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Ask Slashdot: Where Do You Stand on Daylight Saving Time? 613

New submitter gbcox links to this article about how the switch between Standard Time and Daylight Saving Time can be dangerous, but writes Personally, I favor year 'round DST — I like the extra sunlight in the evening... but regardless, I just wish we'd pick one and stop futzing with the time twice a year. As it is right now, we only have about 4 months of standard time as it is... is it really worth the effort to switch the clocks for only four months? I think not. Where do you stand? If you have a strong opinion, it would be nice if you start your subject line in comments with "For it!" or "Against it!" If you think that the yearly clock-shifting is a good idea, when do you think each shift should occur? For those not keeping score, tonight is the switchover time for most Americans.
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Ask Slashdot: Where Do You Stand on Daylight Saving Time?

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  • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:22PM (#48289671) Homepage Journal

    I don't care what the offset is from GMT, just leaveitthehellalone. If businesses need winter hours, they can have those.

    • We spent thousands of man years on making this shit work, so if anybody proposes getting rid of DST I will send teams of rabid ninga weasels to gnaw their putrid dicks off.

      We had to suffer, why should others not know the pain.

      • by rwa2 ( 4391 ) * on Saturday November 01, 2014 @08:00PM (#48290311) Homepage Journal

        Eh, I just set everything to UTC and don't worry about weird things, like cron jobs between midnight and 1am running twice or not at all every once in a while.

        Of course, my last major employer has everything set to PST/PDT, since that's where their major data center is, even though they have rather large branches in every major timezones. And because of some stupid thing in Oracle 10/11 of all things, all of the new data centers in other time zones /also/ are running in PST/PDT, because it's the only way to get Oracle's XDCR to work.

        Which means their new international data center in China will not only be on PST/PDT, but will enjoy 4 DST transitions per year, since China switches their clocks a few weeks off from North America.

        • by Noah Haders ( 3621429 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @08:03PM (#48290333)

          a pet peeve of mine is that when people quote a time like "1pm pacific time" but want to feel fancy they say "1pm PDT". about half the time they are wrong and should have said 1pm PST! When they're wrong I'm always tempted to show up an hour early or late and feign innocence, saying that I was just doing what they said.

          • by corychristison ( 951993 ) on Sunday November 02, 2014 @01:52AM (#48291515)

            Here in Saskatchewan, we do not observe Daylight Saving Time. The entire province is really smack dab center between two timezones. A number of years ago our provincial government decided to do away with DST. We are now, effectively, permanently in Central Standard Time.

            As a business owner, who deals with clients across North America, I have a lot of people try to correct me when I say our timezone is CST, and they believe it should be CDT. Some people simply cannot comprehend that we don't observe DST.

            As an aside, the only argument we have about the time around here is whether we are stuck on CST or MDT.

        • by tomhath ( 637240 )
          This makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it. What difference does it really make if your clock reads 11:00 AM versus 7:00 AM when you get up in the morning?
      • by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @09:46PM (#48290819)

        We spent thousands of man years on making this shit work...

        It doesn't work. It has never worked. It will never work. It is nothing less than one metric ton of pure unadulteraded idiocy, always has been and always will be.

    • by corsec67 ( 627446 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @07:05PM (#48289953) Homepage Journal
      Yep, "National Fuck with the Clocks" Day (Which is of course twice a year) needs to just go away.
      • by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @09:10PM (#48290657)

        It's not national. Arizona realized how pointless and retarded the whole thing is 40 years ago, and hasn't done it since.

        • Hawai`i likewise. Never did that stuff here.
        • by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @10:52PM (#48291005)

          Not exactly true. The Navajo Nation within Arizona uses DST, because the reservation spans 3 states (the other two of which observe DST). Oddly, however, the Hopi have a reservation completely surrounded by the Navajo reservation, and they don't follow DST.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, 2014 @07:37PM (#48290167)

      I'm not losing any sleep over it.

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @11:27PM (#48291131)

      I don't care what the offset is from GMT, just leaveitthehellalone. If businesses need winter hours, they can have those.

