- tz - lists.iana.org

Request
by Gowrishankar M Feb. 18, 2003

Feb. 18, 2003

Dear Sir, In which country the International Standard Time and their Local Time will be the same? Pls Clarify Gowrishankar __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com

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tzcode license clarification?
by Todd C. Miller Feb. 14, 2003

Feb. 14, 2003

OpenBSD is doing a license audit and it seems there are parts of the tzcode package that lack a license/copyright notice. Some files are derived from BSD code and feature a Berkeley licesnse, others are explicitly placed in the public domain, but some have no license/copyright info. The files we are concerned about are: o ctime.3 o ialloc.c o scheck.c o newtzset.3 o zdump.8 o zdump.c o zic.8 o zic.c Thanks in advance for looking into this. - todd

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Timezone download
by Luzin, Frederic Feb. 14, 2003

Feb. 14, 2003

Sorry, I am just trying to develop a programming using the tz database, but but I have got some difficulties to download the code's and data' versions of the tz database. Is your server down, or do you have change your ftp address? Thank you Fred

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Change in Pakistan TZ rules?
by Jesper Nørgaard Feb. 10, 2003

Feb. 10, 2003

I have tried for some time to check the TZ database on ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2002d.tar.gz but neither this nor /pub/ or /pub/tz/ gives any result. Is there an alternative address? I presume that 2002d is still the latest official version. Steffen Thorsen on http://www.timeanddate.com has Pakistan to end DST in 2003 at Sunday the 5.th. of October instead of 15.th. October as TZ database ver. 2002d will have it. Is that an official change? I believe that in 2002 Rives McDow had the transition time in October originally to be October 6, 2002. However, that is of course less relevant if we had an authoritative source on how it will be in 2003. Regards, Jesper Nørgaard Welen Email: jnorgard(a)Prodigy.Net.mx Project Leader (Líder de Proyecto) Software CIMMYT - Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo Dirección: CIMMYT Int. c/o Jesper Nørgaard Km. 45, Carretera México-Veracruz El Batán Texcoco, Edo. de México CP 56130 MEXICO Tel.: +52 (5) 58-04-20-04 ext. 1374 Fax: +52 (5) 58-04-75-58 Tel. Casa: 53-10-05-95 ó 53-10-97-78 Download the free program World Time Explorer, I made: http://www.cimmyt.org/timezone/index.htm

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Lithuania DST
by Jesper Nørgaard Feb. 9, 2003

Feb. 9, 2003

Klaus Marten sent me this, I believe it did not get correctly into the TZ mailing list ... Jesper Too bad I don't understand lithuanian 8-) check out the link. Dear Members, i have the following Information from a User: ... As a candidate for membership of the European Union, Lithuania will observe Summer Time in 2003, changing its clocks at the times laid down in EU Directive 2000/84 of 19.I.01 (i.e. at the same times as its neighbour Latvia). The text of the Lithuanian government Order of 7.XI.02 to this effect can be found at http://www.lrvk.lt/nut/11/n1749.htm ... Greetings from Klaus Marten http://www.weltzeituhr.com Jesper Nørgaard Welen Email: jnorgard(a)Prodigy.Net.mx Project Leader (Líder de Proyecto) Software CIMMYT - Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo Dirección: CIMMYT Int. c/o Jesper Nørgaard Km. 45, Carretera México-Veracruz El Batán Texcoco, Edo. de México CP 56130 MEXICO Tel.: +52 (5) 58-04-20-04 ext. 1374 Fax: +52 (5) 58-04-75-58 Tel. Casa: 53-10-05-95 ó 53-10-97-78 Download the free program World Time Explorer, I made: http://www.cimmyt.org/timezone/index.htm

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An official reference for Ukraine
by Garrett Wollman Feb. 8, 2003

