Stop Screwing with the Time!

[Danoff]

Ok, I know that we have a thread complaining about Daylight Saving Time (actually it complains about standard time). But I want to make a series of more general complaints.

1) Standard time is completely useless. We should be on daylight saving time all year. There is no need for it to be light out at 6am and dark at 4:45pm. And don't tell me it's because of school children. We don't all have to change our clocks at an agreed point just so that schools can have the luxury of opening at the same time year round. We should not have to try to remember "Spring Back" and "Fall Forward" every year. I hate changing my clocks, I hate that it gets dark at 5pm and I hate that I have to screw with my body clock twice per year.

2) Leap Seconds are completely useless. You may not be aware of leap seconds, but I'll tell you about them anyway. About once per year some group of scientists get together and determine that the earth's rotation wasn't quite as expected for the year and we need to introduce a second or take a second away (or not do anything) at the end of the year to adjust our clocks so that noon can take place at the same time every day.

Seriously?!? We have to introduce random, sometimes nonexistent discontinuities in our time system so that we can keep noon to within a second of noon! Are you out of your minds? Do you know what would happen if we didn't introduce leap seconds? Not a damned thing! Noon would drift by (AT MOST) 1 second per year. Call me in 3600 years when noon is at 1pm, then we'll talk about making an adjustment. In the meantime, let's not bother with leap seconds.

I know it doesn't sound like much to you, but making a time system discontinuous screws with software like you wouldn't believe - especially when you're relying on high precision timing, and especially when it doesn't get announced until a few months before it happens. It screws with it so much that in the biz we use a separate time system altogether - one that doesn't incorporate leap seconds. It's roughly 66 seconds (at the moment) behind your time system. But in order to coordinate events to the local time we have to adjust by the 66 seconds (maybe 67 by the end of the year) - which is a ROYAL pain.

3) Leap "years" can stay - Roughly speaking leap "years" skip a day every 4 years. Not doing this would cause the seasons to drift by 30 days every (roughly) 120 years. 100 years may sound like a long time, but to shift the seasons by a month every hundred years is actually a fairly big deal. Couple with with two very important things - that we can predict leap "years" perfectly going forward (which means we can write software to account for it), and that it only happens once every 4 years - means that they're tolerable. What's not tolerable is calling them leap years. We're not skipping years here! It's not like we're gonna repeat 2009 or skip 2010. It's a leap day! Call it a leap day!

4) AM/PM is useless - Can we seriously not count past 12 people? 24 hour clocks make time conversions so much easier.

5) Time zones are annoying - Have we done the math on this one? I get that you might want to know where the sun is in the part of the country you're calling. But is that convenient enough to make you memorize how many hours apart you are from everyplace in the world and do the mental math yourself? On a damned 12 hour clock? It's possible time zones are worthwhile, but I'm not convinced. Even if they are worthwhile do we need to keep track of them to within an hour? Can the US not be on one time standard?

[/rant]

 

[TS]

Come to Arizona, no springing forward/falling back here!

 

[Danoff]

Come to Arizona, no springing forward/falling back here!

You're still stuck with standard time - which is worse. I don't even like having standard time for a few months, let alone all year. But you're right, there are places I can go to get away from the shift in time standards - which makes it all that much more stupid that we do it. It's so confusing! I live right next to arizona, but I can't ever be quite sure what time it is there.

 

[FoolKiller]

You're still stuck with standard time - which is worse. I don't even like having standard time for a few months, let alone all year. But you're right, there are places I can go to get away from the shift in time standards - which makes it all that much more stupid that we do it. It's so confusing! I live right next to arizona, but I can't ever be quite sure what time it is there.

You should have seen how those of us near Indiana had to do it before they finally agreed to time changes statewide. Sure, across the state line they changed but that was just because most of them worked in Kentucky or vice versa. Drive a few hours in though and you start having to check what the local area you are going to is doing.

I agree with all your points. The fact that most people don't even know leap seconds exist and that they can go either direction tells me that they are truly the least important aspect of time changes. The only issue I can see with dumping them, and you can probably answer this, is how much affect does that have on things like satellites? I know there are other time issues with satellites as it is so if leap seconds has any effect they could just be worked into that.

And being dark early sucks. I need to clean my inside car windows and check my oil and tire pressure before going out of town after work today, but I have to do it at lunch so I can see without using a flashlight.

 

[Danoff]

The only issue I can see with dumping them, and you can probably answer this, is how much affect does that have on things like satellites? I know there are other time issues with satellites as it is so if leap seconds has any effect they could just be worked into that.

