Extra Daylight Savings May Confuse the Gadgets 933
CrimeDoggy writes "In the energy bill to be signed by the President today (August 8), changes are to be made that extend daylight savings time. The bill would start daylight time three weeks earlier and end it a week later as an energy-saving measure. Many devices such as VCRs, cell phones, and watches would still operate on the previous schedule, potentially causing problems."
Time for a change... (Score:3, Insightful)
Super. It's about time we monkey with the way we reckon time again...after all, we had almost gotten used to the current insane standard.
I would propose a rather radically different option...eliminate time zones in the U.S. altogether. That's right, no time zones at all...everyone can just use GMT. I'm not advocating that everyone go to work at 09:00 GMT...business can determine what hours they want their employees to work, based on the amount of daylight available at that particular time of year, but the time standard would be the same everywhere. That way, there would be none of this bullshit confusion about 'what time is that here', or 'what is the time there'. It's GMT. The same damned time everywhere.
We're already a global community...it only makes sense to adopt a global time. Of course, asking the country that still uses Imperial measurement units to spearhead this change might be asking a bit much...
Re:Time for a change... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:5, Interesting)
Internet Time [wikipedia.org]
Re:Time for a change... (Score:2)
OT: sig... (Score:3, Insightful)
And it's equally possible to extinguish both...
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:2)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Informative)
In the pre-electricity "modern" era, families that stayed up after dark would light their homes with candles and oil lamps [chariot.net.au], which could get quite expensive
Ex
Re:Time for a change... (Score:5, Funny)
Napoleon taught his troops to fight with their swords in their left hands, to surprise the British. Which is why the continentals would pass to the right.
Re:Time for a change... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/driving%20
Re:I also.. (Score:4, Funny)
According to the Encylopedia Britannica (1944), "The percentage of left-handedness . . . is much higher among inmates of institutions for the feeble minded and the psychopathic." Yet these "biological errors" are campaigning for special recognition as a legitimate minority to force you to accept their immoral behavior. Worse yet, the schools are encouraging deviant-handed diversity and facilitating the use of sinful southpaw scissors!
The Bible says, "A wise man's heart is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left" (Ecclesiastes 10:2), and "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into the EVERLASTING FIRE" (Matthew 25:41).
"Theories relative to handedness vary in their treatment of it as an acquired or a native trait," says the Britannica. Many experts believe that left-handedness is learned and can be corrected. With repentance and reparative therapies, sinners caught in the lecherous leftist lifestyle can be converted and cured. Yes, right righteousness and healthy handedness is possible! Many ex-southpaws have become normal, happy right-writers. Some have even held hands, gotten married, and had children!
But the militant leftist lobby says they were "born that way." They cite evidence that it's genetic, morally neutral, and normal! Well, that doesn't mean we have to teach children that it's OK to respect people who are different! Any nonjudgmental mention of left-handedness is "promotion" of wrong behavior, encouraging vulnerable young children to experiment with alternative handedness!
Since right-thinking people believe that wrong-handedness is immoral, we will force the schools to teach only OUR beliefs to YOUR children!
AGREE WITH US OR BURN IN HELL!
-M. Dennis Moore [seanbaby.com]
Re:Time for a change... (Score:4, Insightful)
We already use a global time in a sense; time zones make GMT into a format that's easier to understand. Knowing that it's 05:00 GMT doesn't necessarily tell you whether you're going to be calling a person in the middle of the night or not.
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Insightful)
You know his hours of operation.
You work from 12:00-20:00, he works from 15:00-23:00. You keep that in your contact information from him. He publishes it in his
Your PIM tells you when you bring up his record if he's working now so you don't have to burn any neurotransmitters figuring it out.
This is the same as figuring out if the Target down the street is open yet.
It's also great in that it would let people work closer to
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our new computer tell-you-when-to-call-people-instead-of-using-our
There is no problem... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There is no problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
the windows user interface in particular pushes the idea that local time is all important and the timezone is just some internationalisation setting.
if you have local time right and timezone wrong your computer gets the wrong idea of UTC which is a bad thing for any protocol that bases things like caching on UTC.
Re:Time for a change... (Score:5, Funny)
We need metric time damn it!
Re:Time for a change... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:4, Funny)
In any cas, the one true system of measure - the Furlong-Fortnight-Firkin system - is easy in both base 10 and base 12, you can't beat it!
Re:Time for a change... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:4, Interesting)
ex.
0 3
2f = 2 3
just my 2c, but made math hella easier, and helps even more with higher dimensional math because you can visualize and manipulate halves and quarters much better than 2/5 and 7/10.
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Funny)
I found this new book on Amazon: "Men are base-21 and women are base-20"
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Funny)
Decimal time (Score:3, Informative)
And I wish the world were so nice that we could all use metric things and other 10-based units to match our number system.
