9 ms·

How long are we going to continue sharing this hallucination of "time zones"? Long live UTC, the one true time. Death to all the pretenders!

corin_ 15y ago
Until you can pursuade the majority of the world that they should have dark days and sunlit nights.
- dave1010uk 15y ago
  People would still get up when the sun shines and go to bed soon after it gets dark. You may be having lunch at 2200 but it'd still be near to when the sun was at its highest. The biggest problem I see would be elevenses would have to be changed in most places.
  - corin_ 15y ago
    It would just make it even more confusing. Right now if I want to speak to a business contact in, say, America, I have to find out their time zone, work out what time it is, and call them up. Under the new system, I would know that my contact in Los Angeles has the same time as me, but I wouldn't know what that actually means. It's currently 1pm here in the UK, but at 1pm in LA will they be in the office? Will they be on their way home from work? Will they be fast asleep? Obviously, it would be possible to learn these things, but it's much harder to look up. Imagine a table of different countries, how do you define this stuff? Much easier to define what time the 24 hour day starts based on the sun than to define people's behaviour, as not everyone will have the exact same schedule for when they start work, when they wake up, etc.
    - MicahWedemeyer 15y ago
      I think in practice it would work pretty similar to how it does now. Companies would set their own time guidelines (ie. "Most of us arrive between 2200 and 2300, but just make sure you're here by 2315 every day") For scheduling meetings with people globally, you'd have to figure out the day/night cycle but I doubt it would be all that much different than it is now. But! There would be no goofy daylight savings time differences and there would be no ambiguity ("Oops, I thought the meeting was at 1pm my time, not yours..."). Plus, all us programmers could sleep peacefully at night knowing that our time-based code would just work, instead of waking in a cold sweat wondering what will happen when a government across the globe decides to erase the existence of a day.
      - corin_ 15y ago
        If I want to ring a company in another country I would rather be able to make an educated guess that has a 99% chance of success, such as "they will be at work at 2pm in their timezone" than have to look up that company's guidelines..
        brazzy 15y ago
        Except your "educated guess" right now has a good chance of being wrong due to the complexity of computing what time in your timezone corresponds to 2 pm in theirs.
    - petercooper 15y ago
      It's currently 1pm here in the UK, but at 1pm in LA will they be in the office? Will they be on their way home from work? Will they be fast asleep? With flexi-time and "24 hour working", that's becoming difficult with even the current system. I don't know the hours most of my contacts work but it frequently seems to be well into the small hours..
    - frobozz 15y ago
      Even now, you need to be aware of cultural differences, as well as timezones. Examples: (for some definitions of here and there) It's 1300 here which means that it's 1700 there - do people tend to go home at 1700 or 1800? Lunchtime in France is typically 1200-1400 (local), whereas in Israel it is 1400-1600. If I'm in France, and I need to call up my Israeli colleagues after lunch, simply adjusting for timezone won't do. If I call at 1430 Israeli time, they will have just gone out. In these situations you currently have to know two things: what time it is over there, and what the cultural norms for work and mealtimes are. If time were internationally uniform, you'd only need the latter.
      - corin_ 15y ago
        But it's certainly easier to guess right now. If I called and they were at lunch I would try again after the next hour clicks by, for example. And, in my experience, guessing at a 9-5 day has nearly always worked out for me, with just a few exceptions where I've learned of their slightly odd hours (and in my personal experience, all the people with odd hours are due to those people/companies, not the country they are in).
      - dctoedt 15y ago
        > In these situations you currently have to know two things: what time it is over there, and what the cultural norms for work and mealtimes are. If time were internationally uniform, you'd only need the latter. For some time now I've included my time zone in the mouseprint of my email signature block; it'd be easy enough to include one's usual hours of availability as well.
  - CWuestefeld 15y ago
    The US government, at least, thinks that the perception is relevant, else why did they put us through so much rigmarole in changing the dates of the Daylight Savings Time change? EDIT: s/things/thinks/
bdunbar 15y ago
Until we all stop living on a globe.
jonnathanson 15y ago
Our internal "clocks" are calibrated to the rising and setting of the sun with respect to our present location. Unless the Earth were literally flat and did not rotate on an axis, "universal time" would not work.
- delinka 15y ago
  Why not? You think 5pm local time is just before evening due to convention. Your "internal clock" doesn't care what the clock on wall says. Here, 17:00 would just become lunch hour.
  - ars 15y ago
    So you've traded timezones for lunchzones. Instead of calculating the timezone, you need to calculate when the local lunchtime is. There is no net benefit.
    - delinka 15y ago
      You're right that there is no net benefit. But, as there's also no net detriment, it's still far from "wouldn't work." I propose that we just drop DST, base local time on solar noon and calculate our associates' time based on their longitude.