The software that governs satellites is built on the ground years before they are launched. Since there is no way to know what the leap seconds will be in the coming years and it is more complex to implement, satellites have their own clock that runs continuously. On the ground it is necessary to convert the value of the satellite clock to terrestrial time (UTC) which uses leapseconds. This is done to coordinate events on the ground (such as the timing of a signal leaving the spacecraft and arriving at receiver on the ground). Leapseconds only make it more likely that at some point someone will screw up and we'll lose a satellite over it.

 

[Apok]

we'll lose a satellite over it.

Oh no worries we have the tax payers to pay for those...

 

[Omnis]

If we don't adjust time. We will eventually exist outside of the atmosphere's time-space boundaries. Don't you know astrauphysics?

 

[wfooshee]

As for when it gets light or dark, in the 73/74 school year (or was it 72/73?) Nixon put us in DST through the winter because of the energy crisis at the time. So we stood around in the dark waiting for the bus to school. Sunrise was 3rd period. How is that better than getting dark early?

You can't fight the fact that because of the seasons there just ain't enough hours of light during the winter. It's gonna be dark before you want to be in the evening, and longer than you want it to be in the morning.

As for time zones, are you proposing a single worldwide time standard? 13:49 is 13:49 everywhere in the world? Or are you proposing local time standards, perhaps by county, perhaps by state, or by whatever entity decides they want to be in charge? That, by the way, is what we had when railroads made travel fast enough for time differences between locales to matter. If Chicago has one time, and Indianapolis has another, just a few minutes later, then Columbus is later still, and New York is another 1.36 hours later, how the hell do they build a schedule? Thus, time zones.

Another factor is where you are in the time zone. I was born in southeastern Oklahoma, Central time, but the western edge of Central time. In the summer it would still be light towards 9:00 PM. (Sorry, 2100 ) I now live in the Florida panhandle, which everybody (including NBC News in the 2000 election, when they gave Florida to Gore while our polls were still open) thinks is Eastern, but it's not. That part of Florida south of Alabama is on Central time. So I'm in the same time zone I was in as a kid, but on the complete opposite side. I can ride my bicycle a few minutes and be in Eastern time. The sun is almost an hour earlier in everything it does here compared to what I'm used to. It gets light too early, and it gets dark too early. So do we split the time zones in two and go by half-hour increments, or 4 and 15-minutes, just to keep the sun's motion closer to somebody's ideal clock? Whose clock? Yours? Mine? Who decides? A referendum?

As for leap seconds, I could care less. I have some inkling of what they're for, but everything I have that's time-sensitive could care less about a second here or there. My networks get their time from the Internet, which is always right and true , so to me it's a big whatever.

As for leap years, who knows why it's called that. But we have the misfortune of living on a planet whose rotational periods do not exactly coincide with it's revolution about its star. Seasons drift through the calendar, so much so that one year they just cut out 15 days to fix it. Maybe that's where leap comes from; they "lept" 2 weeks and a day into the future?

I don't like going home after work in the dark. But if the clock were adjusted so it was light when I went home, it would have to be dark when I left home in the mornings, simply because in late December it just isn't light long enough during the day.

The difference is also more pronounced the further north you happen to be. Another comparison: There are two major international 24-hour sports car races in the world, at Daytona in late January or early February, and LeMans in June. One of the major differences between those races is that Daytona runs through more dark hours than light, being in the wintertime. LeMans, being much further north, and in June, only has about 3 or 4 hours of total darkness during the 24 hour race. Several hours of twilight and the rest is full day. How would you fix the clocks to change that?

 

[Danoff]

As for when it gets light or dark, in the 73/74 school year (or was it 72/73?) Nixon put us in DST through the winter because of the energy crisis at the time. So we stood around in the dark waiting for the bus to school. Sunrise was 3rd period. How is that better than getting dark early?

You think the whole country has to adjust their clocks so that the school can be saved the trouble of shifting their schedule an hour?

You can't fight the fact that because of the seasons there just ain't enough hours of light during the winter. It's gonna be dark before you want to be in the evening, and longer than you want it to be in the morning.

Trust me, I'm well aware that I can't fight the amount of daylight available. I'm just making the statement that daylight saving time is a preferable standard to standard time. Right now in CA here's the sunrise/sunset:


Sunrise: 6:22am
Sunset: 4:51pm

How is that better than 7:22 to 5:51? How is it better enough to make us all go through the exercise of adjusting twice per year.

As for time zones, are you proposing a single worldwide time standard? 13:49 is 13:49 everywhere in the world? Or are you proposing local time standards, perhaps by county, perhaps by state, or by whatever entity decides they want to be in charge? That, by the way, is what we had when railroads made travel fast enough for time differences between locales to matter. If Chicago has one time, and Indianapolis has another, just a few minutes later, then Columbus is later still, and New York is another 1.36 hours later, how the hell do they build a schedule? Thus, time zones.

