Re: Congress

["Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com>]

On Sun, 7 Aug 2005, Robert Creager wrote:

> Morons...

Agreed... Its a fix for a problem which wouldn't exist if they
had developed real fixes for energy sources years ago...
(But you don't want me to go there...  It will raise my
memories of waiting in gas lines from the 1970s...)

> From what I've read, the DST change will not actually take place
> until 2007.  And, if your PC's are still set up to use NTP, then there should be
> no problem (I think).

I would agree -- if the PC's are sync'ed using NTP/NISTIME, etc. they
should not have a problem.  The problem will be in what time they *say*
it is...  Its going to require a revision in all of the operating systems
on all of the computers in at least the U.S..  And the legacy systems which have
discontinued upgrades -- for example I still use Unixware (circa early '90s)
and Windows 2000 on some systems -- will *not* be able to report correct times.

> Anyone know about desktop atomic clocks?  If they are off, I'll be sending mine
> to my favorite congressman.

Related to this I think would be the entire global positioning system
which is in many automobiles and at least some cell phones.

I believe that is operating on its own set of time frequency standards
that get translated into "local time".  So in theory all of those will
need "upgrading" as well.

You don't need to deal with your local congressperson other than to
have them take the people who proposed this without realizing the
amount of grief it was going to cause impaled on some very large
stakes in front of the Washington Monument.

The plaque in front should read "For being a *really* dumb ass."

Robert