      The problem is it doesn't work that way. Businesses are timed to suit the population and within regulations, populations live to suit businesses. You can't say just let everyone do a free for all because a typical shop can't open from 7-3 and have the same customers as the 8-4 range.

      I don't care because I can start and stop work whenever I want. In summer I go to work at 6 and in winter at 7:30-8ish to maximise my day. But not everyone has that option. If I were working for a shop that forces a 9-5 working day I would have very strong feelings about daylight savings time. Given that in the summer we have 2 hours of sunlight which are effectively unusable due to noise restrictions in early hours of the morning, and lack of sun after work.

      • by king neckbeard ( 1801738 ) on Sunday November 02, 2014 @04:26AM (#48291881)
        Businesses opening at different times is actually a bit more convenient for the people working there. If everything is open 9-5 and I work 9-5, I can only go and buy the things I need on a day off. If a third of businesses are 8-4, 9-5, and 10-6 each, however, I can visit 2/3 of those businesses any day. It would also reduce rush hour traffic.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

        UK businesses stick to 9-5 quite rigidly, and it's a pain in the arse. By the time most people finish work the shops are closed. In Japan shops usually open until 7 or 8 in the evening, often starting at 10 or 11 AM if they are small. It's fine because everyone is going to work in the morning and those who don't work can get on with chores, or just use supermarkets and convenience stores that are open 24/7 anyway.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot@worf.ERDOSnet minus math_god> on Sunday November 02, 2014 @01:06AM (#48291409)

      I don't care what the offset is from GMT, just leaveitthehellalone. If businesses need winter hours, they can have those.

      Anyone who thinks DST is easy obviously hasn't done stuff worldwide.

      Because I've just had to deal with one customer in 4 different timezones - one in the US (Eastern time), one in Portugal (Western European) and the Netherlands (Central Europe).

      And it was a weekly teleconference call. We had Portugal already in regular time )WET), but the Netherlands was moving from Central European Summer Time to Central European Time, while us in North America were still in DST.

      Endless fun figuring out a convenient time for the meeting when DST transitions randomly for different people. For those curious, WET is UTC+0000, CET is UTC+0100, WEST is UTC+0100, CEST is UTC+0200. And we had to deal with PDT (UTC-0700), EDT (UTC-0400) as usual.

      Oh yay, now we have DST over. One last time to figure out the meeting times and this unnecessary form of calculation can be put to rest for a few months (seriously, when they all switch at different times it's meant recalculating the time weekly).

      FYI - Outlook sets the meeting time to always be whoever sends the meeting invitation out regardless of DST. So if they set it to 8AM PT, it will be 8AM PST, 8AM PDT, and whatever else that works out to be - so the meeting organizer's time stays at 8, while everyone else has to deal with a meeting that has moved an hour earlier/later. Very important if your customer says they want the meeting at 1pm their time.

      I say get rid of it. International dealings get complex quickly.

  • by NixieBunny ( 859050 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:25PM (#48289681) Homepage
    We don't celebrate DST in Tucson, but all my distant suppliers etc. do, so I have to adjust my mental clock to deal with their different offsets.
    • by TWX ( 665546 )
      There's an idea to shift PST regions to MST (as they are when operating on PDT) and to shift either Central to Eastern, or Eastern to Central, basically putting the Continental United States on to two timezones, either one or two hours apart.

      I like the idea of this. Given that TV schedules in Eastern and Central are often marketed as "Eight, Seven Central", it looks like Central time is already operating as Eastern time anyway. May as well just formalize it.
      • by lgw ( 121541 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @07:19PM (#48290041) Journal

        TV schedules? Like, from the 20th century? My grandfather read about those in a history book once! People use to schedule their lives around entertainment which was, get this, broadcast to everyone at the same time. Weird, right? It's true, the past is a foreign country.

    • by PAjamian ( 679137 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @08:44PM (#48290543)

      We don't celebrate DST in Tucson, but all my distant suppliers etc. do, so I have to adjust my mental clock to deal with their different offsets.

