This cannot be exactly what was intended, because 2:00 a.m. EST corresponds to 1:00 a.m. CST, at which point clocks in the Central time zone will not spring forward for another hour. Therefore, as written, the rule requires that a clock in the affected area must jump backwards from 02:00 EST to 01:00 CST, and then an hour later jump ahead from 02:00 CST to 03:00 CDT. In other words, the currently-required clock transitions would look like this:
01:59:59 EST ... and then, one second later,... 01:00:00 CST ... ... ... and then, one hour later,... 01:59:59 CST ... and then, one second later,... 03:00:00 CDT
We doubt whether you really intended that the citizens of Vincennes, Indiana should stay up in the middle of the night and change their clocks twice.
The DOT-related problem is the over-zealous railroad engineer who parks his train for an hour when the clock falls back and then runs at high speed (increasing the chance of an accident) to make up time when the clock springs forward. I will not tempt fate by putting a smiley face here. In an unrelated matter, page 57 of the docket reads (in part) "We expect the economic impact of this proposed rule to be so minimal that a full Regulatory Evaluation...is unnecessary." Which raises the question: if changing clocks by an hour has such minimal economic impact, why are we playing the DST game in the first place? --ado
I apologize for intruding. I've been following the debate about Indiana with some amusement. It appears everyone on the list agrees that very few of the good citizens of Indiana will get up early in the morning on April 2nd to change their clocks twice unless unusually susceptible to April Fool's Day pranks. Though, come to think of it... The usual friendly Illinois-Indiana rivalry aside, isn't it acceptable to allow computers to make two time changes that night without worrying about the human impact? If displaying local time (and thus the TZ library) requires adherence to the letter of the regulation, and the regulation clearly (though impractically) creates a requirement to change clocks twice, but only a few computers will be inconvenienced by the double-change, what's wrong with that? Now, if the concern is that people who need to record time in legal documents, like radio station logs, will not enter the legally-correct information because of the confusion, I don't think the regulation will make much difference anyway. Time logs, like radio station logs or police-department desk logs, need only be unambiguous, not perfect. For example, radio stations I have worked for in the past almost always switched the logs to or from DST when the next engineer came on. So an overnight slot from 0000-0400, followed by one from 0400-0800, would usually be extended to 0430 DT in October (with the next guy coming in at 0330 ST), or shortened to 0330 ST in April (with the next guy coming in at 0430 DT). Each of the engineers' logs would note the local time zone in effect at the start of his or her shift. Police and fire departments usually use UTC to obviate this exact problem. Again, if I've intruded, I apologize. I'm just not sure why the debate has continued so long, when the regulation is as clear as any I've seen, even though it has a silly unintended effect (which is often the hallmark of regulations in general). David Braverman Inner Drive Technology Evanston, Ill.
"David Braverman" <david@inner-drive.com> writes:
isn't it acceptable to allow computers to make two time changes that night without worrying about the human impact?
I would say not.
For example, radio stations I have worked for in the past almost always switched the logs to or from DST when the next engineer came on.
But eventually, as those radio stations and other clocks get automated, and as people's clocks reflect what the tz data actually say, we will see problems if the times are not what people expect. I suspect and hope that the problems will not be catastrophic, but it's conceivable that they will be, and our best course is to make them less likely by having the clocks reflect common practice. This may help to explain why the tz database attempts to reflect the clocks that people actually see in consensus practice, even when this is not the "official" time. We can't always achieve that goal, of course (partly because the actual behavior is not that well documented), but in this particular case it's quite clear that the official rules disagree with what will actually happen.
I'm just not sure why the debate has continued so long, when the regulation is as clear as any I've seen, even though it has a silly unintended effect (which is often the hallmark of regulations in general).
Well, if we weren't so obsessive about doing time "correctly" we probably wouldn't be on this mailing list.... This situation reminds of Brazil's Presidential Decree 4,844 (2003-09-24), which had a somewhat-similar bug before it was corrected the next day; see the red print at the bottom of <http://www.presidencia.gov.br/CCIVIL/decreto/2003/D4844.htm>. It is a bit ironic that the US is less efficient than Brazil in fixing obviously-broken regulations like this.