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, this introduces a number of minor inconveniences. First off, since the universe started to exist, as far as we can tell, some 16 billion years ago but our typical time needs are in the manner of hours and days, this leads to extremely minor fractions: "I'll meet you at 100.00000000009%" or "I was born at 99.99999999999983%." Second, the refence to a given moment in time changes, ie 50% AUT isn't the same in 5 minutes or 5 seconds, since the total time between 0% and 100% AUT always increases. So you'd have to take that into consideration when using AUT.
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, this also creates a similar problem, it just shifts it to a different area.
Instead of "what is it there"? The question becomes "What time do yo
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Insightful)
You have to ask that anyway. Just because I start work at 8am in Denver doesn't mean I can assume that everyone everywhere starts work at 8am. I can't even assume that in the *same* timezone.
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Informative)
Which will still confuse the people that know that "EST" does not mean "Eastern" but "Eastern Standard Time," and the only state that is on EST right now is Indiana. Everyone else is on CDT or EDT. (CDT and EST just happen to coincide at the moment).
Re:Time for a change... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're missing the basic purpose of telling time. Which is to say that no matter what it says on the clock, it's the "same damned time everywhere", so your solution accomplishes nothing. Time is linear - you don't actually go back in time if you take a flight that lands in one place "earlier" than when it left (I know you know this, but your premise suggests otherwise). The purpose of having a time standard that we can all read is as a frame of reference. Your solution is to eliminate that frame of reference. I don't see how this makes things simpler.
If it's morning where I am in NYC, it's still going to be night in Hawaii regardless of what the clock says. I still need to remember that if I want to call somebody there, or otherwise communicate. Just because my watch says it's 4 AM (GMT) doesn't mean all those Hawaiians are going to be awake.
You're looking at things backwards. Time zones make it easier to deal with this issue, because we can easily say "oh, it's six hours earlier in Hawaii - that means people must still be asleep." Take away the time zones and you're stuck doing calculations about distance and solar cycles for every single place on the planet you've got to deal with. Is it really easier to say "well, Hawaii is 5,500 miles east, and the earth rotates at X miles an hour; therefore, Hawaii will have sunlight in 6 hours" than it is to just know that Hawaii's 6 hours behind us?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I offer you my consulting services. (Score:5, Funny)
Scare tactics always work in US. Tell them, doom is near and people will do anything, even hire you ;)!
Re:I offer you my consulting services. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I offer you my consulting services. (Score:2)
WooHoo!!! (Score:2)
Nothing to see here. Please move along. (Score:2)
Moral travesty (Score:5, Insightful)
(Yes, that's an opinion. Feel free to disagree.)
Re:Moral travesty (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Moral travesty (Score:4, Interesting)
And while every other aspect of the gregorian calendar can be described in just a few lines of code, the daylight-savings time requires a 450KB database [twinsun.com] just to find out which timezone you're in, with entries like "during the second world war, London experimented with double daylight-savings time..." (admittedly most of that 450K is comments)
The only other solution... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Moral travesty (Score:4, Insightful)
8:30 is a fine time for the sun to set. It sets by six in the winter (Virginia) and there doens't seem to be outcry.
7am and the sun is "high overhead"? I'm still trying to figure out why that would be a problem. I work a relatively normal 8-5 day, and I have a sunrise simulator that I use - even in the summer - to get up at 6 so I have time to have breakfast and get my kid out of bed / dressed / fed / off to school. If it were light out at 5am, that'd be great.
Of course, I have TiVo, so I don't have to worry about all that "but I can't watch Jay Leno and get up at 5am" shit. (No, I don't watch late night tv anyway). I don't play evening (insert sport here), where light is a problem. I can't get in 18 holes of golf after work regardless of the sunset time, so evening play is a moot point.
Now that I come to think about it, if it got cooler an hour earlier in the evening, it would probably be much nicer. Young kids could spend more evenings chasing fireflys insead of having to go to bed while its still light out. The fireworks on the 4th could start at a reasonable time.
Tell you what...I'm still looking for a down side. Even my wife would have one less day to be in a bitchy mood 'cause she lost an hour of sleep each spring. (Yes, she seems to treat the extra hour of sleep the fall change offers as a holiday akin to Christmas)
Re:Moral travesty (Score:3, Insightful)
This is exactly how people should adapt to the increased sunlight hours during the summer - get up earlier and go to the gym, do gardening, whatever, during the copious hours before work if your work hours are static throughout the year. Alternately if you're an employer then adapt your hours (or even better adapt flexible hours for the majority of w
Re:Moral travesty (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, but you've pointed out one of the problems: Go to the gym? But it's 5am, the gym isn't open yet. Neither is anything else, unless everyone gets together and agrees to start earlier. You can do this by asking every business to change schedules, or you can do it all at once by c
DVD firmware upgrade (Score:2)
Woo, who cares? (Score:2)
If anything, the tech sector will love it... People that are *so* annoyed by having to manually change their times *twice* for each switchover will be happy to upgrade to a newer unit that doesn't cause such a horrible thing to occur.
