comp.os.linux.networking

On Sun, 16 Mar 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.networking, in
article , EricThompson wrote:

>Our current time keeping has come from an ancient time when every
>area's people had one small little geographic area of the world to
>deal with. So even now, everyone wants to have an 8 AM and an 8 PM
>that mean essentially the same thing, no matter where they are in
>the world.

How soon people forget about the Soviet Union, where the official time
was that of Moscow (37.6E), from Kaliningrad (280 KM/175 Miles North of
Warsaw at 20.5E) to Uelen (about 160 miles/260 KM Northwest of Nome at
169.9W) which would otherwise be 11 timezones (roughly -1 to +10 from
Moscow) - in practice, this was mainly observed in national activities
like the railroad, airlines and broadcasting.

>It's quite a luxury, and we're paying a price for it now in the
>difficulty to which this little discussion alludes. We now have a
>world economy to deal with, and travel that within hours takes us to
>"other days."

International broadcasters seem to have no problem using "GMT" (sic)
as do multi-national file systems.

>Maybe it's time to trash geocentric time keeping, and actually replace
>it with something absolute. How about something that gels better with
>the metric system, with consistent subunits of tenths. Everyone in
>the world would just know that daylight in Los Angeles was between the
>"hours" of 45 and 65, and at that same time, it was night in Amsterdam.

That assumes that people know the approximate longitude of all sites
they are dealing with, and the effects of latitude on the time of
sunrise and sunset. That ought to be interesting - especially when you
throw in the idea of corrected city names (where is Constantinople???).
Then you get into the idea of holidays, never mind what days of the week
are the "day of rest". UTC/GMT has existed for many years, but the
average person has little or no knowledge of it.

>What would be wrong with that?

It would certainly be a boon for the watch and clock manufacturers of
the world. How many watches do you own? How many clocks? Don't forget
the timers for the pool filter, lawn sprinkler, energy-saving
thermostats, et.al. What about the times of the different telephone or
electric rates?

If the sun takes 24 hours to circle the globe, why are there 39
"current" times around the world - ranging from -11:00 to +14:00
(including 13 zones where the time is not an integer multiple of 60
minutes from UTC) and that doesn't even include daylight savings times.
Why do you think there are 396 official timezones? Why do you think
the rules for daylight savings times differ - both between North and
South, as well as the amount of time shifts (did you know that
Australia/Lord_Howe changes 30 minutes between "summer" and "winter"
times, as does Pacific/Rarotonga - do you even know where those
places are)? Can you suggest why Enderbury and Kiritimati use a
zone time of +13:00 and +14:00 respectively (hint: where is the capital
of that nation)? Can you say why Chile extended DST for three weeks
this year only?

>D. Stussy wrote:

>> "Jack Snodgrass" wrote

>>> I wish that they would have just gone up 30 minutes and left it there...
>>> no nore DST... just split the difference and added 30 minutes to
>>> everything.

What about us who don't use DST (major portions of Arizona, all of
Hawaii)?

>> Actually, that would be worse - as our U.S. hour would fall on everyone
>> else's half-hour.

Oh, you mean like the time zones in India? What about Venezuela or
Labrador or Newfoundland, or central Australia?

Old guy