Tempus Fuggit
But I LIKE daylight savings time. It’ll be alright. We’ll all like it. Just wait and see.
Posted by Curly
01/19/2007 at 02:15 PM
You may like it Curly but a bajillion computers that someone forgot to update are all going to be very screwed. Sure, you can manually reset the clock on the new date but your computer will automatically kick it forward another hour a few weeks later.
Now about your e-mail client ....
I feel your pain, anonymous. That kind of SNAFU is going to crop up a billion times in the next few months. The second week of March promises to be ... interesting.
If not downright painful.
This all goes back to Senator Ted Stevens. It seems his equally clueless staff told him that people would cram less stuff in the internet tubes during night time hours.
He is just trying to help…
Posted by armadefoc
01/19/2007 at 03:00 PM
yeah that blows.. i remember dealing with the y2k shit back at the telco (lots of old mainframes)..
what sucks here is once we patch everything and recover from all the computers/apps that were missed and get all up to date, Congress can go and change it back for next year..
arrrrgh!
It’s a right pain. Best fix would be to give up the stupid Daylight Savings/Standard Time nonsense altogether. It doesn’t save anybody anything these days, if it ever did back when it was introduced. Run every computer everywhere on GMT.
Windows XP can be set to time synch daily if the PC is connected to the internet. I’d assume that servers could do the same. But it’s the other machines - mainframes, AS400s, unix boxes, etc - that would be more of a problem. Older versions of the OS not time synched to networks can be easily reset too. I don’t see that as much of a big deal; very few stand alone PCs run time specific apps that have to be that accurate. (and the clock on most PCs is not exactly Swiss precision to begin with)
I remember Y2K. We did all our testing under the old Unix OSes simply by using the Time command. Throw in a big enough offset and we made it 12/31/99 23:59.50 months in advance. Then after Y2K the Unix folks went and made their software clock 32 bits so that didn’t work any more.
I am kind of amazed that Oracle doesn’t take it’s time feed from the system clock. How is this an advantage under normal circumstances?? No pun intended, but doesn’t an independent clock eat lots of clock cycles?
Skipper, think of all the BILLABLE hours this wonderful scam/plan will generate.
Drew,
Oracle does take it’s time from the system clock.
HOWEVER, you have to understand that Oracle databases are often distributed across several timezones and clients connecting to an Oracle database can be anywhere on the planet. Therefore Oracle has to have internal knowledge of EVERY timezone in order to timestamp transactions correctly.
Just because the database instance you connect to in Chicago says it is Central Standard Time doesn’t mean a hill of beans if you are in Tokyo. Oracle has to translate it’s local time to your time otherwise that stock transaction you just placed wouldn’t take effect until tomorrow and you’d possibly be out a lot of money.
This becomes even more critical with E-Business servers running on top of Oracle databases with companies that have offices around the globe (my current client does). In that scenario, you have not only local client’s TZ all over the world to worry about but also distributed database servers that may be located in several countries trying to talk to each other.
Congress has ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA the mess they have created.
As far as billable hours goes, I’ve been averaging over 70 hours a week for the last three months (at an excellent hourly rate).
The money’s good but I’m getting too old for this
.
During Christmas break I wiped WinXP off my hard drive and went with Linux (Ubuntu distro for those Linux fans keeping score) cause as a fledgling computer geek with time on her hands, I wanted to try something new and challenging (and I missed working on a command prompt if that makes any sense. DOS for the win!)
I heartily pass on a bottle of Maalox to you IT gurus. I did good just to get Beryl installed on my computer last night.
Skipper, the government goons, decided that you have too much time on your hands and deem you a threat. So in order to keep you from blogging they’ve decided that you should spend more of your waking hours working, not doing something you find enjoyable, blogging
Ok Skip, I see your point. But I still don’t see where a globally distributed system wouldn’t be better running GMT for everyone. Nothing to adapt, no local TZs to adjust to. And if you did have to adjust, put that bit in the local portal. Which would mean each local portal would have to be adjusted. Arrgh. Ya can’t win.
Severa, does your Ubuntu system date time from Jan 1 1970? All “real” Unix systems do, and knowing why they do is part of being a proper Unix geek. That and the “cat food”, “make love”, “open can” fun commands, along with naming every temp file “foo”.
