- tz - lists.iana.org

Re: week starts at Sunday or Monday??
by Peter Ilieve Oct. 2, 2000

Oct. 2, 2000

Christoph Bugel wrote: > > so my question is.... > now that I decided that days are niumbere 1 to 7, > what is day 1 ??? > is it Sunday, or Monday? > what is the Right Thing to do? The document by Gary Houston describing the ISO 8601:1988 date/time representations that is available at ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/iso8601.ps.gz contains this paragraph: An ordinal date is identified by a given day in a given year. A week is identified by its number in a given year. A week begins with a Monday, and the first week of a year is the one which includes the first Thursday, or equivalently the one which includes January 4. Midnight may be expressed as either 00:00:00 or 24:00:00. Peter Ilieve peter(a)aldie.co.uk

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share/zoneinfo/southamerica (Brazil saving update)
by Mario Sergio Fujikawa Ferreira Oct. 1, 2000

Oct. 1, 2000

Hi, I was informed this was the right place to inform this. If you are not, I both apologize and ask if you can direct this to the right person. I would like to report that the Light Time Saving estimates for Brazil are incorrect. The new correct time savings for this year are - begin 08 Oct 2000 00:00:00 - end 18 Feb 2001 00:00:00 Unfortunaly, it is not clear if the 2nd weekend of September will be the official beginning for consequent years. The same applies for the end date. Therefore, I would advise maintaining the actual policy, yet adding this year's information. By the way, no states were removed or added in this latest decree. --- southamerica Fri Apr 7 01:20:30 2000 +++ /tmp/southamerica Sun Oct 1 02:02:25 2000 @@ -353,6 +353,10 @@ # and are quite possibly wrong, but are more likely than no DST at all. Rule Brazil 1999 max - Oct Sun>=1 0:00 1:00 S Rule Brazil 2000 max - Feb lastSun 0:00 0 - +# Decree <a href="http://pcdsh01.on.br/DEC3592.htm">3,592</a> (1999-10-01) +# adopted by the same states. +Rule Brazil 2000 only - Oct 6 0:00 1:00 S +Rule Brazil 2001 only - Feb 18 0:00 0 - # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] -- Mario S. F. Ferreira - UnB - Brazil - "I guess this is a signature." lioux at ( freebsd dot org | linf dot unb dot br ) flames to beloved devnull(a)someotherworldbeloworabove.org

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places: links
by Oscar van Vlijmen Oct. 1, 2000

Oct. 1, 2000

A couple of links for those who are still interested in places, in spite of past discussions ;) Jesper Nørgaard gave earlier: UN list of capital cities and cities of 100,000 inhabitants and more http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/demog/ctry.htm Another link, just found by me: Global Population Project, with many more statistics and info: http://www.koeln.netsurf.de/~stefan.helders/content.htm Interested in names? "The GEOnet Names Server (GNS) provides access to the National Imagery and Mapping Agency's (NIMA) database of foreign geographic feature names. Approximately 20,000 of the database's 3.5 million features are updated monthly with names information approved by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (US BGN)." The index to the country files: http://164.214.2.59/gns/html/Cntry_Files.html Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Latitude/longitude, sometimes a bit more info http://shiva.pub.getty.edu/tgn_browser/ US State Department: Independent States in the World; a list with capitals: http://www.state.gov/www/regions/independent_states.html I just read an article about Sealand (AD Magazine Sep 30 2000, from Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch), www.ad.nl) The Principality of Sealand, not by the UN recognised "country", not in tz: http://www.sealandgov.com/ Location: 051.53.40 N, 01.28.57 E. No information about timezone, probably UTC+0. Average number of inhabitants: 6. About 300 people seem to have a Sealand passport. Which Dutch city (that's 'city', not 'gemeente') is the largest? Amsterdam 718150 Rotterdam 590480 Den Haag 442800 Source (Dutch site): http://www.stedengids.net/cijfersnederland.htm UN statistics (see above) gives the same idea (year 1994): Amsterdam city: 723163, urban agglom.: 1100764 Rotterdam city: 598236, urban agglom.: 1076442 's-Gravenhage city: 444108, urban agglom.: 694733 Oscar van Vlijmen 2000-10-01

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IAU resolution supporting leap second reform
by Paul Eggert Sept. 30, 2000

Sept. 30, 2000

http://clockdev.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0009&L=leapsecs&F=lf&S=&… reports that the following resolution was adopted by the IAU last month: The International Astronomical Union Recognising 1. that the definition of Coordinated Universal time (UTC) relies on the astronomical observation of the UT1 time scale in order to introduce leap seconds, 2. that the unpredictability of leap seconds affects modern communication and navigation systems, 3. that astronomical observations provide an accurate estimate of the secular deceleration of the Earth's rate of rotation, Recommends 1. that the IAU establish a Working Group reporting to Division 1 at the General Assembly in 2003 to consider the redefinition of UTC, 2. that this study discuss whether there is a requirement for leap seconds, the possibility of inserting leap seconds at pre-determined intervals, and the tolerance limits for UT1-UTC, and 3. that this study be undertaken in cooperation with the appropriate groups of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-R), the International Bureau for Weights and Measures (BIPM), and relevant navigational agencies.

