Daylight Saving

ljbeng · Post by **ljbeng** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 2:25 pm

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/daylight1.html

So.... How many products are going to malfunction next year because they were programmed with automatic daylight saving adjustments? Next year daylight savings changes by about a month. Congress approved it 2 years ago. My VCR was made 6 years ago. It automatically sets the clock back 1 hour in fall and ahead in spring. I know I can turn DS adjustments off and change the clock manually. Do most people know this? I think this may be a big deal come March 11, 2007 when people manually change the clock ahead 1 hour and the VCR automatically changes it again in April 2007.

Chris Smith · Post by **Chris Smith** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 3:53 pm

I cant wait to see â€œstupid in actionâ€

Dean Huster · Post by **Dean Huster** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 5:42 pm

Last spring was when I found out that the little Timex clock radio/CD player did the auto DST update. I had "sprung" it forward before going to bed and when I got up, it was "double-sprung" forward and I had to set it back. It was a good idea at the time, but since DST is a geo-political "standard" rather than something more concrete, it does have its problems when you start putting programming for it into firmware.

Dean

Bob Scott · Post by **Bob Scott** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 7:43 pm

You think you have problems? My Sony VCR's date setting is only programmable until 2007. After that, the VCR+ feature quits working because I won't be able to set the date. Oh well, I never use it anyway.

Dean, can you disable the auto DST feature? Like you said, some places don't use DST, like Saskatchewan.

I wonder if they sell many "atomic clock" watches in Hawaii? I don't think WWVB can be received there. The broadcast footprint does not go that far.

Bob

philba · Post by **philba** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 10:01 pm

heh heh, does win xp know about the change? I kind of doubt it. maybe vista...

HighFrequency · Post by **HighFrequency** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 6:21 am

I'm sure there will be patches for windows. But they'll probably be a month late. I never hear about this DST changing.... is Canada on board with this as well?

I wonder when they're gonna change the value of pi....

jollyrgr · Post by **jollyrgr** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 7:50 am

Just a MESS!

I was having this discussion with my coworkers last Friday. We work in IT and manage some 200+ Windows servers as well as a dozen NetWare boxes. There is no longer support for NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 (technically). So what happens to these servers? We uncheck the DST selection and MANUALLY change the time next spring. The instructions for my RCA VCR are the same; stop using the DST setting and manually set the clock as I would with an older VCR.

philba · Post by **philba** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 7:56 am

It seems to me that you should be able to find an applet that will do this for you. How do you keep all servers in sync in the first place?

L. Daniel Rosa · Post by **L. Daniel Rosa** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 8:13 am

Demand interest!

They're taking an hour from you without your consent, and returning it to you later without apology. Assuming they're making a killing on an investment (time=money) we can still demand at least 3%.

Think about it. #600 seconds for 6 Months at 3%APY. That's 54 seconds to spend when and how you like.

"No, your honor, that speeding ticket doesn't apply to me. I'm spending 6 seconds to slow down.", $438 saved.

"Don't worry sweetheart, I took an extra 15 seconds to consider the options and pulled our investments out before stock plummeted.", $153,000 saved.

"Well, your cosmic grace, Uncle Sam has been giving us kickbacks on his time investments, and I'm taking a few seconds to step out of the way of that bullet.", one life saved.

jollyrgr · Post by **jollyrgr** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 9:45 pm

philba wrote:It seems to me that you should be able to find an applet that will do this for you. How do you keep all servers in sync in the first place?

Thus far we set the time zone (central US) and select DST on all servers. We then sync a domain controller to the naval observatory over the Internet. The Win Server 2003 boxes don't have a problem and use the time service to call into the Domain controller. Problem being we will not have the adjustment for DST take place correctly next spring but I'd expect some sort of DLL for 2003, XP, and Vista to be available.

As far as keeping the time sync correct on the NT 4.0 and Server 2000 boxes.... We have a batch file that does a command:

NET TIME \\<Domain Controller> /Set
(There may be a /YES switch as well but I don't have the command right in front of me.)

A scheduled task runs at midnight for the time.bat file. It has been a couple years since I had to setup an NT 4.0 server machine and about a year or more since I had to setup a 2000 server. I don't recall what time we normally used on the scheduled task but I am fairly certain it was something near midnight or slightly afterward.

I'm guessing the "easy" way out will be to change the scheduled task to run the time sync at 2:02AM and make sure the domain controller is indeed set correctly. Whatever the case is, be it a patch or modify of the scheduled task, we will be hitting every machine to fix the DST. Still not a fun prospect just becaus someone in Washington decided to make changes to DST.

