Back to the Future?

Message boards : Number crunching : Back to the Future?
Message board moderation

To post messages, you must log in.

Previous · 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · Next

AuthorMessage
code3banker

Send message
Joined: 16 Apr 12
Posts: 3
Credit: 121,743
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1258547 - Posted: 10 Jul 2012, 14:18:36 UTC

At the risk of beating a VERY dead horse, GMT is very useful. I used to spend a lot of time on world-wide text talkers. (Am I showing my age?!) Trying to coordinate a time to meet was always tricky, I had to figure out how many time zones (hours) the several other people were from me and come up with a time for each chat participant. I was talking with people in New Zealand, Australia, UK, California, Colorado, Rhode Island). Talk about something to drive a person insane.

With GMT, I can just use that as a base and everyone can figure out how many hours to add/subtract from GMT. Problem solved.
ID: 1258547 · Report as offensive
KneeDeep

Send message
Joined: 27 Sep 99
Posts: 131
Credit: 4,887,778
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1258553 - Posted: 10 Jul 2012, 14:55:25 UTC - in response to Message 1258547.  

At the risk of beating a VERY dead horse, GMT is very useful. I used to spend a lot of time on world-wide text talkers. (Am I showing my age?!) Trying to coordinate a time to meet was always tricky, I had to figure out how many time zones (hours) the several other people were from me and come up with a time for each chat participant. I was talking with people in New Zealand, Australia, UK, California, Colorado, Rhode Island). Talk about something to drive a person insane.

With GMT, I can just use that as a base and everyone can figure out how many hours to add/subtract from GMT. Problem solved.


Same here ... I used to have to deal with other tech support groups around the globe. The worst was Hyderabad India, which is 10.5 hours ahead of me and doesn't participate in daylight savings time. The extra half hour messed me up more times than I can count.
ID: 1258553 · Report as offensive
Lazydude
Volunteer tester

Send message
Joined: 17 Jan 01
Posts: 45
Credit: 96,158,001
RAC: 136
Sweden
Message 1258580 - Posted: 10 Jul 2012, 22:29:45 UTC

For those who use Firefox there are an good plugin:
http://www.stemhaus.com/firefox/foxclocks/

You can have multiple clocks in the Stausbar and it have built in adjustment for Summe/wintertime
ID: 1258580 · Report as offensive
.clair.

Send message
Joined: 4 Nov 04
Posts: 1300
Credit: 55,390,408
RAC: 69
United Kingdom
Message 1258635 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 0:46:23 UTC

Being from an agricultural area ....
I know for shure that :-
Cows come in for milking at `milking time`
Sheep give birth at `Lambing time`
Crops get planted at plowing time
Months later its `Harvest time`
And living in England that means i live on GMT
Cos i dont give a hoot about this `daylight saveing` time lark.
Have you ever tried to put some `Summer time` in a Kilner jar and save it for a dark day in winter,
It dont work.
The sun comes up,
It go`s back down.
Not that it go`s anywhere realy,
It`s just us lot of silly apes that has got ourselfs in a spin over this thing called time.
I dont recon any other species gives a hoot about it and gets on with their day not knowing a thing about it.
ID: 1258635 · Report as offensive
Profile MusicGod
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 7 Dec 02
Posts: 97
Credit: 24,782,870
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1258639 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 0:51:01 UTC - in response to Message 1258635.  

LOL and that is what sets man apart from all the other animals...knowing what time it is

ID: 1258639 · Report as offensive
Wembley
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 16 Sep 09
Posts: 429
Credit: 1,844,293
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1258642 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 0:55:47 UTC

ID: 1258642 · Report as offensive
Profile perryjay
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 20 Aug 02
Posts: 3377
Credit: 20,676,751
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1258675 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 2:28:43 UTC - in response to Message 1258639.  

LOL and that is what sets man apart from all the other animals...knowing what time it is



You've never missed feeding time for your pets have you?


PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC
ID: 1258675 · Report as offensive
Cheopis

Send message
Joined: 17 Sep 00
Posts: 156
Credit: 18,451,329
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1258718 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 4:39:43 UTC - in response to Message 1258387.  

If you didn't have a fixed point of reference for time, the Message Boards would make no sense at all, well, even less than they do now! Now consider, when WUs are sent out and results received back....the servers don't know which time zone that each WU was sent to or what time zone the result came from. Don't forgot, that each WU has a completion time and date. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue in all the databases, if the servers had to make corrections for time zones? This is 1st day kindergarten stuff, on Gallifrey - they like order in matters of time, there.




I can imagine no chaos from using the time zone of the location where the project is located. There is no difference between arbitrarily chosen "base" time zones.



OK, so what happens during switchover from Summer to Winter time? At the chosen time of transition, the servers go back in time 1 hour. Work could be returned 'before' it was sent.....

And the converse? Going from Winter to Summer? How about tasks timing out if they were being processed close up to their original deadline....

And lets not even start to consider timestamps on log entries etc.

Berkeley time varies - it is not constant. The solution? Use a time datum that avoids these and other issues by not varying with the seasons. There happens to be such a datum, its called UTC. That it doesn't coincide with 'local server time' is irrelevant to the project but its use precludes a whole bunch of issues that would cause serious headaches for any sysadmin.


