Snooze Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 Coping with daylight savings itself is not a problem - the concept has existed for a long time, so you have to cope with it. As you have probably seen with PCs - Windows knows the daylight savings rules and can apply them automatically. The problem is that the daylight savings rules themselves tend to be coded in. It certainly could be a problem for PCs - whilst Vista has an automated update facility, all previous Windows releases have to have a new patch release. And whilst it's fine for Windows and (most) Windows-based applications, many enterprise systems are not Windows-based, and have to be manually updated when these changes happen. Most of my work is the airline industry, and a lot of these systems are still running 30-year old software in long-forgotten programming languages! These, for example, would all have to be manually updated, or planes are going to start taking off at the wrong time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreaseMonkey Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 IMO, I think it's what the UK's Politicians/ Banks/ Financial system has cooked up so they can run the same time as Europe, using the longer daylight hours as an excuse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted February 20, 2011 Author Share Posted February 20, 2011 IMO, I think it's what the UK's Politicians/ Banks/ Financial system has cooked up so they can run the same time as Europe, using the longer daylight hours as an excuse. I don't suppose you are related to Morpheus are you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snooze Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 Of course, another alternative is to change the school/work opening hours - just get "standard" opening times changed from 09:00 to 08:00 instead and everyone go home an hour earlier. That has exactly the same effect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackso11 Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 That will never happen. Longer evenings would make sense, but standing on the GMT line marker near my folks house and looking at my watch that is GMT +1 will not make sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJI Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 I remember watching a program about the origins of GMT. From memory I think it was a final 'race' between the French and ourselves as to what the world adopted. Greenwich won, Paris lost. But in modern times speaking in world terms, in comparison not much uses GMT anymore. With ever accurate satallite navigation and atomic clocks etc. there is no real need to tie everything to one place in the world anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morpheus Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 It's still 1975 up there Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonathanc Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 It's a nice idea, but not really worth debating - working in IT, I can tell you that the cost of updating every computer system in the world to cope with a change like this would be VERY expensive. As soon as someone looks at the actual cost impact this change would make, especially in the current economic climate, it's bound to be a no-go. lol:D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Theres always some farmers in the far north of Scotland or on the outer islands who kick off about this, saying they would have to get up in darkness even more, and schools in Lerwick would be opening in pitch black mornings. You live on a remote island....just get up and do your farmwork when you feel like it. Its not like some farmer needs to be turning sods as soon as the London Stock Exchange opens. Open the schools at 10:00 am if its a problem and let the kids home at 4:30. I don't see why the whole UK should be held back by some people waaay north. From what I see of a morning, most kids are driven to school anyway, so its not like there's going to be hundreds of road deaths suddenly if they DO have to get up in the dark. They could, you know, like be a bit more careful if its a problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJI Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 The road death argument was always a strong one but was totally flawed. More road deaths used to occur in the afternoon run as opposed to the morning run. (Which would support the clocks moving forward argument - not the situation we currently have with having to move clocks back in autumn). The 'pro-morning light' lobby (if you can call them that) turned the facts around in order to state that more road deaths would be caused with darker mornings, but in fact by creating darker evenings I *think* it was the case that road deaths actually increased in the afternoons. (don't have any link to that at the moment - just going from what I can remember last time round when the UK was thinking of changing the clocks - which was not too long ago). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Konrad Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 The road death argument was always a strong one but was totally flawed. More road deaths used to occur in the afternoon run as opposed to the morning run. (Which would support the clocks moving forward argument - not the situation we currently have with having to move clocks back in autumn). The 'pro-morning light' lobby (if you can call them that) turned the facts around in order to state that more road deaths would be caused with darker mornings, but in fact by creating darker evenings I *think* it was the case that road deaths actually increased in the afternoons. (don't have any link to that at the moment - just going from what I can remember last time round when the UK was thinking of changing the clocks - which was not too long ago). It's logic, that more accidents will be caused at dark evenings, as you need to add all day work tiredness as a factor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt H Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 defo in favour - it doesn't actually alter much, just maybe some (like famers) will get up a little later and finish a little later (but stay up later perphaps?) I'm a night owl so more sun light later on is a big plus IMO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamesy Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 big yes please Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jagman Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 It's a nice idea, but not really worth debating - working in IT, I can tell you that the cost of updating every computer system in the world to cope with a change like this would be VERY expensive. As soon as someone looks at the actual cost impact this change would make, especially in the current economic climate, it's bound to be a no-go. perhaps we need a 10 hr day ,10 day week ,10 week month ,and 10 month year , to keep the IT people happy , blessed are the IT workers ,,, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 I may be ignorant here, but I fail to see how putting the clocks forward another hour would cost millions in IT work. You just set the pc clock forward to match. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Konrad Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 It's just another 2k scare Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt H Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 I may be ignorant here, but I fail to see how putting the clocks forward another hour would cost millions in IT work I fail to see it too. At first I thought that certain programs that are time based may be heavily impacted on, but then I thought what's the difference between 2 hours and 1 hour in our current daylight savings time system. I would have thought that minor tweeks would be needed to alter the actual time, nothing like the hours you work during a day would change for example? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snooze Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Yep - it's fundamentally a simple change somewhere to update it. The problem is that that's a "simple" change in literally thousands of pieces of software and the millions of installations using it. Changing clocks and DST rules has a direct economic cost, entailing extra work to support remote meetings, computer applications and the like. For example, a 2007 North American rule change cost an estimated $500 million to $1 billion. My company produces about 200-300 different software products, most of which do not run on "auto-updating" PCs. The software would need to be changed for many of these, completely re-tested to ensure smooth switchover and then installed and re-tested at hundreds of airport and data-centre locations worldwide. An expensive business, I'm afraid. Article here, if you're interested: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0307/p02s01-stct.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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