The Utah Governor's Office of Economic Development, pursuant to a bill passed last year by the state legislature, polled citizens and held public meetings about daylight saving time. They got more than 27,000 responses, including 13,000 written comments totaling 574,000 words. The results: 67% preferred Mountain Standard Time (UTC-7) all year (like Arizona) 18% preferred daylight time (UTC-6) all year, essentially Central Standard Time 15% liked the current spring-forward/fall-back system The main argument of the majority was convenience. The tourism and recreation industries prefer daylight saving, though, and will lobby against switching to MST all year if (as seems likely) an MST bill is introduced in the legislature. My source: Davidson L. Something new under the sun: Utah may dump daylight saving time. Salt Lake Tribune 2014-10-15 http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/58526154-90/daylight-saving-malley-uta...
This might seem like a stupid question, but now that most of the world is connected by computers, smart phones, etc... why don't we develop an app that collects time settings and standards along with GPS for every device world wide as to what is showing on the clock? Such an app could then automatically generate zone rules along with location data for each of those rules. It would be a complex exercise in set theory getting the program to recognize "groups" of similar data but I think it could be done. On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 2:31 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
The Utah Governor's Office of Economic Development, pursuant to a bill passed last year by the state legislature, polled citizens and held public meetings about daylight saving time. They got more than 27,000 responses, including 13,000 written comments totaling 574,000 words. The results:
67% preferred Mountain Standard Time (UTC-7) all year (like Arizona) 18% preferred daylight time (UTC-6) all year, essentially Central Standard Time 15% liked the current spring-forward/fall-back system
The main argument of the majority was convenience. The tourism and recreation industries prefer daylight saving, though, and will lobby against switching to MST all year if (as seems likely) an MST bill is introduced in the legislature.
My source:
Davidson L. Something new under the sun: Utah may dump daylight saving time. Salt Lake Tribune 2014-10-15 http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/ politics/58526154-90/daylight-saving-malley-utah.html.csp
On Thursday, October 16, 2014 03:49:56 Zoidsoft wrote:
This might seem like a stupid question, but now that most of the world is connected by computers, smart phones, etc... why don't we develop an app that collects time settings and standards along with GPS for every device world wide as to what is showing on the clock? Such an app could then automatically generate zone rules along with location data for each of those rules. It would be a complex exercise in set theory getting the program to recognize "groups" of similar data but I think it could be done.
The first question that comes to mind is how on earth each of those computers would get the time in the first place. Its the TZ database that this list is for that's used to give most of them the information that they need to give the time in a local time zone rather than UTC. All that stuff like NTP does is give the current time in UTC, so without something like the TZ database, all any of those devices would know about would be UTC. Also, time zone rules change over time, and we often need to know what they are ahead of time, so trying to figure out what they are via AI would not only be a mess, but it wouldn't even have the information that we need when we need it. If all you cared about was generating a database of what a bunch of devices _thought_ that the time was in a given time zone at different points in time was, that would be one thing, but we care about having the correct rules over pretty much as large a time span as possible - both in the future and in the past. And what you're suggesting wouldn't work for that at all. AI can be great for heuristics, but it's horrible if you need to know the exact anwser to something - like what the time zone rules are _exactly_ for a given time zone at any given point in time. But really, what you're suggesting pretty much comes down to generating information from a group of devices instead of looking it up in exactly the same place that they look it up, because the only way that they know anything about the local time zone that they're in is because of the TZ database. They don't magically learn it just because a government announces it. They learn it because their TZ database files get updated with it. - Jonathan M Davis
I was thinking of the Seti@home app that used to be popular back in the 90's. Before that I always had to set the time on all my devices. In my experience my cell phone has updated time change info on something other than the tz database. I don't know how Verizon did it (unless it's through complex shape files), but when driving by Vidal, it was on Arizona time; 6 miles north it switched to Pacific time. I know because I let the tz database know about this strange little town which Verizon somehow knew about and kept time with (probably only a population of about 12). Perhaps an iterative process like this could help improve accuracy when users change the time standard when it is wrong sending that info back to a server that the tz database reads? On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 4:25 AM, Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg@gmx.com> wrote:
On Thursday, October 16, 2014 03:49:56 Zoidsoft wrote:
This might seem like a stupid question, but now that most of the world is connected by computers, smart phones, etc... why don't we develop an app that collects time settings and standards along with GPS for every device world wide as to what is showing on the clock? Such an app could then automatically generate zone rules along with location data for each of those rules. It would be a complex exercise in set theory getting the program to recognize "groups" of similar data but I think it could be done.