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Re: Alternative place names?
by Dik.Winter＠cwi.nl Sept. 29, 2000

Sept. 29, 2000

> I am NOT proposing to change the Theory rules, but I wonder: population > count, popularity, media exposure all change, a capital hardly or not. A > capital is or should be known to everybody. Haven't we all had some kind of > geography lessons, years or decades ago? Oh, come on. How many people in the Netherlands know the official name of its capital? How many people not of Dutch origin know what the real capital is? And it would seem strange to use that name in the files in conjunction with "Amsterdam time". I am quite happy with Europe/Amsterdam, but that is where I live of course ;-). dik

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Re: Another capital
by Dik.Winter＠cwi.nl Sept. 28, 2000

Sept. 28, 2000

>> Welkom en welkom gefeliciteerd in deez' wonderschone hoofdstad van ons land! >> Congratulations! You live in the real and formal capital of the Netherlands. >> The Dutch government has its seat in The Hague (Den Haag, 's-Gravenhage). > Which makes it the capital by both the English meaning of the word (Webster) > and the Dutch meaning of the word (van Dale). Note that when I was at school > we were taught that The Hague was the capital, while the only claim to fame > of Amsterdam was that Kings and Queens would be crowned there. Forgot to mention something. You talk about "formal capital", but that can only be the case if it is written down somewhere in the legislation, but there is nothing about that anywhere. My (Dutch) encyclopedia (which postdates my schooldays by quite some years) says: "Generally Amsterdam is seen as the capital of the Netherlands although the seat of government is in The Hague." Note that this implies that it is not universal, nor that it would actually be correct. dik

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Re: Another capital
by Dik.Winter＠cwi.nl Sept. 28, 2000

Sept. 28, 2000

> Welkom en welkom gefeliciteerd in deez' wonderschone hoofdstad van ons land! > Congratulations! You live in the real and formal capital of the Netherlands. > The Dutch government has its seat in The Hague (Den Haag, 's-Gravenhage). Which makes it the capital by both the English meaning of the word (Webster) and the Dutch meaning of the word (van Dale). Note that when I was at school we were taught that The Hague was the capital, while the only claim to fame of Amsterdam was that Kings and Queens would be crowned there. dik

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Another capital
by Oscar van Vlijmen Sept. 28, 2000

Sept. 28, 2000

> Dik Winter: > Oh, come on. How many people in the Netherlands know the official name > of its capital? How many people not of Dutch origin know what the real > capital is? And it would seem strange to use that name in the files in > conjunction with "Amsterdam time". I am quite happy with Europe/Amsterdam, > but that is where I live of course ;-). Welkom en welkom gefeliciteerd in deez' wonderschone hoofdstad van ons land! Congratulations! You live in the real and formal capital of the Netherlands. The Dutch government has its seat in The Hague (Den Haag, 's-Gravenhage). Many globally accessible sources, e.g. the CIA World Factbook, will tell you the same. http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html Oscar van Vlijmen 2000-09-28

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Re: Eastern Peace Time
by Paul Eggert Sept. 28, 2000

Sept. 28, 2000

"Olson, Arthur David (NCI)" <olsona(a)dc37a.nci.nih.gov> writes: > Last night I heard part of a rebroadcast of a 1945 Arch Oboler radio > drama. In the introduction, Oboler spoke of "Eastern Peace Time." > An AltaVista search turned up http://rowayton.org/rhs/hstaug45.html > by way of confirmation. Peace is such a wonderful thing! We must put this into the database. > ...and presumably what's needed is a line between these two such as... > ...where h:mm is the time that the document ending the war was signed. The document was signed on September 2, but from that web page it appears that the radio was announcing "Eastern Peace Time" in August 1945. Truman officially declared V-J Day on August 15, 1945. Many people celebrate V-J day on September 2, when the documents were signed on the battleship Missouri, but that's not the right date for tz purposes. <http://www.merchant-marine.com/va--ammv.htm> says that at 0615 hours, the US Navy ordered that all offensive operations against Japan cease; this is the best time that I could find for the actual start of peace. > 1. What are the correct values for h and mm above? I would say August 15, 1945, at 06:15 -- presumably this was EWT, so the transition was at 10:15 Universal Time. # Rule NAME FROM TO TYPE IN ON AT SAVE LETTER/S Rule US 1945 only - Aug 15 10:15u 1:00 P # Peace (V-J Day) I'll put this into my next proposed batch of changes.

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Re: (Cyprus), Nicosia is in Europe not Asia.
by Paul Eggert Sept. 28, 2000

Sept. 28, 2000

Antoine Leca <Antoine.Leca(a)renault.fr> writes: > Paul Eggert wrote: > > > I don't know of any current official dividing line between Europe and > > Asia [...] Geographically, Cyprus is > > clearly in Asia, and this has long been recognized. > > Sorry Paul: you are not consistent. Either you do not know of a dividing > line (as I do not, hence I do not comment on the issue). Or you do know > that "Cyprus is clearly in Asia", which in fact means that you know > of some line. What I was trying to say (perhaps infelicitously) is that the geographic dividing line is fuzzy in places (e.g. are the Mugadzhar mountains in Europe or in Asia?) but Cyprus is pretty clearly on the Asian side. Here's a quote that states things fairly accurately, I think: Geographically, Cyprus is considered to be a part of West Asia (this Mediterranean island is much closer to the mainland of Asia than to that of Europe). However, due to cultural, demographic, and historical reasons, it is often considered as a part of Europe. http://www.ozemail.com.au/~natinfo/asia3-2.htm#cyprus However, after some more research I agree that the point is disputable. In particular, the Encyclopedia Britannica flatly says that Cyprus is part of Europe. See <http://www.britannica.com/seo/e/europe/>. > The problem with Cyprus is that, at least as he said, Yiango was > unable to find Cyprus TZ because it cannot found it under > Europe/Nicosia. Yes, that's perhaps the best practical argument for putting it under Europe. I guess you have talked me into adding something like this: # Classically, Cyprus belongs to Asia; e.g. see Herodotus, Histories, I.72. # However, for various reasons many users expect to find it under Europe. Link Asia/Nicosia Europe/Nicosia

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