Feb. 8, 2003

Igor Karpov, who works for the Ukranian Ministry of Justice, found the legal reference for standard time in Ukraine. -GAWollman ------- start of forwarded message (RFC 934 encapsulation) ------- From: Igor Karpov <jc(a)minjust.gov.ua> To: freebsd-gnats-submit(a)freebsd.org Cc: Valentin Nechayev <netch(a)netch.kiev.ua>, wollman(a)lcs.mit.edu Subject: Re: conf/47468: Sysinstall offers different timezones for Ukraine. Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2003 15:41:01 +0200 [deletia] BTW, I've found the official document on this matter. It's goverment regulations number 509, May 13, 1996. In my poor translation it says: "Time in Ukraine is set to second timezone (Kiev time). Each last Sunday of March at 3am the time is changing to 4am and each last Sunday of October the time at 4am is changing to 3am" Regards, - -- Igor A. Karpov phone: +380(44)238-0624 Unix System Administrator "Cute" rots the intellect. ------- end -------

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Daylight Time in Lithuania
by Weltzeituhr Feb. 7, 2003

Feb. 7, 2003

Dear Members, i have the following Information from a User: ... As a candidate for membership of the European Union, Lithuania will observe Summer Time in 2003, changing its clocks at the times laid down in EU Directive 2000/84 of 19.I.01 (i.e. at the same times as its neighbour Latvia). The text of the Lithuanian government Order of 7.XI.02 to this effect can be found at http://www.lrvk.lt/nut/11/n1749.htm ... Greetings from Klaus Marten http://www.weltzeituhr.com

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Site?
by Bill Bonnett Jan. 24, 2003

Jan. 24, 2003

Where can I get a copy of the database? The site ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/ just does not load. Bill Bonnett Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer Microsoft Certified Professional + Internet Email : <mailto:mfeedback@abdicate.net> feedback(a)abdicate.net Web Site : <http://www.abdicate.net/> http://www.abdicate.net ICQ : 110091 Quixtar IBO : 1242957 <http://www.quixtar.com/> http://www.quixtar.com <>< Jesus is Lord ><> ********************************************************************** Information in this email is confidential and may be privileged. It is intended for the addressee only. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete it from your system. You should not otherwise copy it, retransmit it or use or disclose its contents to anyone. Thank you for your co-operation. **********************************************************************

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RE: Greenland marked as "America/*" ??
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) Jan. 24, 2003

Jan. 24, 2003

Areas are grouped geographically rather than politically. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Poul-Henning Kamp [mailto:phk@freebsd.org] Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 12:05 PM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Greenland marked as "America/*" ?? I'm somewhat surprised to see that Greenland is listed as "America/*" in the Timezone files, to my knowledge Greenland is not normally counted as part of the American continent and it belongs in the Kingdom of Denmark. I would argue that Europe/* would be more than marginally better placement, although I'll agree not 100% correct either. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk(a)FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

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UNSUBSCRIBE
by Ken Glidden Jan. 24, 2003

Jan. 24, 2003

-----Original Message----- From: Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [mailto:olsona@dc37a.nci.nih.gov] Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 8:49 AM To: List Time Zone (E-mail) Subject: FW: Greenland marked as "America/*" ?? Poul-Henning Kamp is not on the time zone mailing list; direct replies appropriately. -----Original Message----- From: Poul-Henning Kamp [mailto:phk@freebsd.org] Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 12:05 PM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Greenland marked as "America/*" ?? I'm somewhat surprised to see that Greenland is listed as "America/*" in the Timezone files, to my knowledge Greenland is not normally counted as part of the American continent and it belongs in the Kingdom of Denmark. I would argue that Europe/* would be more than marginally better placement, although I'll agree not 100% correct either. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk(a)FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

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FW: Greenland marked as "America/*" ??
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) Jan. 24, 2003