Another factor is where you are in the time zone. I was born in southeastern Oklahoma, Central time, but the western edge of Central time. In the summer it would still be light towards 9:00 PM. (Sorry, 2100 ) I now live in the Florida panhandle, which everybody (including NBC News in the 2000 election, when they gave Florida to Gore while our polls were still open) thinks is Eastern, but it's not. That part of Florida south of Alabama is on Central time. So I'm in the same time zone I was in as a kid, but on the complete opposite side. I can ride my bicycle a few minutes and be in Eastern time. The sun is almost an hour earlier in everything it does here compared to what I'm used to. It gets light too early, and it gets dark too early. So do we split the time zones in two and go by half-hour increments, or 4 and 15-minutes, just to keep the sun's motion closer to somebody's ideal clock? Whose clock? Yours? Mine? Who decides? A referendum?

I could maybe go for a worldwide standard, but that seems difficult. A national standard is what I hinted at. Again, I'm not completely convinced that we can get rid of time zones. They're not useless. I'm claiming we haven't thought it through, because they're a major pain.

 

[MrBurnout]

You think the whole country has to adjust their clocks so that the school can be saved the trouble of shifting their schedule an hour?



Trust me, I'm well aware that I can't fight the amount of daylight available. I'm just making the statement that daylight saving time is a preferable standard to standard time. Right now in CA here's the sunrise/sunset:


Sunrise: 6:22am
Sunset: 4:51pm

How is that better than 7:22 to 5:51? How is it better enough to make us all go through the exercise of adjusting twice per year.



I could maybe go for a worldwide standard, but that seems difficult. A national standard is what I hinted at. Again, I'm not completely convinced that we can get rid of time zones. They're not useless. I'm claiming we haven't thought it through, because they're a major pain.

I'm sorry, but have you looked at a world map recently? 💡
Look up Russia, they span across 8 time zones. How fun would you think it would be to go to a country that's just south of you and suddenly have an eight hour time difference? It just doesn't work.

I am just sometimes amazed at the lazyness of americans, how is changing the clock by 1 hour twice a year difficult, if it results in more effective sunlight during the morning/day? For me, at least, it is much easier to wake up when it's not dark outside anymore, even if it means sacrificing a bit of daylight in the evening.

 

[Omnis]

[/rant]

Hater.​

 

[Danoff]

I'm sorry, but have you looked at a world map recently? 💡
Look up Russia, they span across 8 time zones. How fun would you think it would be to go to a country that's just south of you and suddenly have an eight hour time difference? It just doesn't work.

I am just sometimes amazed at the lazyness of americans, how is changing the clock by 1 hour twice a year difficult, if it results in more effective sunlight during the morning/day? For me, at least, it is much easier to wake up when it's not dark outside anymore, even if it means sacrificing a bit of daylight in the evening.

What does this have to do with laziness? We go to standard time for all of 4 months... and we do it for no reason. What's the point?

 

[homeforsummer]

I didn't even realise you guys had daylight savings. I thought it was a concoction created and solely adopted by the British. I feel sorry for you all...

 

[Sureboss]

I've always blamed the Scots for it tbh.

I do find it bemusing when I sometimes wake up really early, like 5-5:30am, and it's bright outside. I'm often thinking, why?

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

Waking up in the dark sucks and getting dark outside early sucks, so we're screwed either way.

 

[wfooshee]

Everbody move to the tropics so it doesn't matter any more. No seasons, very little shift in sun times, problem solved.

Oh, wait. The tropical latitudes are where the least amount of land is, huh? Damn.

You think the whole country has to adjust their clocks so that the school can be saved the trouble of shifting their schedule an hour?

It's not just a school. This school shares its buses with other schools, so the starting times are staggered. Elementary schools start at one time, middle schools another, high schools yet another. Day care, parents' schedules, etc. all revolve around what's needed to accomodate that. Is the whole community supposed to shift everything on the DST change day? (Yes, I know you're wanting to get rid of the DST change day altogether.)

As for CA sunrise/sunset, that's still a very local timetable. Today:
San Diego sunrise 6:15, sunset 4:49
Los Angeles 6:22 and 4:51 (you posted these)
San Fransisco 6:46 and 5:01 (farther west, and much farther north than San Diego)
Seattle 7:09 and 4:37 (Same longitude as San Francisco, but way north.)