The first question that comes to mind is how on earth each of those computers would get the time in the first place. Its the TZ database that this list is for that's used to give most of them the information that they need to give the time in a local time zone rather than UTC. All that stuff like NTP does is give the current time in UTC, so without something like the TZ database, all any of those devices would know about would be UTC.
Also, time zone rules change over time, and we often need to know what they are ahead of time, so trying to figure out what they are via AI would not only be a mess, but it wouldn't even have the information that we need when we need it. If all you cared about was generating a database of what a bunch of devices _thought_ that the time was in a given time zone at different points in time was, that would be one thing, but we care about having the correct rules over pretty much as large a time span as possible - both in the future and in the past. And what you're suggesting wouldn't work for that at all. AI can be great for heuristics, but it's horrible if you need to know the exact anwser to something - like what the time zone rules are _exactly_ for a given time zone at any given point in time.
But really, what you're suggesting pretty much comes down to generating information from a group of devices instead of looking it up in exactly the same place that they look it up, because the only way that they know anything about the local time zone that they're in is because of the TZ database. They don't magically learn it just because a government announces it. They learn it because their TZ database files get updated with it.
- Jonathan M Davis
The fundamental reason this doesn't work is that TZ info needs to be know about AHEAD of time so that scheduling tasks (plane tickets, scheduled meetings in the future across timezones (EDT to PDT for example)) can be scheduled correctly before the change in TZ occurs. (and that explains why short lead time before a change in TZ rules is a bad idea) Unless you have devices with built-in time machines to go probe cell towers time signal in the future, this doesn't solve the problem. What you suggest though could be useful to set watches or microwaves to the correct local time using OTA data like the clocks that derive their time from atomic clock radio signals. To my knowledge that signal doesn't include any TZ info. Seeing the low value in these devices I doubt there will be pressure to pay for the infrastructure for such a solution. Beside, as far as I know, cell many compagnies are on this list and have contributed to the data here so they pretty much find out when we do. On 16/10/2014 4:58 AM, Zoidsoft wrote:
I was thinking of the Seti@home app that used to be popular back in the 90's. Before that I always had to set the time on all my devices. In my experience my cell phone has updated time change info on something other than the tz database. I don't know how Verizon did it (unless it's through complex shape files), but when driving by Vidal, it was on Arizona time; 6 miles north it switched to Pacific time. I know because I let the tz database know about this strange little town which Verizon somehow knew about and kept time with (probably only a population of about 12).
Perhaps an iterative process like this could help improve accuracy when users change the time standard when it is wrong sending that info back to a server that the tz database reads?
On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 4:25 AM, Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg@gmx.com <mailto:jmdavisProg@gmx.com>> wrote:
On Thursday, October 16, 2014 03:49:56 Zoidsoft wrote: > This might seem like a stupid question, but now that most of the world is > connected by computers, smart phones, etc... why don't we develop an app > that collects time settings and standards along with GPS for every device > world wide as to what is showing on the clock? Such an app could then > automatically generate zone rules along with location data for each of > those rules. It would be a complex exercise in set theory getting the > program to recognize "groups" of similar data but I think it could be done.
The first question that comes to mind is how on earth each of those computers would get the time in the first place. Its the TZ database that this list is for that's used to give most of them the information that they need to give the time in a local time zone rather than UTC. All that stuff like NTP does is give the current time in UTC, so without something like the TZ database, all any of those devices would know about would be UTC.
Also, time zone rules change over time, and we often need to know what they are ahead of time, so trying to figure out what they are via AI would not only be a mess, but it wouldn't even have the information that we need when we need it. If all you cared about was generating a database of what a bunch of devices _thought_ that the time was in a given time zone at different points in time was, that would be one thing, but we care about having the correct rules over pretty much as large a time span as possible - both in the future and in the past. And what you're suggesting wouldn't work for that at all. AI can be great for heuristics, but it's horrible if you need to know the exact anwser to something - like what the time zone rules are _exactly_ for a given time zone at any given point in time.
But really, what you're suggesting pretty much comes down to generating information from a group of devices instead of looking it up in exactly the same place that they look it up, because the only way that they know anything about the local time zone that they're in is because of the TZ database. They don't magically learn it just because a government announces it. They learn it because their TZ database files get updated with it.
- Jonathan M Davis
-- Oracle Email Signature Logo Patrice Scattolin | Principal Member Technical Staff | 514.905.8744 Oracle Cloud 600 Blvd de Maisonneuve West Suite 1900 Montreal, Quebec
On 16/10/14 13:41, Patrice Scattolin wrote:
Unless you have devices with built-in time machines to go probe cell towers time signal in the future, this doesn't solve the problem.