Jan. 24, 2003

Poul-Henning Kamp is not on the time zone mailing list; direct replies appropriately. -----Original Message----- From: Poul-Henning Kamp [mailto:phk@freebsd.org] Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 12:05 PM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Greenland marked as "America/*" ?? I'm somewhat surprised to see that Greenland is listed as "America/*" in the Timezone files, to my knowledge Greenland is not normally counted as part of the American continent and it belongs in the Kingdom of Denmark. I would argue that Europe/* would be more than marginally better placement, although I'll agree not 100% correct either. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk(a)FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

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Greenland marked as "America/*" ??
by Poul-Henning Kamp Jan. 22, 2003

Jan. 22, 2003

I'm somewhat surprised to see that Greenland is listed as "America/*" in the Timezone files, to my knowledge Greenland is not normally counted as part of the American continent and it belongs in the Kingdom of Denmark. I would argue that Europe/* would be more than marginally better placement, although I'll agree not 100% correct either. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk(a)FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

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Bulletin C number 25
by iers＠hpopa.obspm.fr Jan. 15, 2003

Jan. 15, 2003

INTERNATIONAL EARTH ROTATION SERVICE (IERS) SERVICE INTERNATIONAL DE LA ROTATION TERRESTRE SERVICE DE LA ROTATION TERRESTRE OBSERVATOIRE DE PARIS 61, Av. de l'Observatoire 75014 PARIS (France) Tel. : 33 (0) 1 40 51 22 26 FAX : 33 (0) 1 40 51 22 91 Internet : iers(a)obspm.fr Paris, 15 January 2003 Bulletin C 25 To authorities responsible for the measurement and distribution of time INFORMATION ON UTC - TAI NO positive leap second will be introduced at the end of June 2003. The difference between UTC and the International Atomic Time TAI is : from 1999 January 1, 0h UTC, until further notice : UTC-TAI = -32 s Leap seconds can be introduced in UTC at the end of the months of December or June, depending on the evolution of UT1-TAI. Bulletin C is mailed every six months, either to announce a time step in UTC, or to confirm that there will be no time step at the next possible date. Daniel GAMBIS Director Earth Orientation Center of IERS Observatoire de Paris, France

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Tonga Daylight Savings Time ENDS...
by Pulu 'Anau Nov. 5, 2002

Nov. 5, 2002

Hi, I'm a system administrator in a country that thinks it's funny to constantly play around with the time. To keep the story short, Tonga decided to create daylight savings time to get a jump on everyone for the new millenium. The law was for 3 years, supposedly to get renewed. It wasn't. Unfortunately, a good number of the systems I maintain (Debian Linux and OpenBSD) would like to believe the government here is reasonable and doesn't play around with stuff like this. Ha! Anyway, when they implemented daylight savings it took me a few hours to find the zone files and recompile them, and I don't think the changes were officially reflected (at least in Debian) for about a year. I don't really know where else to report this, but considering the vast amount of history that's already available in the data files, I hope this mailing list will work. I've modified the australasia file from the data file as below. I'm not a zic expert so I hope it's appropriate. It fixed the issue here, anyway. Also, in the compiled file that was pre-existing on this system (Debian 3.0), the file for Tongatapu had a bunch of junk in it, basically a help file for vi and some other binary data after the zoneinfo... I don't know if it's a debian thing or not, I'm not near the openbsd machines to take a look at them... Just FYI... If this file is going to explode on me at some later date, I'd really appreciate if someone could write back and let me know. Some of my customers rely on this information to do some dialup internet/mail stuff, and explaining they ought to complain to the government doesn't work because most of them are the government. Pulu as a diff from the file australasia in the tzdata2002d.tar.gz (Oct 15): 402,403c402,404 < Rule Tonga 2000 max - Nov Sun>=1 2:00 1:00 S < Rule Tonga 2001 max - Jan lastSun 2:00 0 - ---> Rule Tonga 2000 2001 - Nov Sun>=1 2:00 1:00 S > Rule Tonga 2001 2002 - Jan lastSun 2:00 0 -> 408c409,410 < 13:00 Tonga TO%sT --- > 13:00 Tonga TO%sT 2003 > 13:00 - TOT # Daylight savings > expirament fails The appropriate section before: # Tonga # Rule NAME FROM TO TYPE IN ON AT SAVE LETTER/ SRule Tonga 1999 only - Oct 7 2:00s 1:00 S Rule Tonga 2000 only - Mar 19 2:00s 0 - Rule Tonga 2000 max - Nov Sun>=1 2:00 1:00 S Rule Tonga 2001 max - Jan lastSun 2:00 0 - # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL]Zone Pacific/Tongatapu 12:19:20 - LMT 1901 12:20 - TOT 1941 # Tonga Time 13:00 - TOT 1999 13:00 Tonga TO%sT And after: # Tonga # Rule NAME FROM TO TYPE IN ON AT SAVE LETTER/ SRule Tonga 1999 only - Oct 7 2:00s 1:00 S Rule Tonga 2000 only - Mar 19 2:00s 0 - Rule Tonga 2000 2001 - Nov Sun>=1 2:00 1:00 S Rule Tonga 2001 2002 - Jan lastSun 2:00 0 - # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] Zone Pacific/Tongatapu 12:19:20 - LMT 1901 12:20 - TOT 1941 # Tonga Time 13:00 - TOT 1999 13:00 Tonga TO%sT 2003 13:00 - TOT # Daylight savings expirament fails ---- Pulu 'Anau Infotech Tonga Ph: 676-27399