The rest of us will either do the difficult subtraction/addition in our heads until the device fixees itself three weeks later or will just do it ourse
Artifact? (Score:2, Funny)
Look on the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
Please just drop it. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Please just drop it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please just drop it. (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, I think this is a bad idea. I think DST is a bad idea in general, and I wish that more states would do what Arizona has done (but not the Navajo Nation), and dispense with DST altogether.
Re:Please just drop it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please just drop it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Please just drop it. (Score:3, Funny)
Works for me! Let's throw in a nice long three-martini lunch for good measure.
Re:Please just drop it. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Please just drop it. (Score:3, Interesting)
It can be hard to justify a the cost of a $3.00 spiral to a $0.50 incandescent bulb, though. Mine have been going strong for 2 years now, rather than replacing them every 6 months or so.
Only another year and you'll break even...
Ignoring the energy costs of course
I Understand This! (Score:2)
first things first... (Score:2)
My microwave can be an hour off for eternity, but if I miss that INXS/hulk hogan/tommy lee reality show, heads are gonna roll!
e.
Of all the things in the Energy Bill (Score:4, Insightful)
Alright, so I'm going off on this. I understand that
What I'm trying to say is that somehow this is the BIG idea in the energy bill as it is being reported and it doesn't deserve that status.
The Energy bill is a mess the likes of which haven't been seen since the Patriot Act. That's where the focus needs to be.
Oh well.
Re:Of all the things in the Energy Bill (Score:2)
Re:Of all the things in the Energy Bill (Score:3, Insightful)
People only care about the here and now (I'm one of them although I don't care about how this might screw up my computer automatically correcting for CDT and CST).
Global Warming is something that cooks and liberals care about and it doesn't affect anyone in the next two days so it doesn't matter. What's on TV is what matters to people right now.
As long as the media and the Government can
Re:Of all the things in the Energy Bill (Score:5, Insightful)
The same is true for recycling programs.
Also don't forget that many projects have long-term effects and take some time for the true effect to be realized. Your recycling example, for instance. While recycling processes are different from raw manufacturing, there's more to it than just that. Consider, for instance, the long-term effect of cutting down mature forests in terms of oxygen production, erosion, destruction of natural beauty, the effects on the biosphere as a whole, the destruction of habitat for animals that live in those forests, and so on.
We can specifically point to the short-sighted actions of a logging company that destroyed the then-last-known habitat of the ivory-billed woodpecker -- in full knowledge of what they were doing as a result of information given to them by scientists. And look at how long it has taken to find out that the damage may not have been permanent after all -- but undoing their mess may not be possible if it turns out the birds have been wiped out to the point where the ones that have been sighted can no longer reproduce.
You fall into the trap that so many others do of failing to think of the long term and thinking only in the short.
Again, let's see some sources to prove those ridiculous accusations.
People unclear on the concept... (Score:3, Insightful)
There isn't one. That's the point. As opposed to the endgame for not conserving, which is resource exhaustion.
I find your question so absolutely hilarious that I just had to reply.
(Note that "conservation", in sane circles, does not mean "abandoning everything but solar power", the way some nut-jobs (on both ends of the spectrum) seem to think. It means intelligent management of your resources. "Sustainable resource consumption" would be a better term, but that's doesn'
Re:Conservation is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
It would improve my life to get from point A to point B. I can do so in an SUV, or I can do so in a car that uses half as much gasoline. Conservation is to use the least amount of resources to accomplish the same goal. Conservation is not the opposite of need, but the opposite of waste.
Living in AZ (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Furthermore, what the hell does this have to do with energy conservation? I'm still going to turn the fracking lights on when it gets dark; I don't look at the clock and go "hey, it's 7, time to turn on all the lights."
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
There are several studies that show Daylight Saving time saves lives (pedestrians and automobile traffic), reduces violent crime, and saves electricity.
Here's one example. [hoosierdaylight.com]does canada have to follow this? (Score:2)
A great big DUH (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish the president would have had the gumption to just extend Daylight Savings Time to all year long and ditch the date changes entirely. Nearly every device can be configured to ignore DST changes and it would have saved the world a lot of confusion each year.
Smart gadgets (Score:2)
I don't really think it's that big of a deal (Score:2)
Humans can adjust to the difference, or perhaps even MANUALLY change the clocks like we all did 10 years ago, and mostly still do today.
