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As I recall, Russia has done just that this year and abolished the practice in Moscow, switching to GMT+4 year-round. Quote: “Every fall and every spring we ar

As I recall, Russia has done just that this year and abolished the practice in Moscow, switching to GMT+4 year-round. Quote: “Every fall and every spring we are swearing at this system,” Medvedev said. “Our biorhythms are damaged. We are all angry. We either oversleep and turn up late for work or wake up too early and don’t know what to do with this free time. Let alone poor cows and other animals that can’t understand why they should have their meals or be milked earlier or later.” Here is a story on it: http://rt.com/news/daylight-saving-time-abolished/ http://rt.com/news/daylight-saving-time-abolished/

anigbrowl 15y ago
What he said. First Daylight savings time, then Centigrade and the metric system. These three changes would give our economy a significant boost IMHO. Using outmoded metrics is an insidious and wasteful form of protectionism.
- philwelch 15y ago
  I don't see how centigrade would actually help. I agree that it's better for scientific measurements (if not as good as Kelvins) but the typical Fahrenheit range is much better suited for weather conditions than centigrade from a usability standpoint. The typical weather conditions on the inhabited parts of the earth don't range much further than 0-100, whereas centrigrade can't represent any kind of legitimately wintry conditions without resorting to negative numbers and everything above 50 is completely unused. From a usability standpoint, it makes sense that typical temperatures should be distributed along a 100 point scale, and that only genuine extremes should exceed the ends of that. Fahrenheit meets that requirement; centigrade doesn't.
  - StavrosK 15y ago
    That's just a convention. I don't much care if temperature today will be 28 C or 28.5 C, it doesn't matter and it varies anyway. We really don't need that much precision in temperatures.
  - cfn 15y ago
    That is an interesting way of putting it. I (metric since birth) find that zero degrees centigrade is a very strong signal that things are getting cooler or warmer. I would think that, from a usability point of view, zero is easier to retain than thirty two (assuming that ice is an important factor in your neck of the woods).
  - liedra 15y ago
    I dunno about that - been metric all my life and I know the difference between 23 and 28 degrees C. Since it's something you generally grow up learning about, the practical usability (by lay users) in terms of dealing with estimating temperatures is something that is picked up along the way too. Additionally, weather reports will usually qualify the temperatures (with things like "warm and sunny" or "hot" or whatever), which is needed regardless of measurement - 25 degrees C in humid conditions is a very different "feel" from 25 degrees C in dry conditions. Add in wind chill/warm factors and temperature by itself is not actually that useful by itself to determine the weather practically.
    - philwelch 15y ago
      Everywhere I've lived, humidity is a feature of climate and not weather. If you live someplace dry, it's dry. Heat is a dry heat, cold is a dry cold. So you actually can take temperature as the most significant variable.
      - liedra 15y ago
        I grew up in Sydney, Australia, where humidity is reasonably variable. And you can definitely feel it some days, definitely not others. You can see some graphs here: http://www.gids.nl/sydney/weather/ http://www.gids.nl/sydney/weather/ - notice how it fluctuates between about 25 and 100% humidity, particularly on the month-by-month graph.
        philwelch 15y ago
        Wow! You're right, I didn't realize some places had that much variability in their humidity. Even over the course of a day it ranges quite a bit!
        liedra 15y ago
        Glad I could help! Weather conditions are so different across the globe - I came last week from London where everyone was sweltering in 28 deg C heat to Sydney where 28 deg C was only just comfortable in a t-shirt, and I felt like I should take a jacket with me just in case it got a little chillier. I can only put that down to other aspects - humidity, wind, cloud cover, etc. rather than simply raw temperature.
  - henrikschroder 15y ago
    If you live in a climate where you have real winter, then being able to tell the difference between freezing and not freezing is very important. -1 means snow from the sky, ice on the roads, lower humidity. +1 means rain, wet roads, and higher humidity. It's a very important divider, which is why it's at a prominent place on the Celsius scale, unlike the Fahrenheit one where it's between 32 and 34. I don't think it's a coincidence that Anders Celsius lived further north than Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. :-)
    - philwelch 15y ago
      I'm not fond of the tradeoff between not having to remember the number 32 and having to use a sign bit for half the year. Frankly you're not totally safe from ice until 35 or so, and it's useful to have a marker around 0 or so that just says "your face will fall off". Likewise, it's nice to have a convenient marker around 100 for "your face will melt off". 0 and 100 are good for extreme ends of a range, not so much for middle values.
    - mseebach 15y ago
      But -1 doesn't mean that. A myriad of factors comes into play before you can tell if there will be ice on the road, not least the temperature of the road it self. It takes prolonged periods of cold to chill a road down to where it can sustain ice. Conversely, after a night with hard freezing, ice can remain on the road for hours, even as temperatures climb into decidedly balmy territory. In Denmark people rely on weather forecast warnings on the radio for this more than intuitive reading of the thermometer.
juandopazo 15y ago
Argentina tried implementing DST for a year. Next year it just wen't back to no DST after once province decided not to go with it. Lesson learned. http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/argentina-san-luis-out-of-dst.html http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/argentina-san-luis-out-...
stassats 15y ago
Funny, I've never overslept before when DST was switched, but this time my phone decided that it still should switch from summer to winter time, resulting in me sleeping one more hour. What's more annoying, my Garmin Edge cycling computer still shows the wrong time, because it determines your time zone based on GPS and there's no way to change the timezone or time manually. Some web sites (like http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=time+in+Moscow http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=time+in+Moscow) still don't know that the timezones in Russia have been changed.
ricardobeat 15y ago
I don't think farmers change their scheduling due to DST - it's mostly based on sunrise and sunset, they will just (not) adjust their watches.

