Really, there is no good technical solution for this, because in part, it is not even a technical problem. The laws about timezones, etc, very from country to

Really, there is no good technical solution for this, because in part, it is not even a technical problem. The laws about timezones, etc, very from country to country, from year to year etc. And some parts of the world are claimed by two or more different countries, each one of which has an opinion about what time it should be there. One might say "well lets skip all this political b.s. and do everything in UTC" but really, viewing time as running according to a single universal clock is a relic of Newtonian Physics. There is no single, global answer to what time it is. And we are getting to the point where special relativity is kicking in. High-frequency trading is already in the 50-microsecond range. Not so far off from the relativistic time dilations experienced even in flying in a jet airplane: flying around the world eastward results in about a 180 ns slowdown, flying around the world westward give about an 80 ns speedup. Even concepts like simultaneity become relative at the speeds which we will soon be computing at. Imagine two corporate raiders flying in their private jets, biding on the same block of controlling stock: who bought it first would be different depending upon which frame of reference you were in. If you have to write programs for when time really matters (as I did writing stock-trading software) my advice is to just accept the realities, and glory in the complexities. Being able to write software which can keep track of time, and obey all the rules and regulations of various exchanges and countries, is a competitive advantage for you.