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76 Comments
- RawShark, on 10/12/2007, -3/+58Oh noes, it's the dreaded y2k7 bug.
- trghpy, on 10/12/2007, -14/+56Day light savings time is out dated, can't we dump it already!
It was created just to kick lazy people out of bed earlier in order to save on lamp oil.
if you want to save on lamp oil, get your fat ass up earlier, don't change the ***** clock and say its good. - Wullie, on 10/12/2007, -9/+31Daylight saving is vital in the UK, if we did not have it young children would be walking to and from school in complete darkness, so to say it is outdated is complete joke!
- joebloom, on 10/12/2007, -12/+32I agree DST is ridiculous.
Time should be the same everywhere, but the different parts of the world recognize 'day time' or 'night time' within differnt time periods.
My wise words for the day. - Eldoo77, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17Why not just change the start time of school during the summer months?
- wvdavis, on 10/12/2007, -5/+21"Day light savings time is out dated"...
"One of the major reasons given for observing DST is energy conservation. Theoretically, the amount of residential electricity needed in evening hours is dependent both on when the sun sets and when people go to bed. Because people tend to observe the same bedtime year-round, by artificially moving sunset one hour later, the amount of energy used is theoretically reduced. A 1975 United States Department of Transportation study showed that DST would theoretically reduce the country's electricity usage by 1% from March to April, if implemented during these months. These numbers have been supported in Mexico, which began implementing daylight saving time in 1996. Evaluations show national savings of 0.7% of national electric consumption (1.3 billion kWh (TWh)) and reduction of peak load by 500 MW."
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_light_savings_time#Rationales_for_DST
Prices for oil have gotten higher, and the world population has grown with little development or research in finding alternative sources. It is my opinion that saving energy will never be "outdated". - ldkronos, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15"Oh noes, it's the dreaded y2k7 bug."
Well, as lame as it is, this DST thing has already caused me more headache as a programmer than the y2k bug did (which required zero effort on my part)
Here's a problem I experienced recently with one of our web apps.
We have a web event calendar where people can schedule events (for far into the future). When people input an event, they specify the date/time it will begin/end. The application then converts the date/time into a unix timestamp and stores it in the database. Later, when an event is being viewed, the timestamp is converted back to a textual date/time.
The conversion from local time to timestamp is done via PHP functions, which uses the systems timezone file. The OS patch to fix this problem simply updates the timezone file and everything should automatically work.
This is fine and dandy for most things, but I ran into one small glitch. For any events that are scheduled between the new start of DST and the old start of DST (roughly a 3 week period), if they were created BEFORE the patch was applied, they are now off by 1 hour AFTER the patch is applied. (the same would be true of anything in the week or so between the new and old END of DST also)
The 1 hour difference is simple enough, and I might not have even noticed...or if I had, I probably would have just blamed it on user error when entering the data. However, this caused a strange side effect. The application built a secondary index to simplify searching for events. The index consisted of the event_id and the starting timestamp truncated to midnight. Of course, for those events in that 3 week period that were created before the patch was applied, they now had an index timestamp that was actually 1 AM. Of course, this caused events to mysteriously disappear from the calendar. You could search for them, but not see them when browsing.
I wasted a good couple of hours on this problem (thinking at first that it was isolated to a single event) before I finally did an analysis of the entire index and discovered that almost all events in that 3 week period were wrong. Then it instantly dawned on me what had happened. - Cymsdale, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12@broomett
I dugg you down. Not because I disagree with you, but because the indignant look I visualize being on your face when you view the negative digg number makes me smile. - moonhead, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Welcome to Australia, it seems every second year one of the states is changing the dates around daylight savings, usually only by a week as well. Most of the time you have to decide if it worth the effort.
- ray901, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11what Eldoo77 said - why should the all people and businesses in an entire nation change there times so children can get to school without walking in the dark - simply change the school start time. It does not make sense.
- hixsonj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Yeah I know about Wikipedia, but I don't want to have to type in the URL! Give me convenience or give me death!
- Rickard, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12I'm from Sweden and I remember walking to and from school in complete darkness lots of times when I was a kid. What's the problem? By the way, we have DST just like everyone else.
- cybrjoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8huh? DST is hardly a US thing. we're just changing the US DST schedule. every other country has their own, and we're not messing with them.
- Jaxim, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I say we make day light savings time into standard time and keep that time year round. I'd rather have it stay lighter towards the end of the day year round.
- BIGmog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Japan is the only major country that doesn't use DST. I lived there for 2 years and it sucks when the sun comes up at 5am in the summer time yet it's dark by 6pm. It's also burning hot outside by 10am. DST is designed to give more daylight hours to people with typical schedules. Now I work nights so it doesn't help me at all.
- Jaxim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5why not keep day light savings year round and make the kids wake up 1 hour LATER. I'd rather have more daylight when I get out of work, than before or during.