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<http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/> discussion and corrections
by Paul Eggert Oct. 23, 2002

Oct. 23, 2002

I compared the current version of the Webexhibits Daylight Saving Time pages with the tz database at <ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tz/> and have the following comments. <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/g.html> says: * Fiji observes DST; but our information is that they stopped in 2000. * Mongolia observes DST; but our information is that they no longer do so (as of 2002). * Tonga observes DST from the first Saturday in October to third Saturday in April; but our information is that it is now the first Sunday in November to the last Sunday in January. * Russia observes the same DST rules as Europe; but Europe switches at 01:00 UTC, whereas Russia switches at 02:00 local time. * Cuba observes DST starting April 1; but our current information is that they start on the first Sunday in April, i.e. that they use the North American rules except that they change clocks at midnight rather than at 02:00. * Brazil observes DST from the first Sunday in October to the last Sunday in February; but this year it's the first Sunday in November to the third Sunday in February (rules vary quite a bit from year to year). Also, equatorial Brazil does not observe DST. * We have lots of different reports about the Falklands, but your data differs from all of our reports. Do you have a citation for your info? (The Falklands appears to be somewhat catch-as-catch-can.) * Do you have a reference for your information that Rothera, Antarctica, is 3 hours behind UTC all year? * Paraguay has changed its rules; it now observes DST from the first Sunday in September to the first Sunday in April. See decree no. 16350, dated 2002-02-26. A few other comments: <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/b.html> says "the Eastern Time Zone portion of the State of Indiana" does not observe DST. This is true for most of that part of Indiana, but as you point out in <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/f.html>, a few counties in southeastern Indiana observe EST with DST. So perhaps you could say "most of the Eastern Time Zone portion of the State of Indiana" instead. <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/c.html> says "Eventually, in 1925, it was enacted that summer time should begin on the day following the third Saturday in April. The date for closing of summer time was fixed for the first Saturday in October." As can be seen in <http://student.cusu.cam.ac.uk/~jsm28/british-time/>, this is incorrect for both the starting and the ending days. Perhaps you could replace that with "Eventually, in 1925, it was enacted that summer time should begin on the day following the third Saturday in April (or one week earlier if that day was Easter Day). The date for closing of summer time was fixed for the day after the first Saturday in October." <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/d.html> says "Nor was the suggestion of Charles Dowd of Saratoga Springs, N. Y., in 1870, to establish standard time meridians taken seriously." This is a bit harsh, as Dowd revised his proposal in 1872 and the revised proposal was adopted virtually unchanged by the railways of the USA and Canada eleven years later. Certainly Fleming deserves a lot of the credit, but it goes too far to say that Dowd was not taken seriously. <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/e.html> says "This [1916] action was immediately followed by other countries in Europe, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Italy, France and Portugal." You might want to add Luxembourg and Turkey to that list. Also Tasmania, Nova Scotia, and Manitoba, though these regions are not in Europe. It also says "In 1917, Australia, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia initiated it." Hmm, perhaps your records for Nova Scotia differ from ours? We have Halifax as not observing DST in 1917, even though it did observe in 1916. Other areas that introduced DST in 1917 were Russia, Iceland, Spain and Quebec. (In this area our data come from Shanks.) <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/g.html> says "During the summer, Russia's clocks are two hours ahead of standard time." This is not quite true, at least by the ordinary definition of "standard time". For example, Moscow standard time (UTC+3) is about a half-hour ahead of local mean time (UTC+2:30); this is about the same situation as Detroit, whose standard time (UTC-5) is also about a half-hour ahead of local mean time (UTC-5:32). It is true that Russian standard time tends to be further in advance of local mean time than is usual for the rest of the world, but it goes too far to say that Russia is on DST or double-DST all year. Thanks for your job in maintaining that set of web pages; they're quite nice.