I can see the advantages in using UTC and saying we'll base science and analysis time around it.

...

The original confusion lay in the server status page though. Who cares what time it in UTC when I am in EST, the server is in PST, and I'm looking at the server status page? From the science aspect, I'll agree that there is a minor advantage to be had for a time that doesn't have to deal with any time shifts. But for those of us looking at the server status page?

I was hoping that there might be some meaningful reason why non-science related web interfaces were displaying in an arbitrary timezone. When I look at a website like the server status page, I expect it to show my local time (or possibly site local time), so I can immediately see how recent the data is, or how long it will be before someone will be onsite in the course of normal business hours.

To address another poster, yes, arbitrary is the appropriate term because you could choose any one of the world's timezones, none of which have anything to do with the person viewing the server status or forum webpages, and display said time. It surely doesn't take much to put a timezone converter on a webpage to display a time that makes sense to the viewer, and UTC offers no benefits to the display of server status or forum posts.

Doesn't really matter though. It took me years to even bother noticing it, so Blueshirt Tuesday is fine by me.
ID: 1258718 · Report as offensive
Wembley
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 16 Sep 09
Posts: 429
Credit: 1,844,293
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1258728 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 4:59:22 UTC

Your main problem is continuing to call GMT/UTC "arbitrary"

It isn't. It is what all other time zones are based on.
ID: 1258728 · Report as offensive
Profile BilBg
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 27 May 07
Posts: 3720
Credit: 9,385,827
RAC: 0
Bulgaria
Message 1258745 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 5:22:01 UTC - in response to Message 1258718.  

The original confusion lay in the server status page though. Who cares what time it in UTC when I am in EST, the server is in PST, and I'm looking at the server status page?

I care. And most everybody else care because we are not in EST.
(I wonder why the heck I use this 'arbitrary' international unit called meter, why do I not use the 'proper and true' inch/foot/mile or the 'holy' cubit?)

Is this the first time you hear about UTC??

What you'll say if I insist the times to be shown in Bulgarian time so it suits me?
Not everybody live in USA, USA is not the world
(and USA's 'football' is not a football but handball ;) - that is in fact arbitrary usage of the word football)

(If airplanes use local times in communications they will crash every day)


 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 
ID: 1258745 · Report as offensive
Profile Paul D Harris
Volunteer tester

Send message
Joined: 1 Dec 99
Posts: 1122
Credit: 33,600,005
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1258777 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 6:51:31 UTC
Last modified: 11 Jul 2012, 6:52:22 UTC

It's not winter time or summer time did you not go to high school? It's standard time and daylight savings time. Have you ever heard that the earth is a sphere shaped that is why there are different times. High noon in Lynchburg Va is not high noon in Berkley.
ID: 1258777 · Report as offensive
Wedge009
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 3 Apr 99
Posts: 451
Credit: 431,396,357
RAC: 553
Australia
Message 1258805 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 8:12:21 UTC
Last modified: 11 Jul 2012, 8:27:37 UTC

What Wembley and BilBg have said about the time-zones is the point I've been trying to make as well. This egocentricism is most unhelpful when communicating with people around the world. And on top of that, EST in this context is a reference to US EST. I could say I am in EST too... but Australian EST. Even time-zone abbreviations are not helpful because of that ambiguity, which is yet another reason why we use UTC as a standard point of reference in an international context. It is by no means 'arbitrary'.

Paul, your remark isn't very helpful either. To answer your question, no, I did not go to an American high school. One can refer to seasonal time-zone changes as Standard and Summer Time, or one could also use the American convention and call it Standard and Daylight Savings Time. Either is fine, so there's no need to tell people to use one over the other.
Soli Deo Gloria
ID: 1258805 · Report as offensive
Richard Haselgrove Project Donor
Volunteer tester

Send message
Joined: 4 Jul 99
Posts: 14649
Credit: 200,643,578
RAC: 874
United Kingdom
Message 1258810 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 8:18:59 UTC

Maybe we'll have to change the terminology, anyway.

Here in England, we use 'BST' for British Summer Time. But this year, there's no summer, and precious little daylight filtering through the clouds, either. Alternatives, anyone?
ID: 1258810 · Report as offensive
Profile Paul D Harris
Volunteer tester

Send message
Joined: 1 Dec 99
Posts: 1122
Credit: 33,600,005
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1259137 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 21:39:36 UTC
Last modified: 11 Jul 2012, 21:41:52 UTC

The time became standard time now since the age of steam railroads and astronomy of the late 1880 because there is a standard it is known as standard time. Starting in England at Greenwich mean solar time became known as Greenwich Mean Time and all time is synchronized with it so people can tell what time it is regardless of the local solar time also known as GMT, UTC and ZULU.
ID: 1259137 · Report as offensive
Horacio

Send message
Joined: 14 Jan 00
Posts: 536
Credit: 75,967,266
RAC: 0
Argentina
Message 1259146 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 22:00:46 UTC

LOL... Using "standard" for a time convention is what I call the most arbitrary use of the languaje...