Much the same comment applies to the proposal to drop timezones altogether, changing local opening times and the like instead, but then we need a database of future changes of those times instead of one giving the changes via TZ :) -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
On Thu, Oct 16, 2014, at 08:41, Patrice Scattolin wrote:
What you suggest though could be useful to set watches or microwaves to the correct local time using OTA data like the clocks that derive their time from atomic clock radio signals. To my knowledge that signal doesn't include any TZ info. Seeing the low value in these devices I doubt there will be pressure to pay for the infrastructure for such a solution.
The atomic clock radio signal is in UTC. You have to configure the clock for a base timezone, but the signal does include embedded DST information at the day level (the clocks are hardcoded to make the transition at the next 2:00 local time). AIUI it's centrally located for the whole country, so they can't send "what timezone you are in now" data the way cell phone towers can.
On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 09:15:51AM -0400, random832@fastmail.us wrote:
On Thu, Oct 16, 2014, at 08:41, Patrice Scattolin wrote:
the correct local time using OTA data like the clocks that derive their
The atomic clock radio signal is in UTC. [...] it's centrally located for the whole country
With a .us address you are excused to assume there is only "the country" :) Anyway, I was curious aboput this statement and checked - it seems the majority of atomic clock radio signals are, in fact, broadcasting local time - at least MSF (uk), DCF77 (de), TDF (fr) and JJY (jp) are.
To my knowledge that signal doesn't include any TZ info
Most of the signals are defined to be in a certain timezone (which might be different than the timezone the receiver is in), in the sense that they usually can switch between two fixed offsets to UTC (e.g. UTC+1 and UTC+2 for DCF77 or TDF), usually with a short warning before a switch, so UTC can be recovered from these time signals. -- The choice of a Deliantra, the free code+content MORPG -----==- _GNU_ http://www.deliantra.net ----==-- _ generation ---==---(_)__ __ ____ __ Marc Lehmann --==---/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / schmorp@schmorp.de -=====/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\
On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 8:41 PM, Patrice Scattolin < patrice.scattolin@oracle.com> wrote:
Unless you have devices with built-in time machines to go probe cell towers time signal in the future, this doesn't solve the problem.
You leave out the part on how to calibrate when these time machines jumped to. "I arrived shortly after midnight in early spring 2134, and sampled the microwave and VCR time clock. Why are you throwing away the data, Dr Scattolin?" :-) -- Sanjeev Gupta +65 98551208 http://www.linkedin.com/in/ghane
On 16/10/14 17:09, Sanjeev Gupta wrote:
Unless you have devices with built-in time machines to go probe cell towers time signal in the future, this doesn't solve the problem.
You leave out the part on how to calibrate when these time machines jumped to. "I arrived shortly after midnight in early spring 2134, and sampled the microwave and VCR time clock. Why are you throwing away the data, Dr Scattolin?"
:-)
The guys on a couple of the engineering lists have been working on that one for a few years now, but no one has come back (in time) with the solution yet ;) -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
There is no way to automate this. The source material for the TZ database is human action — mostly the decisions of politicians, made up when they feel like it and announced anywhere from years to minutes ahead of time. The only possible way to update the TZ database is to find news about those actions, translate them from legalese into TZ syntax, and edit the database text.
paul
No, I think he's suggesting having people manually set their clocks, and then to build the rules for showing past timestamps retroactively by collecting data from their manually set clocks. It's a ridiculous idea, but not for the reasons you are saying. No, I'm suggesting that we collect data from systems that show user manual adjustments. There are many different uses for this data and I wasn't focusing on the use of current data, but of past time stamps. I'm a developer of software using astronomical calculations to accurately represent the sky and I have done this with my devices when they are wrong. Of course this will not solve the problem of future time zone info, but since it is the future, these are always guesses anyway and such info will only be as reliable as the political structure. If such a system could be perfected, we could at least take some of the workload off Paul for time changes up to the present. On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 12:33 PM, Lester Caine <lester@lsces.co.uk> wrote:
On 16/10/14 17:09, Sanjeev Gupta wrote:
Unless you have devices with built-in time machines to go probe cell towers time signal in the future, this doesn't solve the problem.
You leave out the part on how to calibrate when these time machines jumped to. "I arrived shortly after midnight in early spring 2134, and sampled the microwave and VCR time clock. Why are you throwing away the data, Dr Scattolin?"
:-)
The guys on a couple of the engineering lists have been working on that one for a few years now, but no one has come back (in time) with the solution yet ;)
-- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
On 16 October 2014 14:42, Zoidsoft <zoidsoft@gmail.com> wrote:
If such a system could be perfected, we could at least take some of the workload off Paul for time changes up to the present.
