Re: CHAT: Timezones was The English/French counting system

On Tue, Sep 16, 2003 at 12:36:49AM -0400, Roger Mills wrote:
> If as I assume UTC = GMT
Yup - as I said in my earlier message, they're synonymous, at least for
present and future dates.

> As I said, I'm a night-owl, AND a heavy sleeper once I get going.  If World
> War III hits much before 9 AM EST, I'll sleep right through it. (Let's see,
> that would be 1300 UTC wouldn't it? Macht's nichts.)
Actually, 9AM E*S*T is 1400 UTC.  However, at the moment the US Eastern time
zone is on daylight savings time, and 9AM E*D*T is 1300 UTC.
Daylight savings time just adds to the confusion.  Especially in the
fall.  If it is the first Sunday in October and your local time is 0130,
you have no way of knowing without resorting to external resources whether
that's 0130 EDT == 0530 UTC or 0130 EST == 0630 UTC.  Which means, come
0200, you don't know whether to fall back or not, unless you remember
whether or not you've already done so.  This situation has been the
source of numerous computer bugs, especially on operating systems like
Windows which inexplicably keep the computer's hardware clock set to
local time instead of sensibly keeping it in UTC and adjusting as
needed for input and output.

-Mark

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