My country is in the middle between the -4 and -5 time zones, but it was choosen to use -3 in all the country to match the time zone of Brasil (for bussiness and political reassons).

There is no such thing as a unified daylight saving or time correction here... Some years we have daylight shifts, some years not, some years the whole country does the time shift, some years only some states do it...

Funny thing is I live well in the -5 zone but there was some summers I had to use the -2 so I was having full sun light up to 23:00 in the night...

Since that time Ive found that I can set the Windows clock to show me several timezones, so it shows the local time on the system try but if I put the mouse over it shows me also the UTC and any other times used in my country, if/when they are different from mine.


ID: 1259146 · Report as offensive
Profile Jord
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 9 Jun 99
Posts: 15184
Credit: 4,362,181
RAC: 3
Netherlands
Message 1259148 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 22:06:30 UTC - in response to Message 1259137.  

also known as GMT, UTC and ZULU.

Actually, UTC has nothing to do with what average solar time it is in Greenwich. UTC was born out of the use of atomic clocks.

GMT, as the "mean" within its name would indicate, represented the time zone of a hypothetically average day at Greenwich. GMT disregarded the fluctuations in the normal earth-sun interaction. Thus, noon GMT represented the average noon at Greenwich throughout the year.

UTC, while based on zero degrees longitude, which passes through the Greenwich Observatory, is based on atomic time and includes leap seconds as they are added to our clock every so often.


And for Cheopis, who is still not accepting it: UTC was used beginning in the mid-twentieth century but became the official standard of world time on January 1, 1972.

http://geography.about.com/od/timeandtimezones/a/gmtutc.htm
ID: 1259148 · Report as offensive
Profile Paul D Harris
Volunteer tester

Send message
Joined: 1 Dec 99
Posts: 1122
Credit: 33,600,005
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1259149 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 22:08:53 UTC

At first there were 24 time zone but due to politics there are now 40 time zones.
ID: 1259149 · Report as offensive
bill

Send message
Joined: 16 Jun 99
Posts: 861
Credit: 29,352,955
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1259153 - Posted: 11 Jul 2012, 22:34:22 UTC - in response to Message 1259146.  

This reminds me of

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0SqS2QJdj8
ID: 1259153 · Report as offensive
Cheopis

Send message
Joined: 17 Sep 00
Posts: 156
Credit: 18,451,329
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1259232 - Posted: 12 Jul 2012, 4:14:22 UTC - in response to Message 1259148.  
Last modified: 12 Jul 2012, 4:18:20 UTC

also known as GMT, UTC and ZULU.

Actually, UTC has nothing to do with what average solar time it is in Greenwich. UTC was born out of the use of atomic clocks.

GMT, as the "mean" within its name would indicate, represented the time zone of a hypothetically average day at Greenwich. GMT disregarded the fluctuations in the normal earth-sun interaction. Thus, noon GMT represented the average noon at Greenwich throughout the year.

UTC, while based on zero degrees longitude, which passes through the Greenwich Observatory, is based on atomic time and includes leap seconds as they are added to our clock every so often.


And for Cheopis, who is still not accepting it: UTC was used beginning in the mid-twentieth century but became the official standard of world time on January 1, 1972.

http://geography.about.com/od/timeandtimezones/a/gmtutc.htm


I have no problem accepting it, when there is a meaningful reason to use it.

If I walk to the local grocery store, here on the east coast of the US, and it says that they will be open at 11AM UTC, that would be absurd. Having a forum display UTC seems absurd, and having a server status page based on UTC seems nearly as absurd.

I maintain that displaying UTC for server status or forum timestamps makes zero sense whatsoever, since they have no connection whatsoever to the science of the project, which DOES have a legitimate reason for being based on UTC.

There was another comment upthread about my use of arbitrary again. If you choose some random time without any reason for choosing it, then it's arbitrary. If it's not arbitrary, then you can provide a reason that makes sense for the server status pages and forums to display times which have nothing to do with either the location of the viewer, or the location of the equipment, while simultaneously having no direct connection to the science of the project.
ID: 1259232 · Report as offensive
Wedge009
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 3 Apr 99
Posts: 451
Credit: 431,396,357
RAC: 553
Australia
Message 1259241 - Posted: 12 Jul 2012, 5:03:31 UTC

It seems absurd to you because you appear to refuse to see beyond your own country - your own town, even. When you go to a local shop, it uses local time because it only serves people locally. When you go to an Internet site that serves people all around the world there needs to be a standard reference that everyone in the world can use. UTC is that standard reference.

It is not possible to display times on a web-site tied to the 'location of the viewer' because that location could be anywhere in the world, not just the United States east coast. I don't demand to see times on the Internet in Australian Eastern Standard Time because I recognise there are more people in the world than just where I live. I don't believe my own town should be the centre of the world, I follow the world standard which, in this case, happens to be UTC. It might seem like an inconvenience for some, but it's a inconvenience that is common across all countries.
Soli Deo Gloria
ID: 1259241 · Report as offensive
Previous · 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · Next

Message boards : Number crunching : Back to the Future?


 
©2024 University of California
 
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.