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Re: FW: About rules for Brazil
by Paulo Alexandre Pinto Pires Oct. 23, 2002

Oct. 23, 2002

John Cowan wrote: > However, I think the important point is that the database not impose > guesses about the utterly uncertain future. It is fair enough to > guess that U.S. DST will stay the same, since it has been quite stable. > But guessing that next year in Brazil will be like last year, when last > year was not like the year before, and so on, strikes me as bogus. > > In short, I agree that "only" should be the rule here. That what I wanted to mean, and failed to state as clearly as you did. > > A similar situation obtains in Israel, where the guesses after 2004 > > are quite arbitrary. However, for the few applications that need > > access to future civil time (planning airplane trips?) I think it > > better to have a good guess than to guess that there will be no DST at > > all. > > I see your point, but in fact airplane trips are *not* the only case. > Any time you make an appointment to do something or meet someone in > the future, you are implicitly making it in civil time for the place > of the appointment. If I say to someone "Meet me under the Waverley > [that's a place in Manhattan] at midnight, New Year's Eve 2004" , then > the appointment is set for midnight *local time* whatever that may be. > For a more commercial example, when a stock tender or a futures option > expires as of 5 PM, New York time, on such-and-such a day, that means > at whatever GMT time Congress decrees is equal to 5 PM New York time *as > of that day*. I was more concerned about much simpler things. There are some computer systems and applications where time has a central role. Some of those applications must interface with real people, both on input and on output, and real people (even technicians) are not familiar with time_t, GMT or UTC. The user may input time and not have the expected action happen at the expected time because of bad assumptions about DST (assuming no DST at all among those assumptions). Many applications also have design problems that become evident when crossing DST start/end borders, regardless of when time shifts actually happen -- even standard UNIX date(1) is DST unfriendly. Another problem is that tz repository was only updated (2002d) _after_ DST begun for users of 2002c(timestamp for ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata_2002d.tar.gz is 2002/10/15, while DST started at 2002/10/13 03:00:00 GMT for tzdata 2002c), because of a rule that should have been applied only last year. This fault, however, is not solely TZ people's; related information simply wasn't where people expected it to be (Brazilian National Observatory's (ON) web site was the traditional source, but elsie.nci.nih.gov was also outdated). Only by digging the web could I find the information I wanted, just a couple of days before brazilian clocks would get wrong time. -- Pappires ... Qui habet aurem audiat quid Spiritus dicat ecclesiis.