Will it be an inconvenience? Sure. Will it destroy life as we know it? Probably not.
Daylight Saving...No "S" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Daylight Saving...No "S" (Score:3, Funny)
not a problem (Score:2)
My watches don't know from DST in the first place. Apparently there are still some benefits of being old-school.
More importantly, Windows and OSX both get patched so frequently I can't imagine they won't be able to slip the fix in before then.
a wash (Score:2)
VCR clock (Score:2)
For those who haven't dealt with it before... (Score:2)
What does that mean?
This is a non-issue. Most products either don't deal with DST (VCR's, clocks, etc) or are driven by outside signals (automatically set radio clocks, TV clocks, cable boxes, cell phones), are easily updated (all computer software, which already has to ask the OS f
Homer's Insight (Score:2, Funny)
2K5 bug? (Score:2)
Outcome - Last gasp for COBOL programmers.
Year 2K5 Bug - Legislation results in 3 week time change, causing chaos in out of sync watches, cell phones and computers. Mass mis-scheduled meetings predicted.
Outcome - You cut out of work early to play softball in the park. Boss does not notice.
Daylight Saving Time... (Score:3, Informative)
This is nothing more than a plot... (Score:3, Funny)
Why is it so easy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why is it so easy? (Score:3, Funny)
Freemasons, Illuminati, and the True Origin of DST (Score:4, Funny)
The original plan was that this would give farmers more time to plant their crops. (The justification today is that we will consume less energy, but this was the year 1500 and electricity had not been invented yet.) But even the farmer idea is silly
The true story is horrid. It's dark and scary. The idea was to get the American people to slowly and gradually begin to accept the idea that time is not absolute. First, they were able to get people to screw around with their clocks twice a year. Now, they've managed to convince us to change when we do that. Eventually, the Freemasons and Illuminati hope to get us confused to the point where everybody believes that every day is February 2nd -- Groundhog Day.
Since one of the popular activities on Groundhog Day is planting trees, people will stay home from work and plant trees instead of going to the office and being productive. And since they will have tricked us into thinking that every day is Groundhog Day, planting trees is all that we'll be doing, day in and day out! Since people will stop going to work entirely, our economy will soon crumble. Not only that, but with all of those trees planted, sunlight will stop hitting the ground here and will cause all of our crops to die, starving the whole country en masse. Then the New World Order will be upon us and the Hindu god Kali-Mah will take over.
This is their true agenda, world domination and the destruction of America, Daylight Savings Time is their vehicle for this agenda and I encourage you to vote no on this bill and this is a run-on sentence.
Re:Freemasons, Illuminati, and the True Origin of (Score:3, Funny)
[1] I'm a Master Mason.
[2] My wife's and firstborn's birthday.
The REAL point of DST changes: Retailers (Score:3, Interesting)
As a large retailer, we know that core shopping happens during daylight hours. As the sun sets, people start clearing out of the retail stores.
In most parts of the country, retail stores open at a fixed time, either 9AM (or 10AM in some areas). Almost no stores open at "sunrise".
Therefore, core shopping hours are from a 9AM until sunset. Maybe the store is open until 9 PM, but in general shopping activity slows way down at sunset. This is just a known fact in the retail industry.
By changing the clock, sunset can happen later relative to clock time. Therefore, if we add a month of DST, we add about 30 hours of prime-time shopping to our annual retail calendar!
To a retailer, this is huge news - this is almost like adding 3+ full shopping days to our calendar at almost zero cost.
My management was amazingly happy by this rule change.
Re:Awful idea. (Score:2)
Re:Awful idea. (Score:5, Funny)
Good for you. We all appreciate your proactive stance for mediocrity.
Re:Awful idea. (Score:2)
Hardware and software already deal with the problem. It'll be a minor patch to system libraries to solve the problem for software. It already has to ask "what day is it, and where are you" to figure out when and if to apply DST changes.
This is one more if statement when your locale is in the US.
And most hardware doesn't really understand DST. I've never seen a VCR that did. Why would some
Re:Awful idea. (Score:5, Funny)
Is it 2006 where you are? Can you send me some stock quotes?
Theorhetically yes (Score:2)
In reality? No clue.
Re:Daylight Savings Time.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Purpose? (Score:5, Informative)
How about this? [nist.gov].
Re:Purpose? (Score:3, Informative)
OK, you're dumb. (Sorry, I had, too).
It's a simple idea, really. Let's say most people go to bed at around 11:00. At dusk, everyone turns on their house lights. With daylight saving time (DST), dusk is 8:30, so lights are on for 2.5 hours. Without DST, dusk is an hour earlier, so lights are on for 3.5 hours. (What is really happening with DST is that we are s
Re:How will if affect my watch ??! (Score:3, Funny)