Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!amdahl!ames!ll-xn!husc6!ut-sally!ut-ngp!tmca
From: tmca@ut-ngp.UUCP (Tim Abbott)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Message-ID: <6704@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Nov-87 18:18:16 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.6704
Posted: Mon Nov  2 18:18:16 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Nov-87 04:47:09 EST
References: <8710241907.AA29503@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <946@nmtsun.nmt.edu> <1362@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
Lines: 55
Summary: Time Standards.

In article <1362@bsu-cs.UUCP>, dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
> In article <4709@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> david@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (David Robinson) 
> writes:
> >Simply have DEC maintain in kernel
> >all times in a fixed timezone (GMT?) and have each site
> >specify their timezone and if they are on DST.  This way
> >a file created on VAX A in London will appear to have the
> >same creation date on VAX B in Los Angeles if it is transfered.
> 
> HORRORS!  What do you think this is, a colony of the British Empire?

It used to be, does this give you a problem?

> It's bad enough that the quaint ancient practice of referring to Her
> Majesty's Royal Greenwich Observatory's local time as a standard hasn't
> died yet.  Worse, you folks now want modern, state-of-the-art operating
> systems such as VMS to be defiled in this manner.

Now just a minute, if you want to get all po-ed about this then do it
properly and quit bitching at 'quaint practises'. We use Universal Time
on all our uVAXs, a time system that happens to coincide with British
Winter Time (or whatever it's called, it's been a while) i.e. it has
the same zero point and is sometimes known as Greenwich Mean Time. This
is simply a convenient standard, and just *happens* to be used all over
the world, certainly in every observatory.
Or would you prefer we adopt a new standard, New York Mean Time (NYMT), 
perhaps, or is Berkely the center of your universe (BMT? :-))? Honestly,
you have to settle on some standard somewhere; in my uneducated way, I
might imagine that we only use GMT, or UT if you'd prefer a little more
anonimity, because man only became really aware of the need for such 
standards at a time when Britain was a more important world power than
it is now.

> 
> Leave VMS alone!  Daylight savings time is an ancient concept that
> originated in the blackouts of war-ravaged London.
> -- 

Was it really? Interesting. I have to agree with you it is something of 
a pain to the computer programmer, and if everyone picked a nice convenient
standard (such as UT) and wrote local routines for conversion to local time
life would be a lot easier. However, it does have its uses, particularly in 
saving power during normal work hours (for those that look a little further
than the nearest CRT).

Apart from that, do you have a better solution than the one suggested by
Mr. Robinson above? Seems eminently reasonable to me.


	T.
	Clean as a Q-Tip,
	Quiet as Nylon,
	Don't look now,
	We've got eyes on.
	Sway, this way.