It would multiply, though, the workload placed upon all the people manually adjusting their clocks which they've been gradually conditioned over the last couple decades to believe will set themselves. -- Tim Parenti
On Oct 16, 2014, at 2:42 PM, Zoidsoft <zoidsoft@gmail.com> wrote:
... No, I'm suggesting that we collect data from systems that show user manual adjustments. There are many different uses for this data and I wasn't focusing on the use of current data, but of past time stamps. I'm a developer of software using astronomical calculations to accurately represent the sky and I have done this with my devices when they are wrong. Of course this will not solve the problem of future time zone info, but since it is the future, these are always guesses anyway and such info will only be as reliable as the political structure. If such a system could be perfected, we could at least take some of the workload off Paul for time changes up to the present.
But while those changes are ongoing work, they aren’t the hard part. The hard part is the mad scramble when a rule is changed with little lead time. Also, it is the future changes that matter most; the historic stuff is usually quite accurate for recent years, and less and less critical for dates further into the past. Note that future entries are not “always guesses”. Just the opposite: they are guesses only in a few cases where we’ve had insufficient information. Apart from those unusual cases, the future rules reflect the known published laws or regulations. Of course, those are subject to change and we don’t know about that until it is announced, but even so the term “guesses” is quite inaccurate. paul
Sorry for the poor choice of the word "guess". What I meant to say is that the political structure is not as stable as desirable even though they are based upon man made laws. BTW, I wrote the Terran Atlas based upon this database. Some of us are very interested in keeping an accurate history even though most users on this list probably have no use for data that is more than a month old. On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 3:26 PM, <Paul_Koning@dell.com> wrote:
On Oct 16, 2014, at 2:42 PM, Zoidsoft <zoidsoft@gmail.com> wrote:
... No, I'm suggesting that we collect data from systems that show user manual adjustments. There are many different uses for this data and I wasn't focusing on the use of current data, but of past time stamps. I'm a developer of software using astronomical calculations to accurately represent the sky and I have done this with my devices when they are wrong. Of course this will not solve the problem of future time zone info, but since it is the future, these are always guesses anyway and such info will only be as reliable as the political structure. If such a system could be perfected, we could at least take some of the workload off Paul for time changes up to the present.
But while those changes are ongoing work, they aren’t the hard part. The hard part is the mad scramble when a rule is changed with little lead time. Also, it is the future changes that matter most; the historic stuff is usually quite accurate for recent years, and less and less critical for dates further into the past.
Note that future entries are not “always guesses”. Just the opposite: they are guesses only in a few cases where we’ve had insufficient information. Apart from those unusual cases, the future rules reflect the known published laws or regulations. Of course, those are subject to change and we don’t know about that until it is announced, but even so the term “guesses” is quite inaccurate.
paul
On Oct 16, 2014, at 3:49 AM, Zoidsoft <zoidsoft@gmail.com> wrote:
This might seem like a stupid question, but now that most of the world is connected by computers, smart phones, etc... why don't we develop an app that collects time settings and standards along with GPS for every device world wide as to what is showing on the clock? Such an app could then automatically generate zone rules along with location data for each of those rules. It would be a complex exercise in set theory getting the program to recognize "groups" of similar data but I think it could be done.
You’re confusing the cart with the horse. The way that all those devices know the correct local time is precisely because they have the TZ database built into them. So you’re proposing updating the TZ database from the existing TZ database. Clearly that can’t work. There is no way to automate this. The source material for the TZ database is human action — mostly the decisions of politicians, made up when they feel like it and announced anywhere from years to minutes ahead of time. The only possible way to update the TZ database is to find news about those actions, translate them from legalese into TZ syntax, and edit the database text. paul
On Thu, Oct 16, 2014, at 10:32, Paul_Koning@dell.com wrote:
There is no way to automate this. The source material for the TZ database is human action — mostly the decisions of politicians, made up when they feel like it and announced anywhere from years to minutes ahead of time. The only possible way to update the TZ database is to find news about those actions, translate them from legalese into TZ syntax, and edit the database text.
paul
No, I think he's suggesting having people manually set their clocks, and then to build the rules for showing past timestamps retroactively by collecting data from their manually set clocks. It's a ridiculous idea, but not for the reasons you are saying.
participants (10)
-
Jonathan M Davis -
Lester Caine -
Marc Lehmann -
Patrice Scattolin -
Paul Eggert -
Paul_Koning＠dell.com -
random832＠fastmail.us -
Sanjeev Gupta -
Tim Parenti -
Zoidsoft