- CEHatTYPEPAD, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Japan is the only major country that doesn't use DST. "
WRONG (based on a reasonable interpretation of "major"). http://www.worldtimezone.com/daylight.htm - damonlab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@trghpy
"Day light savings time is out dated, can't we dump it already!
It was created just to kick lazy people out of bed earlier in order to save on lamp oil.
if you want to save on lamp oil, get your fat ass up earlier, don't change the ***** clock and say its good."
Actually, you have got things backwards. You are against the time in the winter when we are not practicing daylight saving time. Daylight saving time gives us the opportunity to enjoy sunny summer evenings by moving our clocks an hour forward in the spring. I would prefer daylight saving time year round. To this end, our government is increasing the number of days per year that we practice daylight saving time. - theOster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5joebloom:
"Time should be the same everywhere"
mr. einstein might disagree ;) - Inverno, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4As of right now I have no clue what time it is in Japan, my hunch is late night. I think the UK is in the afternoon somewhere now. I don't really know. Sure, I could figure out what time it is here in relation to GMT and then do some base twelve math to figure out the actual times around the world.
Thought Experiment:
You wake up at 23:00 to the sun rise. You have a phone call scheduled at 4:00 with a business man in Tokyo. You laugh as you realize the old time system would make you wonder if it's 4:00 his time or yours. You commute to the office and make the phone call at the unambiguous, agreed upon time.
I don't need the sunrise to coincide with any particular number, but I would like to be able to set up phone calls with my family in Brazil without opening my timezone map so we can 'translate' time. - wvdavis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Then why not change the clock and keep it that way." Because the earth not only rotates while traveling around the sun, but while traveling around the sun light from the sun moves from the northern to southern hemisphere. we are playing with time to maximize its light.
- keenada, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3No.
It's because people take their time with them.
Europeans moved to North America and were used to 6AM being *approximately* sun rise. When the sun came up they associate that with roughly 6AM. So, the time system here (in North/South America) adapted to their wishes, and eventually the entire system was formalized with GMT.
This is mainly an issue in countries that spawned from the former colonial powers such as England, France, Spain, et al. If you go to a country that has cut a majority of ties to the "Western" world (i.e. Cuba), and our time standards, you see that work schedules, bed times, etc. all change. Their mentality is more-so "It's 4AM but I'm having fun, so what?". Far less regimented and standardized. And no, I'm not just theorizing, I've seen it. - l3thal, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Yes, here in Portugal its needed for that too!
When i was a young kid i just knew that the change in clocks were so we didn't go to school in night time (and I think that in Portugal the daylight time is more than in UK). Only later i knew that the start of daylight saving was too to save lamp oil. - blackkbot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I'm pretty sure China is a "major" country. Apparently you don't know what he was talking about.
- cuoops, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_savings_time
- mattshoppes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As others have pointed out.. if we stick to ST (ie EST)... it is light at 5am in the summer and dark at 6pm. If, on ther other hand, all year round we stuck to DT (ie EDT)... and made that standard time, I think I could get very used to that.
- franksands, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Useful resources to avoid Daylight Savings problems:
timezone editor for windows: http://www.softshape.com/cham/manual/tzedit.htm
timezone update for Java: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp (JDK US DST Timezone Update Tool - 1.0) - aramova, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I hope everyone has discussed this change already. Most *nix package upgraders (bsd ports trees, etc) and WSUS should handle the hard work OS wise, but applications do need to be discussed.
If your company or project is not already doing so, look into what the packages you're using are doing about this. Planing ahead is the only thing you can do to solve this, and the effort to fix it before it breaks is worth it. - kingfelix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Japan is the only major country that doesn't use DST."
That is clearly false. Notable exceptions to your assumption are India and South Korea.
http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/g.html - grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Storing times in an agreed timezone (eg GMT) is of course a good idea. But it does not solve the problem.
Let me show by example:
My timezone here is GMT+10 (+1 when DST which is now).
Imagine a database that holds appointments.
If I wanted to make an appointment for 27 Jan 2007 14:00 local time, I would store it in the database as 27 Jan 2007 03:00am GMT. Eastern US is at GMT+5, so if someone there was to look up my appointment, it would tell them it is at 27 Jan 2007 8:00am their time.
But what happens if after I have stored 3am in the database, a new end date for daylight savings in my local timezone is announced in effect from 25 Jan 2007 (forget the fact it is the still the middle of summer for us, this is just an example for which you can use different dates).
Using the new rule, my appointment should have been stored at GMT 4am instead of GMT 3am, and when I now look in my appointments, it will now say it starts at 13:00.
Of course, if your database just records transactions or whatever and never has to deal with future dates, you are not affected. If your database on the other hand collects information about future dates, then this becomes a big issue. - pauleric, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2naimesh: "But question here is why can't children go to school one hour earlier in winter rather than changing the clock?"