Opposite sides of Central time zone:
Panama City, FL 6:05 and 4:48
Arbitrary point in West Texas, same latitude and same time zone as P.C. 7:12 and 5:56

More CA:
Winterhaven, very SE corner: 6:05 and 4:39
Oregon line at the ocean: 7:02 and 4:59

So for you to stay at DST, those folks have to wait till 8 in the morning for sunrise, about an hour later a month and a half from now?

I'm not being argumentative just for the sake of being argumentative. I'd love it if it stayed light longer. All I'd have to do is move to Port St. Joe, 20 minutes away. POOF! Everything's an hour later. But what a miserable place to try to spend my days!! (In my own opinion, of course. There are folks who like it there. Several thousand of them, apparently.)

Oh, one other thing. Is your national time going to include Alaska and Hawaii? Because they're WAY out of line with our daylight schedule!

You have some valid gripes. Measuring time is completely arbitrary, and pretty much based on what's available in summer, having come from agricultural necessities, I think. Don't really have a better answer than what's being done already.

The thing I hate is changing the rules! You wouldn't believe what trouble I had at work when they added 4 weeks to DST a few years back. Servers and applications needing patches, calendars going off an hour for 3 weeks in the spring and one in the fall. Truly more trouble than it was worth, and expensive for businesses everywhere.

 

[Joel]

i think national time zones would suck. I mean Canada has 6 time zones, and i don't think people in Vancouver would like sunrise at 10am.

 

[Sage]

I’m not going to link to them because of language issues, but Penn Jillette has done two videos on DST – search YouTube for “penn hate daylight savings” and it’s the first two results.

 

[Alex.]

"I'll meet you at 8PM" seems pretty simple to me. What would Simplify it, Danoff?

 

[buickgnx88]

I guess saying 20 'o clock or 20 hundred or something.

 

[Danoff]

"I'll meet you at 8PM" seems pretty simple to me. What would Simplify it, Danoff?

It's 10am, I'll meet you at 5pm. How long will it be until we meet?

It's 10, I'll meet you at 17. how long will it be until we meet?

 

[mafia_boy]

For us, it's a little bit different and it's worse. Let me start....

When it's not DST, we have 3 time zones....Eastern (+10), Central (+9.5), and Western (+8). HOWEVER, when we switch to daylight saving (DS from now on in this post) this is what happens.

Eastern: New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Victoria & Tasmania go to +11.
Eastern: Queensland stays at +10, because they don't have DS.
Central: South Australia goes to +10.5...now, they are nearly 1500km WEST OF ME, and they are 1/2hr ahead of me....go figure that one guys.
Central: Northern Territory stays at +9.5 as they don't have DS.
Western: Stays at +8, they got rid of DS permanently after a 3yr trial which ended last year.

And we actually had a national DS system introduced in 1917 for a year, then 1941 for a couple of years (think, both are during world wars), then a trial in Tasmania in 1968 for a few years, then the current system of NSW, VIC, SA, TAS & ACT was introduced in 1971-72. QLD tried DS for one year in 1971 then again from 1990-92, and WA have had four seperate trials with DS in 1974, 1983, 1992 & 2006-08.

So from one little change of clocks, we go from 3 time zones to 5, bit worse than what you guys in the USA have to put up with.

 

[ExigeEvan]

You Standard Time and Summer Time is bad?

How about the old Dublin Mean time , that would have been great if it still existed.

 

[Encyclopedia]

I've always thought the AM/PM thing is so strange. There's 24 hours in a day why not go after that?

 

[buickgnx88]

Well to be fair, there are still plenty of places here that use analog clocks, and it would be very jumbled if all 24 hours were on the clock face.

 

[TheCracker]

Do 12 hour clocks annoy/confuse enough people to actually warrant making them obsolete?

It's an easy enough concept to grasp, it's one of the first things i can remember learning at school. It's not rocket science

 

[TB]

Well to be fair, there are still plenty of places here that use analog clocks, and it would be very jumbled if all 24 hours were on the clock face.

It's not bad, actually.

 

[Danoff]

Do 12 hour clocks annoy/confuse enough people to actually warrant making them obsolete?

Yup. They're pointless and irritating. It's worth taking our lumps now so that we can stop propagating this useless tradition.

 

[buickgnx88]

OMG, the clock says it's 4 'o clock! Is that AM or PM! Ah I'm so confused!

 

[Danoff]

OMG, the clock says it's 4 'o clock! Is that AM or PM! Ah I'm so confused!

It's 10am, I'll meet you at 5pm. How long will it be until we meet?

It's 10, I'll meet you at 17. how long will it be until we meet?

It is substantially more difficult to write a computer program that takes into account AM and PM when doing time calculations, and in fact, it complicates calculations in general. It's not that I have trouble reading a clock, it's that it's simply a crappy system.