Download tzedit.exe from Microsoft.
it bases your time from GMT.
or try timesync from softnik for Windows Systems.
Unix,
sorry,can’t help there.
That’s gonna be a cluster&^%$.Drew, hon, damn. I’ve only been using Linux for the past month. I’m not up to all the Unix geek stuffs yet. *LOL*
And I looked, it does date time from Jan 1 1970. (Ubuntu is based off Debian if that means anything to the Linux gods around here)
I suspect our commieqaeda fiends in Congress are hoping you programmer types are going to be too busy fixing this mess to be paying attention whilst they do something truly evil.
They aren’t happy with all of the voices out there calling them on their bullshit. Kucinbitich is getting ready to dump the “fairness doctrine” back on radio. My guess is they are going to do something to track and shut down the blogosphere or at least the conservative part of it.
Something that will screw up all the opposition screaming and info from folks that could tell everyone what the crap they are about to pull off really means. Somethings up campers, and they don’t want us to know the details until it’s too late!!!
Severa, Debian is an operating system. Its built on the Linux core. Its free, stable, and comes with about 16000 packages. So it can do pretty much anything. Ubuntu is thus an OS package built over another OS package built over another OS. This sounds odd, but Windows is the same way. It’s still DOS down in it’s evil black little heart.
Unix is geek by definition. Or perhaps geek is Unix by definition. They’re that intertwined. Futurists, math and science majors, Trekkies, sci-fi nerds; the guys who wrote it considered all of human history prior to July 19, 1969 to be immaterial. ("That’s one step for man, one giant leap for mankind.") Thus for Unix, time began 1/1/70, the 1st day of the 1st year that humanity was an interplantary race. How’s that for looking forward?
and then it gets to be like when some states didn’t use DST(till a few years ago there were a few holdouts) I notice that there are a few states that won’t be changing the days they change on.. talk about throwing a curveball.....will people in Arizona and Hawaii have to be extra vigilant in making sure they don’t get that update from Microsoft? turn off auto updates and such if its on?(Personally leaving auto updates on is the worst Idea I’ve ever heard of but i digress, I like to see what updates are in the pipeline before I install them)
In other news, it looks like Blogrolling had a SNAFU, all the blogs in the blogroll are showing up as updated today for some reason even though they aren’t
This is all greek (or is that geek) to me - I have a live in computer wonderkind who keeps these evil monsters working and bails me out when I screw up - like yesterday when my math test (try a week long work project) went haywire just as I was going to email it to my boss. [Ain’t that how it always happens?!?](Yeah I know, only for us techno-idiots, I do know my place - but met a women on the 5th who didn’t even know what blog meant - try describing color to a blind person, it was interesting)
I am one for throwing DST overboard, a real lunatic left envirowacko waste of time, money and energy (DUH) if ever there was one.
And I agree that this crap and the resurection of the ‘Fairness’ Doctrine are just covers for an attempt to take over/pass a legislation guarenteed to wrest control of some major aspect of our lives (not to mention millions of our hard earned money) away from us.
I suspect that control of the InterNet will be done under the auspices of SanFranGranNan’s ‘for the children’ mantra.
It is time for the computer geeks, survivalists, conservatives, christians, libertarians, military and just plain sane Americans to unite against the spineless, lunatic left and dnc, before the War is on our shore - killing our children.
My solution for DST is simple: ABOLISH THE SHIT! Never again - now and forever more. Period.
Artificial manipulation of time is madness - something Congress is good at legislating.
A better solution would be to leave the damn clocks alone. “Summer time” would still be possible and encouraged by pushing businesses to change working hours during the summer months. The same objective is achieved - more daylight time after work.Plus you would have the added benefit of those companies who didn’t change their working hours making rush hour traffic lighter with people driving to and from work at different times.
This solution takes one little piece of government control of our lives away from the politicians and makes it a choice to be worked out by the people and the companies affected.
Vote for me for President and I’ll straighten this shit out in no time. SKIPPER ‘08!
Microsoft has same option.. but that server that you connect to needs to have the correct time and date.... so it’s still work somewhere..