      Try living in New Zealand and having clients in California. Since NZ is in the southern hemisphere our summer is during your winter and vice-versa, so during our summer (and your winter) we are three hours apart* from US/Pacific, but during our winter and your summer we are five hours apart and in-between there is about a month where DST overlaps in both fall and spring and we are four hours apart.

      * Actually 21 hours, but it's easier to think of it as us being a day ahead and three hours behind.

  • by Beck_Neard ( 3612467 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:25PM (#48289683)

    DST or the people who constantly whine about it.

    • by TWX ( 665546 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:45PM (#48289801)
      I hear a lot of complaining about daylight savings time, but I really don't hear much in the way of support in favor of it. That inclines me to believe that people really don't support it, but because it's not completely horrible the movement to abolish it hasn't managed to gain that much traction.

      I don't live where DST is used, so I can't really say either way how I feel about it.
      • by Sene ( 1794986 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @07:07PM (#48289969)
        I have never lived in an area where DST is not used and so far I think it is utterly useless.
      • by TapeCutter ( 624760 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @07:09PM (#48289985) Journal
        I think it implies most people don't give a fuck, after all is said and done it's just an arbitrary number used to mark events. Although I'm always surprised at how many people know the exact time of the train they catch to work, personally I have no idea, I go to the station a train turns up within 10min and I get on it.
        • Although I'm always surprised at how many people know the exact time of the train they catch to work, personally I have no idea, I go to the station a train turns up within 10min and I get on it.

          Amazing. You must live in NYC. Because in SF, you go to the station on a bus which is late, a train turns up eventually, and you get to work late.

      • by SydShamino ( 547793 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @08:10PM (#48290373)

        I greatly appreciate extra hours outside in the evening, and the ability to leave work while it's still light outside as a counter to winter doldrums. I would support moving permanently to DST except that means kids have to wait for the bus in the dark for a few months, which no one supports.

        • by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @08:33PM (#48290481)
          Then start school later on the dark days. Why is there such an opposition to businesses changing hours with the seasons, rather than changing the clocks?
          • Then start school later on the dark days.

            That'll go over well with working parents...

            • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
              Bah, last time they held a meeting on it, 50% of parents complained school started too early, the other 50% it started too late. 0% said it was just right. It doesn't matter what you'll do, it'll go over poorly with parents.
          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Rakarra ( 112805 )

            Then start school later on the dark days. Why is there such an opposition to businesses changing hours with the seasons, rather than changing the clocks?

            Because they WON'T. And they never will. They just will NOT have different hours for different seasons, especially if you work in a corporate environment like any desk job.

            This whole kerfuffle happens because yes, it actually IS easier to change society's entire concept of the hour of the day rather than have businesses change hours as daylight changes.

          • by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Sunday November 02, 2014 @07:30AM (#48292445)

            Why is there such an opposition to businesses changing hours with the seasons, rather than changing the clocks?

            Let's see...

            Businesses change their hours twice a year, more or less at the times we now change the clocks...

            Or we change the clocks...

            Sounds like basically the same thing in terms of annoyance value (trivial), since if YOUR business changes hours, you'll still have to adjust your sleep schedule to deal with the new hours.

            In other words, six of one, half dozen of the other....

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by aliquis ( 678370 )

          So above the arctic circle they shouldn't go to school at all in the mid of the winters? =P

        • by pjbgravely ( 751384 ) <pjbgravely2NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday November 01, 2014 @09:36PM (#48290765) Homepage Journal
          I would love to see the opposite, there is way too much daylight in the summer, but very little night sky for someone trapped in first shift like I. In the winter it would be nice to have at least an hour of sunlight when you get home for snowblowing.

          In the summer it would be nice to have some dark before bed. I have been forced to sleep a few hours after work so I can get some time in the dark each day.
        • I'm an amateur astronomer, I want as many hours of darkness in the evening as I can get.
      • by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @08:25PM (#48290435)

        I hear a lot of complaining about daylight savings time, but I really don't hear much in the way of support in favor of it.

