because Y2K wasn't enough

[piranha]

of a problem, the new US energy bill changes daylight saving time starting in 2007. yeah, that's what's gonna make good sense, changing a system that's been in place for 18 years, and that is connected to every other country's system. nevermind that i actually think DST is bullshit and if any change should be made to it, it ought to be abolished and companies should be encouraged to offer flex time (since that has a whole lot of other positive side effects), and people should be rewarded for keeping their energy bills low.

whoever came up with this should be tied to an anthill, covered with honey. i wonder if anyone has calculated the approximate worldwide cost for the switch. not like the US would care, really. we ought to boycott their idiocies. but even internally, that's a lot of software and gadgets that'll have to be changed. i almost feel sorry for the airlines.

small saving grace is that apparently as part of the new law, the secretary of energy has nine months after the enactment of the act to report to congress the impact the change in daylight saving time would have on future energy consumption in the us. hello! how about doing studies before signing something into law?

[edit: daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time ...]

Comments

[brooksmoses.livejournal.com]

Good grief.

I am almost tempted to start putting forth conspiracy theories about this being supported by Microsoft as an incentive for people to upgrade from older operating systems that they no longer wish to provide support for. It's particularly convenient how they just dropped support for Windows 2000 about a month ago. And, if this Vista thing comes out before then, they just have to decide to drop support for "non-security-related fixes" in XP a month before the first DST change of 2007, and everybody will have to upgrade or face considerable annoyance.

I'm fairly sure that's unsupportable speculation without any basis in truth, but still -- the effects are about as annoying as if it were truth. Guess I'll just have to switch to Linux by then.

[brooksmoses.livejournal.com]

Or I suppose I could just run my computer clock on GMT.

But that's far less apocalyptic sounding.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

http://www.worldtimeserver.com/atomic-clock/ is your friend. Unless it's a CIA-inspired keylogger, of course.

[brooksmoses.livejournal.com]

The problem is, though, that that doesn't really help. Either I keep the computer's idea of GMT synchronized (which I do already) so that all of my emails and so forth work correctly and my file timestamps get dealt with properly, which means that the "local time" will be wrong for a few weeks -- or else I keep the "local time" correct, which messes up GMT and means that emails and files and so forth get the wrong timestamps, and occasionally time goes backwards an hour and breaks programs.