anigbrowl 15y ago

What he said. First Daylight savings time, then Centigrade and the metric system. These three changes would give our economy a significant boost IMHO. Using outmoded metrics is an insidious and wasteful form of protectionism.

philwelch 15y ago
I don't see how centigrade would actually help. I agree that it's better for scientific measurements (if not as good as Kelvins) but the typical Fahrenheit range is much better suited for weather conditions than centigrade from a usability standpoint. The typical weather conditions on the inhabited parts of the earth don't range much further than 0-100, whereas centrigrade can't represent any kind of legitimately wintry conditions without resorting to negative numbers and everything above 50 is completely unused. From a usability standpoint, it makes sense that typical temperatures should be distributed along a 100 point scale, and that only genuine extremes should exceed the ends of that. Fahrenheit meets that requirement; centigrade doesn't.
- StavrosK 15y ago
  That's just a convention. I don't much care if temperature today will be 28 C or 28.5 C, it doesn't matter and it varies anyway. We really don't need that much precision in temperatures.
- cfn 15y ago
  That is an interesting way of putting it. I (metric since birth) find that zero degrees centigrade is a very strong signal that things are getting cooler or warmer. I would think that, from a usability point of view, zero is easier to retain than thirty two (assuming that ice is an important factor in your neck of the woods).
- liedra 15y ago
  I dunno about that - been metric all my life and I know the difference between 23 and 28 degrees C. Since it's something you generally grow up learning about, the practical usability (by lay users) in terms of dealing with estimating temperatures is something that is picked up along the way too. Additionally, weather reports will usually qualify the temperatures (with things like "warm and sunny" or "hot" or whatever), which is needed regardless of measurement - 25 degrees C in humid conditions is a very different "feel" from 25 degrees C in dry conditions. Add in wind chill/warm factors and temperature by itself is not actually that useful by itself to determine the weather practically.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Everywhere I've lived, humidity is a feature of climate and not weather. If you live someplace dry, it's dry. Heat is a dry heat, cold is a dry cold. So you actually can take temperature as the most significant variable.
    - liedra 15y ago
      I grew up in Sydney, Australia, where humidity is reasonably variable. And you can definitely feel it some days, definitely not others. You can see some graphs here: http://www.gids.nl/sydney/weather/ http://www.gids.nl/sydney/weather/ - notice how it fluctuates between about 25 and 100% humidity, particularly on the month-by-month graph.
      - philwelch 15y ago
        Wow! You're right, I didn't realize some places had that much variability in their humidity. Even over the course of a day it ranges quite a bit!
        liedra 15y ago
        Glad I could help! Weather conditions are so different across the globe - I came last week from London where everyone was sweltering in 28 deg C heat to Sydney where 28 deg C was only just comfortable in a t-shirt, and I felt like I should take a jacket with me just in case it got a little chillier. I can only put that down to other aspects - humidity, wind, cloud cover, etc. rather than simply raw temperature.
- henrikschroder 15y ago
  If you live in a climate where you have real winter, then being able to tell the difference between freezing and not freezing is very important. -1 means snow from the sky, ice on the roads, lower humidity. +1 means rain, wet roads, and higher humidity. It's a very important divider, which is why it's at a prominent place on the Celsius scale, unlike the Fahrenheit one where it's between 32 and 34. I don't think it's a coincidence that Anders Celsius lived further north than Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. :-)
  - philwelch 15y ago
    I'm not fond of the tradeoff between not having to remember the number 32 and having to use a sign bit for half the year. Frankly you're not totally safe from ice until 35 or so, and it's useful to have a marker around 0 or so that just says "your face will fall off". Likewise, it's nice to have a convenient marker around 100 for "your face will melt off". 0 and 100 are good for extreme ends of a range, not so much for middle values.
  - mseebach 15y ago
    But -1 doesn't mean that. A myriad of factors comes into play before you can tell if there will be ice on the road, not least the temperature of the road it self. It takes prolonged periods of cold to chill a road down to where it can sustain ice. Conversely, after a night with hard freezing, ice can remain on the road for hours, even as temperatures climb into decidedly balmy territory. In Denmark people rely on weather forecast warnings on the radio for this more than intuitive reading of the thermometer.

juandopazo 15y ago

Argentina tried implementing DST for a year. Next year it just wen't back to no DST after once province decided not to go with it. Lesson learned. http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/argentina-san-luis-out-of-dst.html http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/argentina-san-luis-out-...

stassats 15y ago

Funny, I've never overslept before when DST was switched, but this time my phone decided that it still should switch from summer to winter time, resulting in me sleeping one more hour. What's more annoying, my Garmin Edge cycling computer still shows the wrong time, because it determines your time zone based on GPS and there's no way to change the timezone or time manually. Some web sites (like http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=time+in+Moscow http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=time+in+Moscow) still don't know that the timezones in Russia have been changed.

ricardobeat 15y ago

I don't think farmers change their scheduling due to DST - it's mostly based on sunrise and sunset, they will just (not) adjust their watches.