        That's because people tend to be loud if they don't like something but tend not to say much if they either like it or don't care. After all - what's the point of cheering for DST since that is what we already have? Yea for the status quo?

        Personally I wish we would go to Daylight Saving Time year around. I want as much time with sunlight after work as possible. When we shift back to standard time I go to work when it's dark and come home when it is dark. With DST I would at least get an hour or so of daylight in the winter.

        • I have the option of working 7-3 or 10-6 (or anything in between). More businesses need this flexibility! It would also lessen the peaks in traffic. It would also nullify any benefit of DST.

          I used to work a 15 minute walk from the beach. I would have an early morning swim before work in summer. :)

      • I hear a lot of complaining about daylight savings time, but I really don't hear much in the way of support in favor of it. That inclines me to believe that people really don't support it, but because it's not completely horrible the movement to abolish it hasn't managed to gain that much traction.

        Observer bias. One of things people struggle to deal with is identifying if something is good or bad based on complaints. Complainers are vocal. Supporters are typically just happy to sit by and be along for the ride.

        Then there's demographics. In my city daylight savings time has an incredible amount of support, so that's all I hear about. Yet every time the debate comes up we lose due to all the farmers and country boys out west who are against it because (insert strange reason like cows not coping with ch

    • DST or the people who constantly whine about it.

      They may constantly complain, but they only go berserk twice a year.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )
      I care about it even less now that I don't have to change my own clocks. I barely notice it now.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:25PM (#48289689)

    I like the extra sunlight in the evening...

    Then wake up earlier! Futzing around with the clock doesn't change the length of the day. I loose a little more respect for the entire human race every year when I have to hear "more sunlight in the evening" again.

    • by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:38PM (#48289747) Homepage Journal

      I like the extra sunlight in the evening...

      Then wake up earlier! Futzing around with the clock doesn't change the length of the day. I loose a little more respect for the entire human race every year when I have to hear "more sunlight in the evening" again.

      Umm... that doesn't change the time when people get off work. The reason most people want more light at the end of the day is so they don't have to drive home in the dark.

      • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @07:31PM (#48290107) Journal

        Umm... that doesn't change the time when people get off work. The reason most people want more light at the end of the day is so they don't have to drive home in the dark.

        Then change work hours.

        If that time shift is something that we really want, as a society, then that shouldn't be too hard. Heck, I've known businesses, churches, and other entities that had "summer hours" anyway, even with the clock shift.

        Or heck, legislate a shift in work hours. It's hardly more oppressive than legislating capricious changes in the freakin' clock

        • by Rakarra ( 112805 )

          Or heck, legislate a shift in work hours. It's hardly more oppressive than legislating capricious changes in the freakin' clock

          Legislating a shift in work hours is absolutely impossible, so it's certainly not more difficult than daylight savings time. And that's partially because daylight savings time is already done.

    • by ranton ( 36917 )

      I like the extra sunlight in the evening...

      Then wake up earlier! Futzing around with the clock doesn't change the length of the day. I loose a little more respect for the entire human race every year when I have to hear "more sunlight in the evening" again.

      What kind of moron doesn't understand that some people have set work hours and it can't just shift their schedule however they want. Waking up early doesn't give you more sunlight at the end of your work day if you have to stay in the office until 5:30-6pm. And if you hate mornings, more sunlight in the morning is not a substitute.

      I could care less about sunlight in the evening, and also think it is a silly complaint, but your condemnation of it is far more overboard than their silly request.

    • by jxander ( 2605655 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @07:00PM (#48289909)

      The sticking point is work. Any random Joe working 9 - 5 is going to get off work at 5, regardless of when he woke up.