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Re: Mongolia no DST?
by Paul Eggert Oct. 22, 2002

Oct. 22, 2002

> From: Jesper Nørgaard [mailto:jnorgard@Prodigy.Net.mx] > Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 12:07 AM > I noticed that there is no DST for Mongolia for 2002. Is that a > deliberate decision, or is it because we have no "max" rule instead > of "only" rules? I don't recall having seen any decision that they > were taken off using DST during the year. I vaguely recall that the 2001 DST in Mongolia was somewhat experimental, which is why I listed it for that year only in the tz database. I just did a brief search on the web and found nothing definitive or even suggestive about 2002 (or about 2001, for that matter). Perhaps Rives McDow, who contributed the 2001 info, knows what happened this year in Mongolia. (McDow is so good at this that he may even know what is predicted to happen _next_ year.)

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FW: Mongolia no DST?
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) Oct. 22, 2002

Oct. 22, 2002

-----Original Message----- From: Jesper Nørgaard [mailto:jnorgard@Prodigy.Net.mx] Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 12:07 AM To: 'TZ mailing list' Subject: Mongolia no DST? I noticed that there is no DST for Mongolia for 2002. Is that a deliberate decision, or is it because we have no "max" rule instead of "only" rules? I don't recall having seen any decision that they were taken off using DST during the year. Regards, Jesper Nørgaard Welen Email: jnorgard(a)Prodigy.Net.mx Project Leader (Líder de Proyecto) Software CIMMYT - Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo Dirección: CIMMYT Int. c/o Jesper Nørgaard Km. 45, Carretera México-Veracruz El Batán Texcoco, Edo. de México CP 56130 MEXICO Tel.: +52 (5) 58-04-20-04 ext. 1374 Fax: +52 (5) 58-04-75-58 Tel. Casa: 53-10-05-95 ó 53-10-97-78 Download the free program World Time Explorer, I made: http://www.cimmyt.org/timezone/index.htm

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Mongolia no DST?
by Jesper Nørgaard Oct. 22, 2002

Oct. 22, 2002

I noticed that there is no DST for Mongolia for 2002. Is that a deliberate decision, or is it because we have no "max" rule instead of "only" rules? I don't recall having seen any decision that they were taken off using DST during the year. Regards, Jesper Nørgaard Welen Email: jnorgard(a)Prodigy.Net.mx Project Leader (Líder de Proyecto) Software CIMMYT - Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo Dirección: CIMMYT Int. c/o Jesper Nørgaard Km. 45, Carretera México-Veracruz El Batán Texcoco, Edo. de México CP 56130 MEXICO Tel.: +52 (5) 58-04-20-04 ext. 1374 Fax: +52 (5) 58-04-75-58 Tel. Casa: 53-10-05-95 ó 53-10-97-78 Download the free program World Time Explorer, I made: http://www.cimmyt.org/timezone/index.htm

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Re: FW: About rules for Brazil
by John Cowan Oct. 21, 2002

Oct. 21, 2002

Paul Eggert scripsit: > In this month's case you would be right, of course; but I suspect that > it will be just as common for the clocks to be advanced ahead of our > guess as behind, and there your proposed strategy would fail just as > badly as the tz database's current approach. However, I think the important point is that the database not impose guesses about the utterly uncertain future. It is fair enough to guess that U.S. DST will stay the same, since it has been quite stable. But guessing that next year in Brazil will be like last year, when last year was not like the year before, and so on, strikes me as bogus. In short, I agree that "only" should be the rule here. > A similar situation obtains in Israel, where the guesses after 2004 > are quite arbitrary. However, for the few applications that need > access to future civil time (planning airplane trips?) I think it > better to have a good guess than to guess that there will be no DST at > all. I see your point, but in fact airplane trips are *not* the only case. Any time you make an appointment to do something or meet someone in the future, you are implicitly making it in civil time for the place of the appointment. If I say to someone "Meet me under the Waverley [that's a place in Manhattan] at midnight, New Year's Eve 2004" , then the appointment is set for midnight *local time* whatever that may be. For a more commercial example, when a stock tender or a futures option expires as of 5 PM, New York time, on such-and-such a day, that means at whatever GMT time Congress decrees is equal to 5 PM New York time *as of that day*. I have been for some years now telling people who are not on this mailing list that it is safe to use GMT or GMT+offset for present and past times, but that when an application stores future times, it should store a local time and a timezone name. Even this is not infallible -- we don't know how the TZ system will work in the year 2076 -- but it's a lot better than storing a GMT+offset and hoping nothing weird happens. -- John Cowan <jcowan(a)reutershealth.com> http://www.reutershealth.com http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz. -- Calvin, giving Newton's First Law "in his own words"