Has anyone bothered to contact DOT about this? Maybe they have not noticed the oversight. Bill Sic vis pacem para bellum. -----Original Message----- From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert@CS.UCLA.EDU] Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 7:31 PM To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: Docket No. 2005-22114 "David Braverman" <david@inner-drive.com> writes:
isn't it acceptable to allow computers to make two time changes that night without worrying about the human impact?
I would say not.
For example, radio stations I have worked for in the past almost always switched the logs to or from DST when the next engineer came on.
But eventually, as those radio stations and other clocks get automated, and as people's clocks reflect what the tz data actually say, we will see problems if the times are not what people expect. I suspect and hope that the problems will not be catastrophic, but it's conceivable that they will be, and our best course is to make them less likely by having the clocks reflect common practice. This may help to explain why the tz database attempts to reflect the clocks that people actually see in consensus practice, even when this is not the "official" time. We can't always achieve that goal, of course (partly because the actual behavior is not that well documented), but in this particular case it's quite clear that the official rules disagree with what will actually happen.
I'm just not sure why the debate has continued so long, when the regulation is as clear as any I've seen, even though it has a silly unintended effect (which is often the hallmark of regulations in general).
Well, if we weren't so obsessive about doing time "correctly" we probably wouldn't be on this mailing list.... This situation reminds of Brazil's Presidential Decree 4,844 (2003-09-24), which had a somewhat-similar bug before it was corrected the next day; see the red print at the bottom of <http://www.presidencia.gov.br/CCIVIL/decreto/2003/D4844.htm>. It is a bit ironic that the US is less efficient than Brazil in fixing obviously-broken regulations like this.
Yes. Refer to this message from a few days ago. From: Paul Eggert <eggert@ucla.edu> To: "Judith S. Kaleta" <indianatime@dot.gov> Cc: Time zone mailing list <tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov> Subject: off-by-one-hour error in OST Docket No. 2005-22114 Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 21:56:23 -0800 Message-ID: <87oe26unso.fsf@penguin.cs.ucla.edu> On Mon, Jan 23, 2006 at 10:46:41PM +0100, Bill Bonnett wrote:
Has anyone bothered to contact DOT about this? Maybe they have not noticed the oversight.
Bill
___________________________________________________________________________ David Keegel <djk@cybersource.com.au> http://www.cyber.com.au/users/djk/ Cybersource P/L: Linux/Unix Systems Administration Consulting/Contracting
On 1/23/06, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
"David Braverman" <david@inner-drive.com> writes:
It is a bit ironic that the US is less efficient than Brazil in fixing obviously-broken regulations like this.
I'm sorry but I have to ask: where is the irony in this? I hope the answer isn't obvious to people from US and I'm not seeing it just because I'm brazilian ;) Rodrigo Severo
Rodrigo Severo <rodrigo.lists@fabricadeideias.com> writes:
On 1/23/06, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
It is a bit ironic that the US is less efficient than Brazil in fixing obviously-broken regulations like this.
I'm sorry but I have to ask: where is the irony in this? I hope the answer isn't obvious to people from US and I'm not seeing it just because I'm brazilian ;)
I was referring to the common misperception in the US that Brazil has a bureaucracy that is less efficient than ours. Please see, for example, <http://www.infobrazil.com/Conteudo/Front_Page/Analysis/Conteudo.asp?ID_Notic...> and look for "inefficient government bureaucracy". (Since you're in Brazil, you know better, which explains why the joke didn't make sense to you. :-) This is getting a bit off-topic, but I felt I should try to explain my attempt at a joke that in retrospect was poorly worded. Sorry about that.
participants (6)
-
Bill Bonnett -
David Braverman -
David Keegel -
Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] -
Paul Eggert -
Rodrigo Severo