  • Helping retailers (Score:5, Informative)

    by jd659 ( 2730387 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:26PM (#48289691)
    Interesting interview on the reasons behind the DST was on NPR with the author of "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time". "The upcoming shift in the daylight-saving time change is designed to help retailers — and is a substitute for a genuine energy policy, says author Michael Downing. Congress moved the time shift up this year. Melissa Block talks with Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time." http://www.npr.org/templates/s... [npr.org] No DST is fine with me.
    • by TapeCutter ( 624760 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @07:38PM (#48290169) Journal
      Here in Melbourne, DST means my street is clogged with the parked cars of beachgoers in the evening, and yeah it definitely keeps the small shopping strip alive. Like many people in IT I have flexible working hours, neither I, or my boss, or his boss, gives a flying fuck what the clock says. However the vast majority of workers are not so fortunate, for them it's fixed hours or nothing. So if these people want to change the clock so more daylight is available after they knock off why should I care?
  • Against it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ATMAvatar ( 648864 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:27PM (#48289701) Journal
    Daylight Saving Time is an awful idea, compounded by the fact that the rules change from location to location and can change from year to year. In computer systems, it gets even worse when you consider that different systems have different rules still, and talking to two of them at the same time can lead to irreconcilable differences which cause all kinds of headaches.
    • On the contrary, it's bad design that leads to irreconcilable differences which cause all kinds of headaches.

      Correctly handling time in computers is trivial from a (new) design POV, simply store everything in UTC and translate it to whatever the local display requires, if the original local version of the UTC timestamp is important then you also store the tz offset and dst flag, best to do this anyway since unimportant things have a habit of becoming important soon after release.

      Unfortunately the kind
  • Simple: Dumb (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:31PM (#48289713)

    Only the egotistical mind of a politician can fathom the ridiculous idea of starting and stopping the earths spin twice a year

    • Re:Simple: Dumb (Score:4, Informative)

      by westlake ( 615356 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @09:07PM (#48290649)

      Only the egotistical mind of a politician can fathom the ridiculous idea of starting and stopping the earths spin twice a year.

      Standard Time, Zone Time, is a creation of the railroad.

      Before then, people kept local solar time, with clocks changing about every twenty-five miles or so east and west.

      Twenty-five miles is also about as far as you can travel comfortably in one day on foot, horseback, by stagecoach or the Erie barge canal.

  • by cruff ( 171569 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:32PM (#48289717)
    A real pain in the ass it is, we should abolish it completely.
  • Make DST standard (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:33PM (#48289727)

    Make it DST year round. Daylight in the evening is much better than the mornings. You're going to work in the morning anyhow, who cares how light it is? You get out of work and still have daylight left, awesome.

  • For a saner alternative to Eastern Daylight Time, I use Atlantic Standard Time. AST is the same as EDT year around, and many countries (e.g. Dominican Republic) don't observe Atlantic Daylight Time.

    http://www.timeanddate.com/tim... [timeanddate.com]

    Although I use AST at home, my schedule is still heavily influenced by everyone else outside. Go figure.

  • by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:40PM (#48289763)

    To the overall economy ?

    I am personally aware of it forcing the update replacing of no longer supported operating systems in solutions that were date time dependent. (Everything pre XP/ various versions of unix and I would guess lots of old mainframe code). But that isn't from daylight savings time but rather the legislature playing games with when it went into effect.

    As far as I can see now it just screws with people's sleep cycles and schedules to no particular effect.

    P.S. I have heard the safer for the children argument concerning going and coming to school. It seems it would be simpler to change the schools hours of operation.

  • Against it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:42PM (#48289779)

    Statistics show that the heart attack rate shows a small but significant peak following the weekend DST is activated. You're fucking with the biorhythm of people in ways that are only rivaled by forcing them to travel from east to west coast twice a year and having to adjust the time accordingly. And for what? "More sunlight hours" in the Summer (because, yes, the NORMAL time is the time you have in WINTER!)? So more time that I have to deal with screen glare, yeah, that's what I want!

    4 out of 5 people are "night" people, i.e. people who have less trouble adapting to staying up later than they have to getting up early. And why the fuck are we catering to the 20%?

