering system. Having 50 (that's 5 x 12) seconds per minute, 50 minutes per hour, and 20 hours per day seems perfectly reasonable.

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

#62

Post by jrockway »

weinzierl wrote: post #29
ig1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Every piece of software that deals with time in any kind of sophistication needs to have logic to handle it. I used to work on a share price alerting system where you could say "if the price of stock X goes up by 10% during these hours than alert me", that creates a nightmare when it comes to DST changes. Do you use the timezone of the person who setup that alert (what if they're now in a different timezone do yo…

Unix-like systems like Linux and OSX handle that very well. The hardware real time clock ticks in UTC, file timestamps and the like are stored in UTC. The OS knows everything about time zones and DST and therefore can display the time the way you expect it.

The problem goes the other way. If a user says, "run this job at 1:10AM", does the job run twice when 2am becomes 1am at the DST switch? If everyone input times in UTC, it would be fine, but users want to input and output.

I am lucky to be able to avoid this problem, because while I do have users that want to read and write times in their local time zone, they are asleep at 1am and automated stuff tends to run at midnight. Sometimes the dice roll in your favor :)

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

#63

Post by anigbrowl »

zeteo wrote: post #46
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well while we're at it, what's the fetish with 10? We should use powers of 2 for everything :)

Most of us have 10 fingers, which makes counting easy (although you can count to 12/20/24/40 on your fingers too, I admit).

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

#64

Post by jarek »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #49
rue wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. It can also be explained as a matter of simple efficiency: Currently when synchronising something, two pieces of information must be known (the time, and the timezone). If using a single timezone, only one is required (whether it's night or day at either end is inconsequential, only the party at that end really needs to worry about it and can provide a range of hours suitable to them).

This is absolutely incorrect. Except in the singular example of arranging telecommunication across timezones, you have to maintain MORE information under this system. When I currently travel, I can make the assumption that any restaurant will be open by 11 AM, that I have to check out of my hotel by 11 AM and that I can't check in until 3 PM. In your system, standard store hours have become a random regional fluctuat…

When you travel, how do you know what time it is?

Either way, you have to adjust something. Right now, you adjust your known time difference (i.e., change the clock, either by knowing the difference or by asking someone local). With that proposal, you would adjust the known opening times.

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

#65

Post by tedunangst »

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's stopping you? Starting now, whenever you give someone a time, specify UTC. If someone tells you a time that's not UTC, ask them to provide it in UTC.

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

#66

Post by griftah »

rdl wrote: post #38
evgen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

No. USSR was always divided into several time zones. Moscow time is just a soviet analog of GMT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Russia#Developments

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

#67

Post by anigbrowl »

rue wrote: post #44
aaronblohowiak wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed. It can also be explained as a matter of simple efficiency: Currently when synchronising something, two pieces of information must be known (the time, and the timezone). If using a single timezone, only one is required (whether it's night or day at either end is inconsequential, only the party at that end really needs to worry about it and can provide a range of hours suitable to them).

With a single timezone then you need to know the longitude of the remote location instead. There's a book (called Longitude, unsurprisingly) about the piecewise invention of accurate chronometry in order to solve the problem of knowing your longitude at sea. Latitude you can work out pretty easily as long as you have an almanac, compass, and a protractor, but longitude is a problems sans clocks and logs of distance traveled.

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

#68

Post by kjhgfdfgh »

tophercyll wrote: post #55
rue wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://decimalti.me There's a few ways to do it: as you can see, I like to use the 1/100 as the base unit (it's a little under 15 minutes in current reckoning) and go decimal beyond that since you have a neat percentage as a result, and you can drop off precision as needed.

We often (jokingly) measure time in kiloseconds around my office. As rue points out, that's just a bit over fifteen minutes, so its actually a useful unit. "See you in the conference room in 2 ksecs..." Put a bunch of geeks together too long and this is what happens.

Real geeks use milli-fortnight

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

#69

Post by georgieporgie »

salvadors wrote: post #53
rottencupcakes wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely incorrect. Except in the singular example of arranging telecommunication across timezones, you have to maintain MORE information under this system. When I currently travel, I can make the assumption that any restaurant will be open by 11 AM, that I have to check out of my hotel by 11 AM and that I can't check in until 3 PM. In your system, standard store hours have become a random regional fluctuat…

You obviously don't travel much. There is huge variation in these sorts of things worldwide. See, for example, http://www.spanish-town-guides.com/Opening_Hours.htm

That's a cultural issue, and Spain has only one time zone anyway. A lot of business can be conducted across the United States, which is fairly consistent in its hours. I suspect that Russia is fairly consistent within their borders as well.

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

#70

Post by koenigdavidmj »

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? Then some musician would have to work during the day and sleep at night.
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