Alternatives to Daylight Saving Time?

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?"

Internet Required

[bill_mcgonigle]

"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.

Forget about it

[djupedal]

> "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?"

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...

No it isn't

[sesshomaru]

Standard Time is nearly upon us, Daylight Savings Time is ending.

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).

Re:Internet Required

[JeffSh]

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.

Where did that S come from

[onkelonkel]

In the interest of Getting Things Right, I'll point out that it's "Daylight Saving Time" not "Daylight Savings Time".

Re:DST is ending - only in Northern hemisphere

[yabos]

Southern hemisphere will be coming into summer soon and lots of countries appear to use DST in our northern winter months.
http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst2008b.html [timeanddate.com]

Japan's "System"

[FFCecil]

Simple answer: abolish it. I lived in Japan for several years and they don't adjust their clocks. Guess what? I didn't notice! Well, except that I didn't have the hassle of changing all my clocks, and throwing off my sleeping rhythm twice a year.

Frankly, I don't see the point of DST anymore. So many people work in giant window-less buildings now, what does it matter? The lights are on the same amount of time regardless. And if you desperately need consistent daylight, move closer to the equator. Or you could invest in some full-spectrum light bulbs (they help me quite a bit).

Meh, just my $0.02.

Re:Move to Arizona

[internerdj]

We should replace it with nothing. Just eliminate it. It would simplify life at no cost. While I agree it should be replaced it wouldn't be at no cost. 4 years ago I got tired of being late after the time switch so I bought a clock that got the time over the radio. Great right? Till two years ago when the idiots in Congress said lets change it by two weeks for no reason whatsoever. Then I had a clock that was wrong 4 times a year instead of two, because I forgot on the new date to change timezones and then it auto changed two weeks later. I had to buy a new clock after two years of that. I can't imagine how much software out there has all the daylight savings switches in the source. Even if it is just a patch someone has to update all the machines not connected to the rest of the world.

DST

[sxmjmae]

I have always found it a funny topic. The politician like to think they have so much power by implement DST or not. Has anyone ever told them they can control the real number of hours of sunlight through legislation? I remember one local politician saying DST would give farms an extra hour of day light! Wow I thought - how could they have such power over the cosmos.

Nooo-- Not again

[Anonymous Coward]

A year ago last spring I was working as a Unix Admin for a rather large dysfunctional company. They waited until January and then decided that a several thousand systems needed DST patching. I was part of a team that worked seven days a week on this. I think I got a $200 gift card for all my overtime. PLEASE don't mess with DST again.

70Hz from 9-5 50Hz 5-1 60Hz rest of night

[An dochasac]

One of my schoolteachers suggested this back when most clocks ran on 60Hz synchronous motors. Speed up time during the work day, slow it down at happy hour.

Four words

[diablovision]

Four words:

One time for Earth.

Re:Move to Arizona

[Golddess]

I bought a clock that got the time over the radio [...] I forgot on the new date to change timezones and then it auto changed two weeks later

If it got it's time from the radio, why would you need to set anything at all? I would think that any radio transmissions should be local enough that it would be sending the correct time for that region regardless of the time of year.

Re:Move to Arizona

[AusIV]

I suspect that you'll get something like GMT from the radio transmissions, and the clock itself adds however many hours it needs to get to the present time zone and to consider daylight savings time.

Re:This is not a problem

[matthelm007]

No, it does NOT save ANY money. Duke electric (?), which has the before and after records on Northern Indiana, where they just made the switch a few years ago from not having DST, had a study done using that data. There was NO saving what so ever, in fact, usage went up slightly (again, they also have areas that didn't change to compare normal year changes) up! (wish I'd kept the link, but I think it was even post here.)

Re:Move to Arizona

[weierstrass]

Just everyone use GMT (UTC) and get used to it. What is the point of timezones anyway? Oh, you like that it's 12 in the middle of the day and in the middle of the night. So what. Get over it. It's going to happen eventually anyway.

Re:Move to Arizona

[LandDolphin]

Apparently I need to acquire a lawn. Because words like "chillax" really annoy me. Did chill somehow need san "ax" at the end? A hybrid of two words (Chill and relax) that already mean the same thing where the hybrid is longer then both of the original words is just annoying as all hell.

Re:Move to Arizona

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think any lightbulb, especially a compact flourescent is in any way comparable to sunlight then I suspect you're an itinerant basement dweller and in fact haven't seen the sun in years (if ever).

there's no silver bullet

[kiddygrinder]

The only real solution is to network all clocks and have them auto adjust by say 10 min a few times during the year. Give it 5 or 10 years and it'll be fixed. Personally i don't have much of a problem with the way it is now, i just miss an hours sleep once a year to get an extra hour of daylight in the afternoon to sit on the veranda and drink beer, but to each their own i guess.

Let's go on it permanently

[chriswaco]

Morning suck anyway. Let's go on DST permanently.

Lafayette, Indiana

[DynaSoar]

An area of Indiana around Lafayette (and Purdue University) doesn't observe DST. They stay the same all year while the areas around them switch back and forth. They suffer no ill effects from not changing their clocks twice a year. The further suffer no ill effects due to different amounts of light and darkness compared to their stable time system. Like the rest of the planet, those that need to resort to a world-wide time standard use Greenwich/Zulu. Once again, no ill effects of keeping the same time difference between their time standard and Greenwich/Zulu have been observed.

I mention no ill effects because my ex-wife, who ran a substance abuse treatment center in Lafayette, and I, running one in Virginia, compared daily intake numbers for three years. Every fall, the weekend after time changed in Virginia, we had a 250% increase in admissions. She saw no such change. As to whether a sudden smack to the diurnal rhythm forcing one into crisis and so into treatment is an ill effect or a beneficial effect remains open for discussion. The vast majority of the people in the Lafayette area will continue to not care.

NTP

[jemenake]

If you look at the map of where DST is used, you'll notice that it's used more the closer you get to the poles (where there's a larger swing in the length of the day between the seasons). Now, when you realize that, then it dawns on you that there's no particular reason why there should just be a 1-hour shift for everyone in the US regardless of latitude.

Why doesn't California have a 1-hour shift and Washington have, say, a 2-hour shift... and Alaska have an 8-hour shift? Seems asinine, right? Well, then why even have a 1-hour shift, then? It's a slippery-slope argument, but it's difficult to argue that, as sub-optimal as a "1 hour fits all" approach is, that it's any less optimal to scrap the whole thing completely.

So, I'd can it. However, if you *really* still want it... how about this? With so many devices (computers, phones, etc.) syncing their clocks to servers, lets just have a national conversion to server-sync'd house clocks (kinda like the upcoming switch to digital TV) and then, if you really want DST, just have the servers gradually slew it in, day by day, as the sun moves toward solstice.

Re:Move to Arizona

[swillden]

Thank FDR.

His New Deal was being systematically shot down by the Supreme Court on the grounds that the Commerce Clause didn't justify massive federal intervention in the economy. He threatened to stack the deck by appointing six new justices (making the total 15) if needed to get his legislative agenda upheld. The Court caved and started supporting the New Deal and in the process set the precedent that the federal government can do whatever it damned well wants as long as it can imply some vague connection to interstate commerce.

The current Court has been the first one to try to roll that precedent back a bit, actually striking down a couple of Commerce-based laws, but since Obama is going to win and appoint a Democrat or two to the bench, expect the all-powerful Commerce clause to be quickly re-established.