Still an Anonymous Coward, eh? On Sunday 18 September 2005 05:05, Synthetic Cartoonz wrote:
On Sunday 18 September 2005 00:57, Randall R Schulz wrote:
Dear Anonymous Coward
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When the school zone warning lights don't come on at the proper time and a few tots get squashed then I'll remember that Randall R Schwartz, Emperor Of Space Time, commanded it wasn't worth worrying about.
No problem. When you find this Randall Schwartz, tell him "hi" for me. And surely these "squashed tots" won't be the responsibility of the person driving the vehicle that squashed them, will it? Of course not. The carnage caused by automobiles doesn't concern you. Only the horrors of government-mandated changes in DST.
So daylight savings time does not adversely affect you. Do you think that while you can easily accommodate DST, others need to be protected from it?
As has been expressed here and by many others with many examples time keeping affects people. Many people trust time keeping systems. We've hooked our infrastructure to time-keeping systems to better manage them. When those systems cease being trustworthy then varying degrees of mayhem results.
Then the problem is blind trust in technological systems, not nailing down DST. You said it should be eliminated. That's going to cause just as much trouble (if any) as moving the starting and ending dates.
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If you've somehow achieved a personal nirvana that requires you don't ever look at a clock then Congratulations.
Cut the sarcasm, will you, please?
What the clock displays when the sun comes up and goes down does not matter to me. Why should it? It's all entirely arbitrary.
Naturally, the passage of time, how much I have in a day, how long I'll live, do matter to me. DST start and end dates have nothing to do with these aspects of time.
You say I'm sarcastic and then you confirm exactly what I said. Time keeping matters to other people. The fact it doesn't matter to you is not reason enough that other people must obey your Que Sera Sera dictate to the masses.
I did not say time-keeping does not matter to me. I said the alignment of the clock with astronomical phenomena does not matter because it is arbitrary. I don't know about you, but where I live the radio and TV stations note the upcoming time changes several times in the days prior to the switch. They probably will be able to keep track of the legislated change and be able to issue such notices correctly. There's no reason to be caught unaware of the DST change and if someone is, it's probably because their life is largely independent of such concerns.
By the way, does that sun-goes-up, sun-goes-down, time-is-arbitrary excuse work with your boss when you show up late? I'll have to plan to show up late to work one day and try it out. I suspect I'll be referred to HR for a drug test.
What a joke. Do you work from some kind of totalitarian perfectionist, just like yourself who suspects a person of drug use if they make a mistake? By the way, what will be disclosed by the drug test you're going to be subjected to the day you do eventually make some kind of mistake?
You've now confirmed my earlier suspicion: that you believe it's up to you to protect others from the ravages of DST.
It is a programmer's job to protect people from the dangers of systems that are not perfectly predictable or inadequately managed. What do you think a programmer's job is? Showing up to work "whenever" and drinking coffee?
Then do so. Harrangue the manufacturers of systems with embedded clocks to use the year-and-a-half-long forewarning they received that this change is coming to prepare for it. Deal with the local personnel who specify the purchase of the ones that don't accommodate the change despite the many months of advanced warning they get.
[snip pseudopolitical silliness]
You're admitting your dictatorial bent?
I remain completely unconvinced that this is a real issue. It is trivially accommodated within existing technological means, as we've already covered.
Excluding the previous World War I and II time fudging policies, the current attempt at a Federal DST schedule began in the 60s, was tweaked in the early 70s, and amended in the mid-80s. There are not many computer systems of any importance still functioning from that era or before it. Many of the current "technological means" that accommodate DST have been created and operate under the assumption (yes, an incorrect assumption) that the schedule set by law doesn't change. Yes, badly engineered systems. But, if everything coded before us was done perfectly then few of us would have jobs. Then again, since time doesn't matter to you why should anyone bother accommodating it at all? Hakuna Matata, baby. Don't Worry, Be Happy.
Your contention about clock-based system is far from universally true and for those systems to which it does apply is simply an indictment of the technological competence of their designers. You want to forbid DST changes (but still eliminate it entirely) simply to coddel the manufacturers of bad hardware. That's foolish. Keep in mind that these automated, clock-bases systems already include rather fancy calendric math, since the DST start and end dates are specified in terms of the "nth Sunday of April / October." If these systems are autonomous and free-running, then the sophistication of their software w.r.t. to calendar calculations is already such that altering them for new start / end criteria would be trivial. And if they don't perform such calculations, they must be manually adjusted, and again, I'm pretty sure the agencies that maintain them can deal with the change in DST start and end dates.
People have been dealing with it for decades without serious impact.
People have been dealing with a known schedule that had not changed since the time before everything was trusted to computers.
It is the responsibility of technologists to accommodate changes, whether or not they're advancements, not to hold them back.
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Randall Schulz