  • No? Because that is why we started daylight savings time. To save candles. Because people would come in early in the day or stay later at night and you'd have to light a candle which could be expensive if everyone was doing it.

    But... we don't use candles anymore. We use LED lightbulbs and nuclear fucking power.

    So... DST is obsolete. Retire it.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @06:48PM (#48289829)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by AJ Mexico ( 732501 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @07:01PM (#48289925) Homepage
    Unlike most of the US Eastern time zone, DST causes Floridians to have to get up in the dark. That's completely ridiculous. The whole premise of daylight saving time is that you have an extra hour of daylight in the morning, which Florida never had. Because Florida is the southernmost state in the Eastern time zone, and also because Florida is west of most of the Eastern time zone, 6:00 AM EDT is ALWAYS before sunrise everywhere in Florida. Florida needs DST about like we need snowplows. My first choice would be for the Florida legislature to exempt Florida from DST (which they can do). The rest of the country can do whatever. I'm also heartily sick of changing the time on like a dozen gadgets twice a year. I have seen one plan for year-round DST which I can support. It also re-aligned the time zones, putting Florida into the central time zone. This results in Florida staying at GMT +5, which is the same as EST now. For most of the country, DST might make a certain amount of sense -- in the summer. In the spring, fall or winter, it's just silly. The rationale that DST saves energy is probably obsolete -- especially in Florida. In the old days, the primary energy consumption was lights. Now it's air conditioners. When people come home early in the afternoon, it's hot, and they run the AC more. It's very likely DST is wasting energy. DST has picked up a weird constituancy over the years. Many people have never lived without it. A lot of people believe either literally or emotionally that DST is responsible for nice spring weather and longer summer days. Belive it or not, the days were as long, and the weather as nice without federal legislation.
  • abolish it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by johnrpenner ( 40054 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @07:02PM (#48289929) Homepage

    the theoretical amount it saves is outweighed by the recurring adjustment cost it incurs.

    they should string the guy by his toenails who invented this ridiculous aberation.

  • Where I stand... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by acroyear ( 5882 ) <jws-slashdot@javaclientcookbook.net> on Saturday November 01, 2014 @07:36PM (#48290151) Homepage Journal

    ...is in a place where, after 15 years of /., I am sick and tired of having this very same, and pointless (since nobody ever changes anybody's minds here), discussion twice a year, every year, like clockwork.

    • by westlake ( 615356 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @09:18PM (#48290693)

      ...is in a place where, after 15 years of /., I am sick and tired of having this very same, and pointless (since nobody ever changes anybody's minds here), discussion twice a year, every year, like clockwork.

      I think a poster from Melbourne had it about right.

      DST serves the needs of those who work fixed hours and the shops, parks, theaters, etc., that benefit from their patronage. The geek doesn't picture himself as being part of this class, and so he whines about the change every year.

  • by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @08:36PM (#48290501)
    I have analog clocks in three strategic locations in my studio apartment: bathroom, kitchen and office. I can look up and see the time from anywhere in my apartment. When DST was roughly six months, I switched out the AA batteries before changing the time. Alas, Congress changed DST to eight months. Some clocks drift more so than others between battery changes. PITA!
  • by oDDmON oUT ( 231200 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @08:44PM (#48290545)

    Studies have concluded DST is more expensive than standard time in energy costs (http://www.nber.org/papers/w14429.pdf), the last rule change, extending it by another month was estimated to have cost the US between $550M and $1B and may adversely affect accidents and medical conditions.

    Do away with the time shift and set it to standard permanently, or set it to saving time, but stop the incessant back and forth, it's just plain silly.

  • by stajp ( 2588149 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @09:19PM (#48290705)

    ... and there is no answer.