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FW: About rules for Brazil
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) Oct. 21, 2002

Oct. 21, 2002

Paulo is not on the time zone mailing list; direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Paulo Alexandre Pinto Pires [mailto:p@ppires.org] Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 12:16 PM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: About rules for Brazil Hello, folks. I have recently downloaded tzdata 2002d, which brings new rules for Brazil again, because the government again changed when summer time starts. I suggest that rules for Brazil don't ever be considered permanent, i.e., make no use of "max" for new rules, but instead use "only". Regardless of a public poll at National Obversatory's (ON is the official source of time information for the country) web site, to learn if Brazilians would like to have fixed dates for start and end of summer time, the dates were changed again because of plain stupidity -- Electoral authorities forgot about summer time at all, and because of stupid machine programming, start of summer time had to be delayed. It is certain that the new rules will not be used in the next year, when there will be no elections, and this delay (hopefully) will not be necessary. Reading the source file for timezone data for Brazil is a joke. Things like a mayor who tries to change time in his city, and authorities forgetting about summer time in planning important occasions are everywhere. Not having fixed rules is a major cause of such a mess. This year, the decree stating that summer time should begin not on the second Sunday of October (yet no such decree ever existed before -- each ear a _new_ decree said "it starts on day X and ends on day Y"), but later, was published by the end of its first week, and not reflected on ON's web site, where most of us used to find such rules. The result is that many people, again, had their clocks wrong. I believe that if clocks eventually go wrong, it would be better if they just remained in the regular time. The effect of not advancing the clock causes less impact (and surprises) than having it unexpectly be one hour ahead.of what users think it should be, because of assuming that rules for the previous year will be used again (even though it sounds very reasonable to our technical ears). So, we now have Rule Brazil 2001 max - Feb Sun>=15 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2002 only - Nov 3 0:00 1:00 S Rule Brazil 2003 max - Oct Sun>=8 0:00 1:00 S but this is wrong, if nothing else, at least because of one very simple reason (already mentioned): "Oct Sun>=8" or "Feb Sun>=15" may look like a good aproach, and result of careful observation by some of us, but they are not in any previous decree, and assuming it may fail in the future again (and it fails in the past too, if we start looking back. as far as 1998 and before). Let's not go beyong the facts we know, that is we know when summer time starts in 2002 and ends in 2003, and nothing more. Besides that, let those of us who are Brazilians try to push the goverment into using permanent criterion, so that mess doesn't happen again. (BTW, I didn't have problems this year, because when I noticed that ON didn't publish anything until last year's start date was to close, I dug the Net and found this year's decree). -- Pappires ... Qui habet aurem audiat quid Spiritus dicat ecclesiis.