corin_ 15y ago

Until you can pursuade the majority of the world that they should have dark days and sunlit nights.

dave1010uk 15y ago
People would still get up when the sun shines and go to bed soon after it gets dark. You may be having lunch at 2200 but it'd still be near to when the sun was at its highest. The biggest problem I see would be elevenses would have to be changed in most places.
- corin_ 15y ago
  It would just make it even more confusing. Right now if I want to speak to a business contact in, say, America, I have to find out their time zone, work out what time it is, and call them up. Under the new system, I would know that my contact in Los Angeles has the same time as me, but I wouldn't know what that actually means. It's currently 1pm here in the UK, but at 1pm in LA will they be in the office? Will they be on their way home from work? Will they be fast asleep? Obviously, it would be possible to learn these things, but it's much harder to look up. Imagine a table of different countries, how do you define this stuff? Much easier to define what time the 24 hour day starts based on the sun than to define people's behaviour, as not everyone will have the exact same schedule for when they start work, when they wake up, etc.
  - MicahWedemeyer 15y ago
    I think in practice it would work pretty similar to how it does now. Companies would set their own time guidelines (ie. "Most of us arrive between 2200 and 2300, but just make sure you're here by 2315 every day") For scheduling meetings with people globally, you'd have to figure out the day/night cycle but I doubt it would be all that much different than it is now. But! There would be no goofy daylight savings time differences and there would be no ambiguity ("Oops, I thought the meeting was at 1pm my time, not yours..."). Plus, all us programmers could sleep peacefully at night knowing that our time-based code would just work, instead of waking in a cold sweat wondering what will happen when a government across the globe decides to erase the existence of a day.
    - corin_ 15y ago
      If I want to ring a company in another country I would rather be able to make an educated guess that has a 99% chance of success, such as "they will be at work at 2pm in their timezone" than have to look up that company's guidelines..
      - brazzy 15y ago
        Except your "educated guess" right now has a good chance of being wrong due to the complexity of computing what time in your timezone corresponds to 2 pm in theirs.
  - petercooper 15y ago
    It's currently 1pm here in the UK, but at 1pm in LA will they be in the office? Will they be on their way home from work? Will they be fast asleep? With flexi-time and "24 hour working", that's becoming difficult with even the current system. I don't know the hours most of my contacts work but it frequently seems to be well into the small hours..
  - frobozz 15y ago
    Even now, you need to be aware of cultural differences, as well as timezones. Examples: (for some definitions of here and there) It's 1300 here which means that it's 1700 there - do people tend to go home at 1700 or 1800? Lunchtime in France is typically 1200-1400 (local), whereas in Israel it is 1400-1600. If I'm in France, and I need to call up my Israeli colleagues after lunch, simply adjusting for timezone won't do. If I call at 1430 Israeli time, they will have just gone out. In these situations you currently have to know two things: what time it is over there, and what the cultural norms for work and mealtimes are. If time were internationally uniform, you'd only need the latter.
    - corin_ 15y ago
      But it's certainly easier to guess right now. If I called and they were at lunch I would try again after the next hour clicks by, for example. And, in my experience, guessing at a 9-5 day has nearly always worked out for me, with just a few exceptions where I've learned of their slightly odd hours (and in my personal experience, all the people with odd hours are due to those people/companies, not the country they are in).
    - dctoedt 15y ago
      > In these situations you currently have to know two things: what time it is over there, and what the cultural norms for work and mealtimes are. If time were internationally uniform, you'd only need the latter. For some time now I've included my time zone in the mouseprint of my email signature block; it'd be easy enough to include one's usual hours of availability as well.
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  The US government, at least, thinks that the perception is relevant, else why did they put us through so much rigmarole in changing the dates of the Daylight Savings Time change? EDIT: s/things/thinks/

bdunbar 15y ago

Until we all stop living on a globe.

jonnathanson 15y ago

Our internal "clocks" are calibrated to the rising and setting of the sun with respect to our present location. Unless the Earth were literally flat and did not rotate on an axis, "universal time" would not work.

delinka 15y ago
Why not? You think 5pm local time is just before evening due to convention. Your "internal clock" doesn't care what the clock on wall says. Here, 17:00 would just become lunch hour.
- ars 15y ago
  So you've traded timezones for lunchzones. Instead of calculating the timezone, you need to calculate when the local lunchtime is. There is no net benefit.
  - delinka 15y ago
    You're right that there is no net benefit. But, as there's also no net detriment, it's still far from "wouldn't work." I propose that we just drop DST, base local time on solar noon and calculate our associates' time based on their longitude.