(For those scratching your head saying "Why is this idiot running NT 4.0 and 2000?" The answer is simple: The vendor has not certified their product on Server 2003 with the FDA. I will have to review my scan log but I believe we have something like 25 or 30 NT 4.0 machines that are still in full operation.)

This was bugging the crap out of me so I took another stab at it. It took some searching but I got an answer. I will also post my findings in the COMPUTERS section. This CAN be fixed! But Microsoft is not supporting a patch for anything below WinXP SP2. You have to use a utility to fix WinXP SP1, Windows 2000, and Windows NT 4.0. (I'm not sure about Win9x and ME).

Microsoft's stance on the issue:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007.mspx

Using the Timezone.exe utility to fix older Windows versions:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=914387

Hope this helps someone.

Dave Dixon · Post by **Dave Dixon** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 5:51 am

I have always wondered what is up with some locations that are off by 30 minutes or 45 mintues.http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0855474.html Has anyone here ever been to one of these locations??
Dave
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jollyrgr · Post by **jollyrgr** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 9:58 pm

Dave Dixon wrote:I have always wondered what is up with some locations that are off by 30 minutes or 45 mintues.http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0855474.html Has anyone here ever been to one of these locations??
Dave
[/url]

Kinda Sorta. I was on a trip two years ago to Kentucky for a funeral. We started back Saturday late in the day on our way to nothern Illinois and stopped along highway 65 somewhere north of Louisville, south of Indianapolis. This was the weekend that the "fall back" time change took place so when the hotel clerk alerted me that check out time was 11:00AM I asked her "Do you observe daylight savings time here?" The woman had no clue as to what I was talking about. I explained that this is the weekend for "fall back" and the clocks change. But I also informed her that parts of Indiana observe DST and some parts do not. She could not tell me! Absolutly no clue. And if you look at the confusion that exist with Indiana you can see the problem. See this web site: http://www.mccsc.edu/time.html

So the next morning I get up and check with the morning shift desk clerk. He is a bit more on the ball and answers me this way: "No we don't change the clocks. We just reprogram the VCRs because all the shows now come on at a different time."

Dean Huster · Post by **Dean Huster** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 10:24 pm

Dean, can you disable the auto DST feature? Like you said, some places don't use DST, like Saskatchewan.

Funny, but I never thought to look for the instruction manual. Anymore, these digital devices are hardly easy to use because of all the cryptic functions and the need to consult the manual just to be able to do basic things. but it would make sense for an international company to make sure that the product was conditioned for areas that somehow manage to survive without DST.

I wonder if they sell many "atomic clock" watches in Hawaii? I don't think WWVB can be received there. The broadcast footprint does not go that far.

I wonder if all the "atomic clocks" actually use WWVB vs. WWV/WWVH? The Heathkit "Most Accurate Clock" that predated the current crop of cheap "atomic clocks" used the 5/10/15MHz WWV/WWVH frequencies to synch up the clock and then monitored the transmissions and trimmed its internal clock oscillator so that when signal was lost, it still kept darned accurate time. It was within 10ms of true time when the DIP switches were set for the proper propagation delay and the clock was receiving the radio signal. These el cheapo "atomic clocks" don't update often enough to boast that kind of accuracy. The ads make them sound accurate, but really all they do is a daily time set which many of us used to do manually with our watches when we had a daily WWV signal at hand.

Dean

philba · Post by **philba** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 11:04 pm

I don't know how often those cheap wwv clocks update but i have two and they are always in sync. Plus I use worldtimeserver on my PCs and it is always in agreement with the two wwv clocks. They change minutes very close to each other. Anything better than a couple of seconds is better than I need.

By the way, neither of those clocks change for DST. There is a DST setting that you can turn on - it simply advances the hour forward. It's only my computers that knows to shift for DST. I have a pile of home automation devices and none of them have a clue about DST.

jollyrgr · Post by **jollyrgr** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 3:41 pm

Speaking of atomic clocks for the home...

I have several atomic clocks. One is a wall clock (time, temp, date, moon phase), another is a weather station with a clock, a clock radio with atomic clock setting, and an atomic watch. All of these will "sync up" sometime after midnight. You can set them initially and eventually the get the right time. But it is the simple AC self setting one that gets me. It does not matter how long this has been unplugged. You plug it in and it is set. There is a battery compartment (empty right now) for remembering the alarm settings. But this thing sets as soon as it is plugged in no matter what time of day it is. Like I say the others are based on WWVB and must have a midnight pass (or several) before they sync up. This one self setting clock simply gets plugged in and is set. How this one works I'm not sure. Could it be picking up some sort of signal provided by the power grid for their equipment?

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