GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover?

Several readers alerted us to this piece in PC World reporting on concerns that GoDaddy might not be ready for the DST changeover. Some readers, and others, claimed that GoDaddy's servers are not reachable now and are not serving email or web sites; but others see no evidence of this. The article recounts the rather flip response one GoDaddy customer got from their tech support: "As Daylight Savings [sic] does not apply to our servers, since we are on Arizona Time and our time zone does not change, our servers wouldn't update." When IDG News Service contacted GoDaddy they got an altogether more sensible reply.

if there is a possibility for a screwup ...

[sarathmenon]

I dont understand, all that godaddy does is manage dns, web servers for parking space and basic MX services. How can someone fuck up with this kind of setup? Even if DST patches are off the only problem that i see is with

1. DNS TTLs being incorrect.
2. Your mail showing incorrect time
3. Web server logs (who analyzes these anyway) showing an incorrect time.

How can any or all of these bring down a site. WTF?

Re:Timezones

[flyingfsck]

Yeah, though in actuality, recalculations of the earth surface cased the Greenwich line to no longer run where it used to. It is a few meters away now. The trouble is that the earth hasn't got an exact centre to base measurements on.

Re:Timezones & embedded firmware

[Technician]

Thus, you're actually better off storing everything in UTC, because then you know what time everything really took place / will take place, in any timezone you care to know it in.

Whether it's done in UTC or local time zones, having local decisions made based on the local time can be problematic when hardware, firmware, and software manufactures don't provide updates.

The DST has changed. I am now taking inventory of hardware that didn't properly make the change. I don't count things like the digital clock in my car, because it doesn't support DST in any way.

Items that have failed and support DST and still failed include my wall Atomic Clocks, and my Linksys Router with the latest (Feb 2007) firmware updated. The manufactures website on both of these items makes absolutely no mention of the DST change as if nothing happened.

I have work-arounds for both failures. It involves turning off the broken DST and changing the time zone one zone to the East. The Linksys router is a non-issue for most folks, but I use the clock for access restrictions, otherwise the school age kid requires lots of prodding to get offline and go to bed. Having his access shutdown eliminates lots of nagging.

Why can't Linksys even admit the issue and state on the website the latest firmware update did not address the issue? I should not have to check to see if the software is working properly. I think I will submit a bug report and see what happens.

Re:Timezones & embedded firmware

[Reaperducer]

Items that have failed and support DST and still failed include my wall Atomic Clocks

Strange. My atomic clocked changed just fine. Also, I was always under the impression that the DST function wasn't built into the clock itself, but into the data stream coming from WWV or WWVH (depending on your location.) Maybe you live somewhere that your clock ended up locking into CHU, the atomic clock in Canada, or the one in South America (call letters escape me right now). I've picked both of those up loud and clear on my shortwave radios from time to time in the United States.