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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)

#71

Post by madcaptenor »

You can generate a table of sunrises and sunsets from the US Naval Observatory, http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.php . Unfortunately I don't see a way to link directly to the table; Moscow is 55 45 N, 37 36 E, and now four hours east of Greenwich. From their location, they're "naturally" around UTC+2:30 (37.6 degrees, divided by 15 degrees per hour).

The table says that in late December the sun will rise at around 10 AM and set at around 5 PM. This doesn't seem preferable to the 9-4 they'd have under standard time. I'm not sure about Russian time zone boundaries, though; is Moscow time used in areas to the east of Moscow?

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

#72

Post by madcaptenor »

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.)

Parts of Western China observes "Urumqi time" (UTC+6, compared to Beijing's UTC+8). There's a point at which people won't let you screw with their clocks arbitrarily.

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

#74

Post by dedward »

technomancy wrote: post #26
andresmh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Software is often written with the assumption that time always goes forward, because, well, that's how time works. However, according to the rules of daylight savings, time actually goes backwards once a year.

This was resolved a long, long time ago - it's why we have a timezone file, so we can keep the system in GMT and have it convert user-interface stuff for the user.

Software is often written in ignorance of this fact - and causes headaches whenever things change.

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

#75

Post by dedward »

weinzierl wrote: post #23
msbarnett wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Per the article, they're staying on UTC+4 (aka DST) permanently, rather than falling back to UTC+3 in the winter.

Absolutely, but that is no counter argument to yason's statement. There is no such thing as winter time. As far as I understand it it's just that Moscow's time zone is UTC+3 and they are changing that to UTC+4. It's not that unusual that a country is in an another time zone than it should be geographically, look at Spain for example.

From the article,they only said they won't be switching their clocks back this winter as they usually would.

They have "winter time" in the same sense that "it's the time we use in the winter" Remember, some places refer to daylight saving time as "blah summer time"

So yeah, all they're saying is they are staying on their equivalent of DST starting this year.

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

#76

Post by dedward »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #41
dhughes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but for the entire country! That's a lot of real estate under one time zone, it may be silly to have summer and winter times but having one time zone for a country approximately the same size as Canada (5,000km wide) seems silly, Canada has six time zones.

> having one time zone for a country approximately the same size as Canada (5,000km wide) seems silly Why? In America, people already get up at 7am (insert your own time here, obviously) regardless of what the local sunrise actually is - which varies based on how far north or south you live. It's pretty arbitrary. But one time zone at least makes the arbitraryness easier on coders.

It's arbitrary to a degree, but having a single timezone for Russia, or even the US, would amplify the effect. It's no big deal now because you are used to season changing, sunrise changing, etc - but if suddenly you had to get up for work and endure, say, 5 hours of darkness, or perhaps only 1 hour of daylight left..... it would be ugly. That's why we have timezones.

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

#77

Post by zeteo »

meese_ wrote: post #52
zeteo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Powers of ten are easy to manage in base 10?

Yeah, but once you move everything to base 2, you won't have to deal with those pesky powers of 10 anymore ;)

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

#78

Post by anigbrowl »

speleding wrote: post #9

I wish they would do that here. As a parent of two small kids I dread the clock changes, it takes forever for them to adjust.

It costs the US economy billions every year. Exactly how many billions depends on how you measure, but the direct costs of adjusting for the extension in 2007 were $1.1bn, according to the well-sourced Wikipedia article on the subject. DST all year round, say I. Dark winter mornings are OK by me.

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

#79

Post by anonymous1234 »

[deleted] wrote: post #73

[deleted]

The US DST change in 2007 cost an estimated $500 million to $1 billion: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0307/p02s01-stct.html

DST has cost me many hours spent debugging. I will be very happy if/when it is abolished in the US.

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

#80

Post by baddox »

BrandonM wrote: post #61
zeteo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Choosing a radix is a balance between the number of prime factors (and brevity) and the number of symbols to keep track of. I think twelve strikes a good balance as well.
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