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help
by Steve Mann Oct. 21, 2002

Oct. 21, 2002

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About rules for Brazil
by Paulo Alexandre Pinto Pires Oct. 21, 2002

Oct. 21, 2002

Hello, folks. I have recently downloaded tzdata 2002d, which brings new rules for Brazil again, because the government again changed when summer time starts. I suggest that rules for Brazil don't ever be considered permanent, i.e., make no use of "max" for new rules, but instead use "only". Regardless of a public poll at National Obversatory's (ON is the official source of time information for the country) web site, to learn if Brazilians would like to have fixed dates for start and end of summer time, the dates were changed again because of plain stupidity -- Electoral authorities forgot about summer time at all, and because of stupid machine programming, start of summer time had to be delayed. It is certain that the new rules will not be used in the next year, when there will be no elections, and this delay (hopefully) will not be necessary. Reading the source file for timezone data for Brazil is a joke. Things like a mayor who tries to change time in his city, and authorities forgetting about summer time in planning important occasions are everywhere. Not having fixed rules is a major cause of such a mess. This year, the decree stating that summer time should begin not on the second Sunday of October (yet no such decree ever existed before -- each ear a _new_ decree said "it starts on day X and ends on day Y"), but later, was published by the end of its first week, and not reflected on ON's web site, where most of us used to find such rules. The result is that many people, again, had their clocks wrong. I believe that if clocks eventually go wrong, it would be better if they just remained in the regular time. The effect of not advancing the clock causes less impact (and surprises) than having it unexpectly be one hour ahead.of what users think it should be, because of assuming that rules for the previous year will be used again (even though it sounds very reasonable to our technical ears). So, we now have Rule Brazil 2001 max - Feb Sun>=15 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2002 only - Nov 3 0:00 1:00 S Rule Brazil 2003 max - Oct Sun>=8 0:00 1:00 S but this is wrong, if nothing else, at least because of one very simple reason (already mentioned): "Oct Sun>=8" or "Feb Sun>=15" may look like a good aproach, and result of careful observation by some of us, but they are not in any previous decree, and assuming it may fail in the future again (and it fails in the past too, if we start looking back. as far as 1998 and before). Let's not go beyong the facts we know, that is we know when summer time starts in 2002 and ends in 2003, and nothing more. Besides that, let those of us who are Brazilians try to push the goverment into using permanent criterion, so that mess doesn't happen again. (BTW, I didn't have problems this year, because when I noticed that ON didn't publish anything until last year's start date was to close, I dug the Net and found this year's decree). -- Pappires ... Qui habet aurem audiat quid Spiritus dicat ecclesiis.

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Brazil DST errors
by Rainer Brockerhoff Oct. 17, 2002

Oct. 17, 2002

Hi, I've just downloaded a version of your timezone files from GNU.org, as your FTP server seems to be down. There are several errors regarding Brazil... details are on my weblog at: http://www.brockerhoff.net/bb/viewtopic.php?p=90#90 I'd be happy to send you an update, but am unsure of the precise format you require. My current TZ file is for Mac OS X only. Thanks! -- Rainer Brockerhoff <rainer(a)brockerhoff.net> Belo Horizonte, Brazil "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by" (Douglas Adams) http://www.brockerhoff.net/ now with forums for XRay, Zingg! et al.

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Brazil and summer time
by Pablo Borges Oct. 16, 2002

Oct. 16, 2002

Hi. I work at uol.com.br (a major brazilian ISP) and I experience problems with our "messy" summer time decree's. So this year we made the following changes to your's southamerica Rules: Yours: Rule Brazil 2003 max - Oct Sun>=8 0:00 1:00 S to Ours: Rule Brazil 2003 only - Oct 15 0:00 1:00 S This avoids to *major* problems. The first, when we set up a 'max' rule, this rule is valid to every year after, so, when the government delays the decree, we happen to see all our machines entering the 'summer time' way before the correct date. The second, the decree says February 15th, and not the first sunday after February 8th, as says your rule. I hope this helps. []'s Pablo Borges UOL sysadmin -- "Don't get me wrong: Emacs is a great operating system---it lacks a good editor, though." Quote from the "VI LOVERS HOMEPAGE" http://www.thomer.com/vi/vi.html

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