Because the parents who have to convince their teenagers to get up one hour earlier, are the ones who vote. - aramova, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5This is true, it has some valid uses in some cases, I think the majority of the issue with this change in the US and Canada is what's the cost/value of the whole change?
The cost is a massive change to untold number of computer systems, legacy systems are bound to be hard hit, and god knows there are more then enough of those around.
I'm still a bit unclear of the value of the change though, and what it's impact is to warrant the cost involved in making this change. - pixelmixer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2shoot, change the School hours to be one hour earlier? About 10 years ago in grade school I was waking myself up at 5:00 AM just so i could catch the bus at 5:30... move that an hour forward and you'd have most of the entire country getting ready at 4:00 AM anyhow. That includes the parents that have to take their kids to school or wake them up so they can catch the bus. If you look at it from their point of view, its better to just move the clock with DST... Since theres a HUGE chunk, maybe even a mass majority, of people that are involved with the school system.
- joerao, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is more of a Java issue then a particular issue with the RDBMS. Take a look at this note from SUN: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Intl/USDST/
- bjwest, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1ldkronos:
Have you thought of using UTC in your application? I'm assuming each user had a login, therefor some type of setting data. Add a field for users timezone (utc+- format), then bounce that against the UTC formatted timestamp in the event database. This way, they can easily share events with users in different timezones with the time/date shown in correct local time. - geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1err UTC.
- geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1*) Your database should rarely be in anything other than UMT/GMT time - convert everything for the UI display.
*) If you use java, use Joda time, they update the daylight savings time with an extra file which you can download and import on the fly, plus the API is much better than the Java API.
http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/ - Bluejaye, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't really care about the database or any software problems. I'm still mad that this is messing with Halloween. My zombie costume that I wear handing out candy just won't look scary in daylight.
- ldkronos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Have you thought of using UTC in your application?"
UTC doesn't fix anything (I'm already using a unix timestamp, which is essentially the same thing). When a user goes to the page and says "event starts at 6PM" you need to translate that 6PM local time into UTC (or in my case...a unix timestamp). That conversion, of course, is done with the timezone files. The problem is, when the timezone file changes (like in this case) any previous conversions for the effected date range will be incorrect. Once the timezone file is patched, when you convert them back into local time, they will be off.
The only durable solution would be to store the user entered data in the database without converting. Of course, that makes things like searching an absolute pain. Or you could store the converted and unconverted date, and then periodically validate that the conversion is the same. Stuff like that. However, unless we start seeing the rules for DST changing every year, that more trouble than it's worth. The data's already been fixed, and there will be no more problems with this going forward (until the next time congress passes stupid legislation like this) - janus_god, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why even record transactions in a timezone other than GMT. If you store everything in GMT it a simpler process of dumping the logs and adjusting your transactions forward or back to meet the timezone you need.
- cmfrolick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1One thing a lot of people may not even think about is PBX's (the proprietary kind, not Asterisk) rely on many things that are time based, and they also will be dramatically affected by this change, and not so easy to fix. At least with Y2k they were hyping and fixing it for more than a year, we really don't have that kind of time left.
- crawdad62, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I live in Indiana and up until last year we never changed our clocks. We were EST in the winter and CST in summer. Honestly that was probably the best because we now follow EST all year. In the summer it doesn't get dark until almost 10:00pm (which I actually like but some don't) and if we followed CST it would be dark by 4:30pm in the winter (which would really suck).
Bring it on! I have a Wave-cepter watch. I'll get the correct time somehow! :-) - Hazardc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Yup worthless lazy *****, who works full time while putting himself through flight school/college and still managing to invest some money on the side
i just happen to think school that early in the morning is retarded to begin with, and a large portion of scientists who study the human brain tend to agree.
have fun with life buddy! - ELWOOD_BLUES, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Here is what I have had to patch and test because of DST '07---
Windows
Solaris
Java
BEA
Config Files
PeopleSoft on-line changes
DB2 Connect patches
On a dozen servers.
Today I got a call about MQ. Thought I was going to scream till I learned the update is not related to Y2K07. - Maceart, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1DST is not a smart idea. In a world in which standards are essential, (take the metric system, for example) the United States needs to wake up and dump such a strange system that was made by Benjamin Franklin so farmers can save energy and go to sleep later.
DST is a piece of crap. Enough with the changing of times as humans see fit. Stick with one already! - solarpowered, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Use UTC in your apps.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1lets just move the clock ahead or back 30 min and just call it quits for daylight savings time, Its a pain in my *****! -borat
- FZero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Call some brazilian programmers to work for you. Due to idiotic laws, Brazil's DST dates change EVERY ***** YEAR. Hooray for politics!
- ColdChilli, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1this will probably cause more problems than Y2K, mostly because most programs that rely on time and are embedded systems never expected Daylight savings time to change.
- SEN5241, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2WTF? Saving .5% of our energy usage is going to avert our extinction?
Someone needs to get off their high-horse and pull their head out of their ass. -
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