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from the hope-springs-eternal,-or-forward-maybe dept.
With the looming Daylight Saving Time cruelty of losing an hour descending upon us a mere week from now, it is worth noting that Texas has again introduced bills to abolish it in the Lone Star State.
For the 2019 Texas Legislature, House Bill 49 and Senate Bill 190 have been filed, with both being referred to the House and Senate State Affairs Committees.
The bills would exempt Texas from daylight saving time, including the portion of the state in Mountain Standard Time.
Arizona and Hawaii are the only two states that have opted out of Daylight Saving Time currently. New Mexico is also currently considering legislation to stop switching, with the House attempting to end DST and the Senate attempting to switch to it permanently.
Where do Soylentils fall?
[Ed. addition] Properly, DST is not "Daylight Savings Time"; it is "Daylight Saving Time". It has been so often misused, however, that it has become common usage. Also, Wikipedia's entry on Daylight Saving Time notes a tidbit I found interesting:
The time at which clocks are to be shifted differs across jurisdictions. The European Union has a coordinated shift, shifting all zones at the same instant, at 01:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which means that it changes at 02:00 Central European Time (CET) or 03:00 Eastern European Time (EET), the result is that the time differences across European time zone remain constant.[41][42] North America shifts at 02:00 but at the local time and is consequently uncoordinated so that, for example, Mountain Time is, for one hour, zero hours ahead of Pacific Time instead of one hour ahead in the autumn and two hours instead of one ahead of Pacific Time in the spring.
The dates on which clocks are to be shifted also vary with location and year; consequently, the time differences between regions also vary throughout the year. For example, Central European Time is usually six hours ahead North American Eastern Time, except for a few weeks in March and October/November, while the United Kingdom and mainland Chile could be five hours apart during the northern summer, three hours during the southern summer, and four hours a few weeks per year. Since 1996, European Summer Time has been observed from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October; previously the rules were not uniform across the European Union.[42] Starting in 2007, most of the United States and Canada observe DST from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November, almost two-thirds of the year.[43] Moreover, the beginning and ending dates are roughly reversed between the northern and southern hemispheres because spring and autumn are displaced six months. For example, mainland Chile observes DST from the second Saturday in October to the second Saturday in March, with transitions at 24:00 local time.[44] In some countries time is governed by regional jurisdictions within the country so that some jurisdictions shift and others do not; this is currently the case in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and the United States.[45][46]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:33PM (8 children)
zulu time, all the time.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 05 2019, @06:42PM
That's an interesting idea actually.
- OR -
That's crazy talk! Like saying Americans should switch to the crazy metric system or to A4 / A5 paper sizes.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by bradley13 on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:17PM (3 children)
I've heard this argument, but it doesn't hold up. First, you have zero chance: people are accustomed to time the way it is, and this kind of massive re-think just isn't going to happen. Most people work roughly 8-5, or maybe 9-6, and that seems to be the way we like it. At least, all attempts at flex-time seem to fail pretty miserably.
Second, time-zones do actually have a purpose. What good does it do, to have the same time everywhere? With time zones, given a local time, I know at least roughly whether it's working hours or not; whether it's morning, afternoon or evening. Read in the news that that Sydney was hit by a tidal wave at 2am, and you automatically know that was in the middle of the night. With UTC, most people would have no clue, and the rest of us would be doing math in our heads to figure it out.
This is the same kind of brilliantly logical, and yet utter unpractical idea as demanding that noon = sun directly overhead. It makes someone's inner nerd happy, but would piss off everyone else.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:37PM
I actually think everybody would be fine with that.
"Let's meet at 'noon'."
"Ok, so that's about ... 11:15? Sounds good to me!"
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday March 06 2019, @12:40AM
West coast tech companies should just only release software with pacific time. Fuck everyone else. Alaska is PST+1 and DC is PST-3.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday March 06 2019, @02:16AM
I've worked in several places with flexitime. Employees generally love it. Good managers deal with the few downsides from their point of view, and appreciate the general improvement in morale and efficiency.
Poor managers don't like it because if handled badly it increases their workload. They generally get rid of it as soon as they can. I have even heard PHB-type managers say that it is bad because it makes employees happy, and if they are happy then they are not working hard enough.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:25PM
I rather like that answer. The problems it causes (not knowing what time they're talking about when someone says it's 8:00) are trivial. Of course, all the businesses and schools, etc., would need to change their hours to something locally appropriate where they are situated, but that's a one-time problem.
That said, be sure to switch to a 24 hour clock at the same time.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:55PM (1 child)
It used to be Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:08PM
A.K.A. Zulu, the phonetic alphabet representation for Z, meaning zero offset, i.e. UTC+00:00.