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Alternatives to Daylight Saving Time?
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Oct 23, 2008 03:21 PM
from the even-ben-franklin-made-some-whoppers dept.
from the even-ben-franklin-made-some-whoppers dept.
Wellington Grey writes "Daylight saving time almost upon us. The arguments about its possible benefits and drawbacks come up twice every year. Does it save energy or lives? Possibly, but it does definitely cause a great deal of inconvenience. My question is this: what do you think would be the best possible system to replace DST with? What is the best way for humans to deal with the inconsistent amount of light over the year and still foster coordination over disparate time zones?"
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Hardware: Daylight Savings Time Increases Energy Use In Indiana 384 comments
enbody writes "The Freakonomics Blog at NYTimes.com reports on a study of Indiana energy use for daylight savings time showing an increase in energy use of 1%. 'The dataset consists of more than 7 million observations on monthly billing data for the vast majority of households in southern Indiana for three years. Our main finding is that — contrary to the policy's intent — D.S.T. increases residential electricity demand.'" Maybe that's just from millions of coffee makers being pressed into extra duty.
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Move to Arizona (Score:5, Funny)
We don't do DST in John McCain country.*
*Unless you're an Indian, in which case you might.
Re:Move to Arizona (Score:5, Insightful)
I grew up in AZ - moved to a state that does daylight savings a couple years ago. I hate it. I never felt any lack for not having it or thought, "Gee, I wished we messed with the clocks twice a year."
We should replace it with nothing. Just eliminate it. It would simplify life at no cost.
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Re:Move to Arizona (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, once the government has adopted something you can't get rid of it. You can change it for better or worse (usually worse) but it is there for ever.
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May be ... (Score:5, Funny)
Internet Required (Score:5, Interesting)
"9-5" business hours is a convention because there's no easy way to do anything different in a pre-wired world.
Now that we have or are about to have ubiquitous Internet everywhere, companies should publish smbmeta [trellixtech.com] files at domainname.foo/smbmeta.xml with their hours in it, and have every useful directory service (Google Local, Yellowpages.com, that iPhone thing, etc.) understand a linkage between a domain name and store (oh, and the phone thing too, which can usually be used as the 'foreign key'). Good VOIP phones could easily do the same. The cost is practically nil for everybody and we get past the need for conventions.
Of course there are clustering reasons to coordinate business hours on a geographical basis, but individual businesses can make those decisions and either profit or lose business by them.
Re:Internet Required (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm afraid I must disagree. 9-5 business hours are becoming even more important in a connected world because of our desire/need for immediate responses.
Businesses must be open during similar hours so that we may respond to each others requests. For instance, call cenders in India are open and running at night for them in order to service our requests from the states..
I am not interested in dispatching an email and expecting a response. People talk to one another still and always will. 9-5 business hours are here to stay and will only get more important.
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Re:Internet Required (Score:5, Insightful)
The worldwide inter-connectedness of business is a strong argument AGAINST the 9-5 schedule. What good is standardizing on "9-5" when your customer on the west coast and your partners in India, Japan, and England all have their own, different 9-5?
Who the hell even picked 9 and 5, and what makes those particular numbers so special that everyone has to change our entire time system twice a year to make sure those are always work hours?
If every business adopted a very simple "go to work when you have to and leave when you have to" policy, we wouldn't care what the damn clock said, and would need neither time zones nor daylight saving time.
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This is not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The effect it does have is actually increasing energy usage as people crank on the AC when they get home earlier in the daylight of afternoon and it's hotter. And AC is vastly more expensive to operate than a bulb.
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Get rid of it (Score:5, Insightful)
See subject. Then make everyone talk in UTC. That should do it.
Re:Get rid of it (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost. Everybody should be using 24 hour time as well. ie, it's now 20:40.
Parent
Forget about it (Score:5, Interesting)
Russia has a dozen time zones and fares just fine - as does China, with only one. This business of claiming that 'light' is a problem needing a solution is the only issue here...
Re:Forget about it (Score:5, Funny)
We should build a shell around the earth covered in solar cells on the outside and florescent bulbs on the inside. This way we could make it the same time for everyone all the time on earth, and we'd all be equal all the time and live in perfect harmony until the dim green flickering light, the neverending ballast hum, and the sweet smell of air-conditioner mold drives us all stark-raving mad.
Parent
DST is ending (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, DST is coming to an end. The summer is when the hours are artificially moved ahead. The winter time is the actual "accurate" earth time.
How about this? (Score:5, Funny)
What is the best way for humans to deal with the inconsistent amount of light over the year and still foster coordination over disparate time zones?
Turn on a lamp.
Standard Time is Upon us! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, we are in Daylight Savings Time right now. We are getting ready to go back to Standard Time.
Wrong! (Score:5, Funny)
The issue with DST is not that it's inconvenient, it's that it's insufficiently precise! We should be changing the time every day (at least!) to make sure our time is as accurate as possible to the length of the day. Every day, 12 noon should be when the Sun is directly overhead, no matter where you are.
Sure, this means changing time zones almost continuously while travelling, and at least daily while remaining stationary, but at least we won't have to deal with the confusion that comes from discovering that the Sun is directly overhead at 12:00:34 instead of 12 noon sharp! How can we call ourselves intelligent beings when our time system is so woefully inaccurate most of the time?
So, scrap daylight savings time and replace it with a system of several thousand time zones, each updated daily based on the predicted "high noon" for that particular day at that particular location. If the prediction ends up being off by a few microseconds on a particular day, just change the time to correct it right then and there! Sure, wristwatches will become orders of magnitude more complex, but it's the only way to have a truly sane and accurate system of time measurement. And after all, isn't that what we all really want here?
No it isn't (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's my favorite anti-daylight savings time page:
End Day Light Savings Time [standardtime.com]
I don't like Daylight Saving Time, or as I call it "Pretend it's an hour later than it is," and will be glad when the clock in my car doesn't make me do addition to remember what time it is (I refuse to adjust it for this nonsense.) This silly dance we do every year twice.
My alarm clock is a self-adjusting atomic model (not internally of course, it readjusts itself via radio signal from the U.S. Atomic Clock in Colorado).
DTS already replaced... (Score:5, Funny)
what do you think would be the best possible system to replace DTS with?
I think DTS disappeared with the release of SQL Server 2005. I'm pretty sure it's all .NET code now...
Nuke it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Daylight Savings Time has enormous costs and very little value in return.
We should get read of it and say, "Good riddance..."
If there are issues with available daylight in a particular area, then the times of events should be adjusted accordingly. If it is to dark at 7 AM for kids to go out in order to reach school at 8 AM, then push back the start time of school, etc., to 9 AM.
In reality, this is what Daylight Savings Time does, but at much greater cost.
Re:My proposal (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:My proposal (Score:5, Funny)
Where is the blink tag when you need it?
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Re:Let's just use Zulu time... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Let's just use Zulu time... (Score:5, Funny)
Did you know that sales of Swatch Internet Time watches doubled between 1998 and 1999?
So they sold eight instead of four?
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Re:Picture this... (Score:5, Funny)
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