Switching Your Systems to the New DST
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 6th Mar 2007 15:40 UTC, submitted by editingwhiz
Hardware, Embedded Systems If you live in the United States, you are probably affected by a law passed by Congress in 2005 which turned the daylight savings system upside-down. Computers are, obviously, affected by this as well. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols explains how to update your Linux computers to the new DST rules: "To make sure your Linux system knows when DST is, this year and ever on, you need to update your zoneinfo file, or replace it with one that contains the new rules." In addition, even though Apple has provided a fix for Mac OS X, this fix does not work for Macs running 10.3.9 or lower. Apple does provide a fix. This is where a freeware utility also comes into play.
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RE[2]: I am looking forward to it
by jal_ on Wed 7th Mar 2007 14:25 UTC in reply to "RE: I am looking forward to it"
jal_
Member since:
2006-11-02

"We are not an agricultural, daylight-dependent society. It's time to drop these agricultural, daylight-dependent anachronisms."

DST was introduced to conserve energy, as many people on this thread have reminded us, and has nothing to do with daylight-dependment or agriculture. The idea is that during summer, it gets light really early (when most people are still sound asleep), but gets dark when most people are still awake (and thus will turn on the lights). When shifting for an hour, you would save the energy needed for light for one hour. You can't just shift that hour permanently, since during winter, it would get dark even sooner than it does now, so the clock is turned back then. Of course, one could argue whether in a modern time with everyone having computers and other energy consuming home appliences running 24/7, the energy consumption of your average light bulb really matters that much.

Reply Parent Score: 1

phoenix Member since:
2005-07-11

It's still backwards, especially in the winter. It's dark when you wake up, it's dark when you are preparing for work, it's dark when you get to work (for those that work at 8 or 9 in most places), it's dark when you leave work (for those that work until 5-ish), it's dark when you get home. Where's the savings there? The lights are on all day.

If we moved the clocks ahead in the winter, then it would still be dark in the morning, but it would be light out for an hour or so after work. Seems we'd save a lot more power that way.

And if we moved the clocks back in the summer, it would actually be dark at night, like it's supposed to be. I can't stand trying to sleep when it's still daylight out after 11pm.

Reply Parent Score: 2