OT: New time zones?

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Once I wrote a simple program for an old PC-XT that was just 5 bytes (just 1 jump instruction) to reset the PC.

[Commander Kinsey]

Doesn't matter now, youe parents would be arrested for daring to let you walk to school.

[Commander Kinsey]

In Japan 95% of workers for your company must live within 1- miles of your company, or something like that. Sensible rules are possible, but not in the west. We are 6 IQ points lower than them.

[Rod Speed]

NY [e-mail] wrote

Not convinced that that was ever the reason.

Likely the fact that many don't like getting up very early and allowing time for getting the kids off to school etc.

Unlikely given that many realise that they don't perform as well after the midday meal.

I used to think that 9:30 meeting at work were an utter obscenity.

Now it is very uncommon for me to not be up before 5am.

[Commander Kinsey]

Try it in Windows 11, I bet you it's not measured in bytes or even kilobytes.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Could that difference have anything to do with leap seconds?

[Commander Kinsey]

There's no difference whatsoever, unless you have OCD.

Although I note the second link says this stupid incorrect fact: "UTC does not observe Daylight Saving Time (unlike GMT)". GMT does NOT observe daylight savings time!

[zall]

BULLSHIT.

[zall]

You've just lost that bet, its a single API call.

[SteveW]

Work hours, school hours, etc. are set by the clock and the rest of society. Solar midday is hours off people's actual middle of their day. Most people spend much of the year getting up hours after sunrise and then head straight off to work, etc., having used none of it. Then in the Autumn and Winter, they come home from work and it gets dark too early for them to do anything outside. Unless people work outside, daylight in the morning is nigh on useless, while daylight in the late afternoon/evening is very precious.

[SteveW]

People no longer have jobs for life or a clear career progression. They cannot keep moving house every time they move jobs, disrupting their children's education and friendship groups; losing their support networks; making their partner/spouse change jobs to be near the new home. Companies just want the best candiates for jobs and workers want the best pay, conditions and potential futures. That involves having large catchment areas for employment.

[SteveW]

But you'd have some light in the evening to play out and ride to and from friends' houses.

Your parents would not have to come home from a day's work to darkness, no ability to do anything outside and the sheer despression of havin gno free time in daylight.

[zall]

Not with plenty of work.

Useful, sure for BBQs and walking the dog etc but hard to claim that is precious.

[The Natural Philosopher]

All immediately solved by e.g. Germans, who get up in the dark and are at work by 7 a.m, and home to play with the kids by 3pm.

What does it matter what the clock says = if you want afternoon sunlight at home, get up earlier!

[Commander Kinsey]

The Germans are a more logical race and we should all do as they do. They are less prudish for a start, with people walking around naked in the hills, and the age of consent is closer to actual puberty. They also get people into a lot of trouble for spitting in public. Bring back Adolf.

[Commander Kinsey]

If there were enough jobs to go round, you could always choose one in a sensible commuting distance. It's very simple, change the standard working week from 38 hours to 37 hours. Hey presto, more workers everywhere. You only lose a 38th of your pay. It has to happen, it has happened in the past, people used to work much longer weeks. One country even made Friday part of the weekend and found people did as much work in 4 days as 5 as they weren't fed up!

[Joe]

I suspect you'd find out a bit more about Germans if you said that out loud in Germany.

The Germans are good at planning and very respectful of authority, but less good at improvisation. I was once involved in taking a fairly large American device into Bosch in Darmstadt, where we found they had no provision for 19" rack mounting, despite having owned half of the US company for some years. We had to stand it on a table.

[SteveW]

How does that help when I can't go to work earlier, as I have to get the kids sorted for the (fixed) school day? If I work in a job that has fixed hours? If my work is noisy and would disturb the neighbours at my workplace while they are still in bed? The whole point is that much of life is fixed around society's norms, whether you like it or not and rather than trying to change all those norms, shifting the clock for the whole of society is much easier.

[SteveW]

I work in a specialist field, the jobs are in a number of clusters. I can't find another job closer and I'm not going to pull my kids out of their school and move away from friends family and my elderly parents. Easpecially when the next job may be in a different cluster.

[Commander Kinsey]

The key word in your post is "specialist", now consider the majority. I'm talking about the amount of traffic for commuting, clearly the odd person commuting isn't a problem.