Europe Moves to Winter Time, U.S. Changes Clocks Next Weekend

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <bob2 () bob frankston com>
Date: October 25, 2009 3:06:02 PM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>, "'ip'" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Cc: <jspira () basex com>
Subject: RE: [IP] Europe Moves to Winter Time, U.S. Changes Clocks  
Next Weekend

Turkey did the switch at 4AM this morning (Sunday Oct 25th). This had  
an interesting side-effect as I was flying from Shanghai to Istanbul  
during the transition. I wondered why the plane was reporting time an  
hour later than I had set my watch to but it also showed us landing an  
hour late. Turns out, of course, that the plane was correct about the  
takeoff time but wrong about the landing time.

I can understand getting this wrong – it’s the kind of thing the  
program (or programmer) just doesn’t deal with (same as a good UI on  
the per-seat user interface for the screen). Another related problem  
with calendar events is that the syntax doesn’t have good ways to deal  
with rich time representation. How can I say the meeting is 2PM in  
Istanbul and doesn’t change when the daylight changes? And is an all  
day meeting really all day or should the end points change?

More fun is when you have multiple operating systems and reboot and  
each tries to correct for DST. I pushed for putting the time zone in  
the nonvolatile RAM rather than in the OS but I didn’t convince people.

It’s a reminder of why Y2K wasn’t a big deal as these kind of issues  
are endemic but not a big deal because we take them in stride and  
don’t pile them on top of each other.

It’s also a reminder why the leap second is so incredibly stupid –  
time is approximate to the nearest hour and we care about nanosecond  
precision? And China has just one time zone – I’d like to understand  
more about how that works in practice.

Well enough for now – my body is zoning out …



From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Sunday, October 25, 2009 08:29
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Europe Moves to Winter Time, U.S. Changes Clocks Next  
Weekend



Begin forwarded message:

From: jspira () basex com
Date: October 24, 2009 8:27:12 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Europe Moves to Winter Time, U.S. Changes Clocks Next Weekend


Dave

Important reminder for all IPers to keep in mind:

Europe Moves to Winter Time, U.S. Changes Clocks Next Weekend

Europe set its clocks back one hour to “winter time” at 1 a.m. GMT  
Sunday.  Next Sunday morning, while most people are still asleep, the  
United States and parts of Canada will switch back to Standard Time at  
2 a.m. local time. <SNIP>

Complete look at daylight saving time at http://www.basexblog.com/2009/10/24/daylight-savings-time-2009/

Regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen/Szívélyes üdvözlet/Cordialement/ 
Cordiali saluti/Saludos/Vänliga hälsningar

/s/ Jonathan
Jonathan B. Spira
CEO and Chief Analyst
Basex, Inc.
8 http://www.basex.com


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