    My vote - ditch the daylight savings time, and ditch the time zones. Lets make some timezone global, and everyone uses that timezone. I wrote a comment in Treehugger (http://www.treehugger.com/health/forget-just-getting-rid-daylight-saving-time-lets-get-rid-time-zones-and-go-local.html) 8 months ago, on the previous clock move discussion, and most of it I'll copy here:

    For the last 5000 years humans are thought that sun is high in the sky at midday. Only way to detect time were sundials (even if old Romans had hourglass or something like that, they must be watched over constantly so they were not an option for reliable timekeeping). In the last 500 years we have mechanical clocks and we defined parts of day more precisely - hours, minutes, seconds. Timezones are here only in the last 150 years, and daylight savings time in the last 70 (and most people despise daylight savings time as it's not natural).

    And daylight savings time is the argument against keeping timezones. Humans chose time measurement according to Earth rotation around the sun. On spring and autumn solstice (equinox) there is 12 hours of light and 12 hours on night. Why didn't they chose 12 as a number of hours, and not 10? Or 8? But as it is, we have hours, minutes and seconds, and our whole physics and other sciences revolve around those units.

    So what is time? Or local time? It's just a number which we, humans, decided on. There is another example of time we humans decided: Unix timestamp or epoch. Used in computers it measures number of seconds since January 1st 1970 at 00:00:00 UTC.

    What does daylight savings time has with it that's an argument for making time global? The answer: why are we moving clocks back and forth, to accommodate a system which should help us, to natural change of how long does a day and night last. Because our laws, work contracts and everything similar (again, human tools which could be changed) state the beginning and ending of an activity. And instead of changing those, we chose to move the clock?!?!?

    I agree, in global time nobody would like to go to bed at 14:00, and go to work at 23:00, because everybody thinks that 14:00 is in the afternoon and 23:00 is in the middle of the night. But for some, if we used a global time system, that 14:00 would be middle of the night, and 23:00 would be the morning. 14 is just a number, a tool. For those whose time would become global, the number would stay the same, for others it would change. But everything would change - Google calendar could not expect that 13 o'clock is time for lunch because in your region lunch is now at 4:00 (and in reality it's somewhere around noon)

    And there is another reason to change to global time real soon - space travel. When first colonist go to Moon, Mars and other planets in our solar system, how should they measure time. Locally? To the clock of some nation (first to colonize)? Should they use an Earth second or a Moon or Mars second? Should they still use a second, but set up a different number of seconds for a minute or an hours, and then use a standard 24 hours/day calculation?

    We need a global system of time NOW. Used reasonably, with changes in work laws, school calendars etc. But we need IT. Is it Swatch Internet Time, is it UTC time or anything else.

    Forces of habits are tough to beat. Only loss in global time is that 12 o'clock is not high noon, with a sun high in the sky. Oh wait, even now that's not the case if you're in a big timezone!

    So forget the dayligh savings time, forget the timezones, forget that the time on your watch has a special meaning. You'll wake up in the morning, you'll go to sleep in the evening.

  • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @11:06PM (#48291057) Homepage

    Then why is it still the law? Politicians are, above all things, good at figuring out what their constituents want. I suspect that the reality is, most people are either neutral, or do like it. Those who don't like it, complain loudly twice a year; those who do like it, just stay quiet because they already have a system they like.

  • by johnlcallaway ( 165670 ) on Saturday November 01, 2014 @11:45PM (#48291187)

    I lived the first 45 years of my life in states that followed daylight savings time. I didn't like it when I had kids, because it seemed for a couple of weeks after the switch, they were all messed up.

    Now I live in Arizona, where we leave the damn clocks alone, and I love it. It's a minor inconvenience occasionally when relatives back east are three hours ahead instead of two, but it's great not having to deal with the time shift directly.

    As for people wanting DST because they get more daylight in the evening ... why don't you just get up earlier. It's the same amount of daylight either way, it's only YOUR schedule that doesn't allow you to enjoy it.

  • by Air-conditioned cowh ( 552882 ) on Sunday November 02, 2014 @02:38AM (#48291609)
    Why even mess with it? A clock is an instrument to indicate the time of day. Do I want a ruler where everything is offset by 1cm or a speedo that is offset by 10mph? Of course not. Instruments should do their best to tell things the way it is.

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