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Software Now Wagging the Public Interest Dog

Published on June 30th, 2005

I found the following press release mildly disturbing. Essentially we’ve turned social change over to what our computers allow? There is something profoundly sick about all this. I would personally like to see daylight saving time become the ONLY time. The days and nights make much more sense during the period that it is implemented. When it was first introduced, it was quite controversial. A brief history can be found here. Note that it is correctly “daylight saving” not “daylight savings.” The press release below doesn’t even use the term correctly. Then again, few people use the correct terminology, just listen to the newscasters.

Energy Bill’s Proposed Daylight-Savings-Time Change Is Untimely
Language Ignores Realities of Fixing Software Nationally and Internationally

McKinleyville, CA – June 29, 2005 – The Energy Policy Act of 2005 as passed by the House of Representatives contains a potentially costly “energy saving” provision regarding daylight savings time. It calls for a change in start and end dates of daylight savings time (DST) observed in the United States, with the new DST period stretching from March to November. This change would take effect in March 2006 if the House language prevails over Senate language, which does not contain the extension.

“It’s not a matter of whether the proposal is right or wrong. It’s a matter of practicality,” noted Dave Thewlis, Executive Director of the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium. “Members of the Consortium suggest a simple delay of the effective date to insure that calendar and scheduling vendors and consumers have ample time to prepare for any changes.”

If the House language survives, software and hardware calendaring and scheduling products based on the Internet Engineering Task Force’s (IETF) iCalendar standard will need to be changed. Users of such products-universities, companies of all sizes, and many other types of organizations-as well as their suppliers will face a major challenge:

. Vendors may be unable to issue “patches” to the problem in so short a time, and if they did, their customers-with millions of end users-may be unable to deploy those fixes in so short a time.
. As a corollary, organizations in the U.S. that depend on such products could have great difficulty in making the necessary changes to remain synchronized with colleagues outside of the US.

“The proposed change generally affects any calendaring and scheduling product whether or not it’s based on the iCalendar standard,” added Thewlis. “Anything that keeps a calendar, including cell phones, is potentially affected. Many embedded environmental systems such as building management systems, time-lock control, work-shift and time clocks, may also be affected. The problem will also affect any division the U.S. government itself that depends on a software or hardware calendaring solution.”

Documents addressing the issues for both US and international users are posted at the Consortium website (www.calconnect.org).

The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium

The Consortium focuses on the interoperable exchange of calendaring and scheduling information between dissimilar programs, platforms, and technologies. The mission is to provide mechanisms to allow calendaring and scheduling methodologies to interoperate, to promote understanding of these methodologies, and to enable calendaring and scheduling tools and applications to enter the mainstream of computing. Members are California State University (Fresno), Carnegie Mellon University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, EVDB, Isamet, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Meeting Maker, M.I.T., The Mozilla Foundation, Novell, Open Source Application Foundation, Oracle Corporation, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stanford University, Symbian, UC Berkeley, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin Madison, and Yahoo! Inc. Launched December 2004, the Consortium will hold a series of interoperability testing events, Roundtables and Technical Committee meetings to achieve its objectives within a five-year time frame.

6 users responded in " Software Now Wagging the Public Interest Dog "

# 1 andrew said, on June 30th, 2005 at 11:08 am

well beyond the software problem is an airline problem. Since some international destinations closely follow the current American Standard time/ Saving time shift and locations dont.

There are landing time and landing rights issues that are at stake if the Congress does actually amend the start and end dates. Estimates are that the change could cost airlines $147,000,000.00 (whether that is accurate or not I dont know)

The story can be found here:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050518-9999-1b18airlines.html

# 2 Capeche said, on June 30th, 2005 at 11:26 am

I myself have likewise always thought daylight saving time a bad idea, but this whole thing led me to want to ask another question:

If the earth stopped spinning or spun in such a way that one part of it was always facing the sun, would that part of the earth catch on fire, leaving the other part (the dark part) to turn into icey crystals?

# 3 Pat said, on June 30th, 2005 at 11:42 am

Here in Indiana, we recently introduced Daylight Saving time. For decades, Hoosiers did not want it until a pro-business Governor was elected on Dubya’s coat tails. Now the argument is about whether Indiana will be on Central or Eastern Time.

What does it matter? If you don’t want your child to wait in the dark for the school bus, have the schools start later. If you want an extra hour of daylight in the evening, start work an hour earlier. If you want to be on the same time as New York, move to New York. You can’t change nature so learn to live with it.

# 4 Tom said, on June 30th, 2005 at 3:44 pm

The whole notion of moving the clocks is a huge mistake. Human childhood is plenty long enough for people to get a solid grasp of the vagaries of solar lighting, get used to it, and learn from it.

“Daylight Saving Time” cruelly confuses youths who are trying to wrap their minds around Planet Earth’s spin, tilt, and rotation around the sun. Not many kids get the benefit of 4D (or even 3D) solar-system-simulations, and probably none has ever been offered a good explanation of all the details involved in “what time is it?”

We are “higher beings,” most of us posessing the talents to eventually straighten out and comprehend things, to a greater or lesser degree, which were misrepresented to us as children. But it takes a long time to develop these higher faculties; it is cruelty beyond measure to knowingly lie to one in the process developing these higher faculties.

“What time it is” should be fixed, as well as possible (the Gregorian Calendar is good enough), because it screws up the perspective, and therefore development, of our kids.

The entire population of the world should use ONE time, all over the earth: GMT (or whatever). No fudging. Get used to it. Learn from it.

Grow.

[Can't you just taste the resentment?]

# 5 K B said, on June 30th, 2005 at 9:02 pm

“What does it matter? If you don’t want your child to wait in the dark for the school bus, have the schools start later. If you want an extra hour of daylight in the evening, start work an hour earlier. If you want to be on the same time as New York, move to New York. You can’t change nature so learn to live with it.” — Pat

But Pat, your suggestions would require people to think, plan, and make decisions for themselves. Americans love to have a government which tells them to move their clocks back and forth. It makes them feel that every possible decision, down to the ticking of the clock, has already been made for them.

# 6 Wesley McGee said, on July 1st, 2005 at 10:12 am

Capeche, that’s an interesting question. I suspect the answer would be quite complex, as the earth has many things that should act to provide equilibrium to the environment. (I had wanted to say to equalize the environment, but then I immediately realized that the environment is not equal throughout the planet.) Of course, many of these things are dependent on somewhat equal sunlight per latitude on the globe (i.e. water would evaporate quicker where the sun shone), and plus the oceans are a major component, as they provide most of the water for evaporation for weather, so I’d imagine that where the earth ‘froze’ would have a major impact (Daylight over the Pacific, vs over the Asia/Africa/Europe landmass).

OK, that’s my long way of saying “I don’t know”.

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