Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:22:49 -0300 From: Nicolas Alvarez <nicolas.alvarez@gmail.com> Message-ID: <gcimog$sa8$1@ger.gmane.org> | So basically the current tzdata has a *guess* at when it *might* be. Everything in tzdata that claims to indicate what will happen in the future is a guess as to what might happen. How can it be otherwise? Unless the timezone code says nothing at all about times from the date of its creation (that is from the reeast time of each tzdata update - so the "date" command on your system would always give the current time in UTC) it cannot really do otherwise. None of is is able to predict the future with certainty, all we can ever do is guess. Now some of the guesses are ones we can be reasonably confident about, like when summer time will end in the US this year, others are total speculation as we get no data at all on what is happening, and many others are somewhere in between - but they are all guesses, and if we were required to avoid using any guesses (predictions) at all the whole thing would be a disaster. | As you probably know, many operating systems had their time wrong last week | because tzdata said DST would start on the 5th. Ubuntu took days to update | the tzdata since the report. The current package says it will start on the | 19th. Yes, we try hard to get the best information we can, and make the most reliable estimations of what is likely to happen, and most of the time things work out the way we'd like. Sometimes they don't. What really matters is the accuracy of the information that we can obtain, and how early that information reaches us. We know there are places where summer time rules seem to be decided upon a whim the day before the event, but I suspect that most of this is just perception - things like airline timetables for international flights cannot simply be changed with a day's notice. So what is most likely the problem is just that the information is not getting through, rather than it does not exist. That is, I am reasonably confident that there are people in Argentina who really know whether summer time will start Oct 19 this year or not, and if not, when (if at all.) The issue is getting that information from the people who know and to the people who maintain tzdata. Someone who cares needs to do that, this year, and in the future (until perhaps things stabilise and there are less surprises.) | If the government doesn't say *anything* about DST, Why would they not? That is, if asked? If no-one bothers to ask, that's a different issue, that is is you just sit passively and hope to be informed, but why not go out and ask??? That's what I asked for in an earlier message - no-one seems to have done anything (beyond speculating.) | what will you do? Change the rules on the 18th to remove the DST? No, because on the 18th we still will not know one way or the other, on this assumption (that no-one bothers to find out in advance.) What would happen is that on the 19th we will find out what actually happened, and if we were wrong, we will correct it then. That's obviously not ideal, but if no-one is going to say any more than "I haven't heard anything yet" then what choice is there? The reason you aren't hearing anything may be because they assume you already know from earlier announcements (the actual "prepare to change your clocks" messages usually only start appearing a day or two before the actual event, even in places with very stable summer time rules.) Note here that no-one simply decided that Oct 5, and then Oct 19, would be good days to screw with the Argentinian people. They came from the most reliable information we have been able to find so far. The legislation that said summer time would start in Oct was last December, so it cannot reasonably have meant Oct 2007, it must have meant 2008. It has been suggested that that legislation has been repealed, if so, find some authoritative source - ie: get someone who really knows to say something (and ideally a reference to some official doc, if it is available on the net, even better) and send that. Then we will have more up to date, and reliable information, and the rules will get updated (well, actually that's a guess too, as that's also in the future, but it has always happened in the past...) | Do you know how much time it will take for all distros to have it? | Definitely more than a day, so on the 19th | we'll have the same mess again. Yes. Unfortunately. Unless someone actually does the work to get better information that's what is going to happen (assuming summer time does not start on the 19th, at the minute that seems more likely than other scenarios). kre