Clock in GDC-TMS didn't switch to daylight saving time

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Both NTP servers and the DCI ecosystem use UTC. An NTP server will give you the time in UTC; projector, server, TMS, and media block logs record the time of an event in UTC. Software in these devices then translates it into whatever you configure the local time zone to be for display, or pre-programmed actions (most importantly, scheduled show starts). That software includes the dates on which DST starts and ends (i.e. the dates of clock changes in a given locale).

If the government really does go ahead and f*** with daylight saving time again (and IMHO, that would be a really bad idea, unless we go to year-round standard time, which I would support), a lot of DCI equipment will need software updates to take account of that, because UTC never changes. For example, here (Los Angeles), we are eight hours behind UTC when DST is not in effect, and seven when it is. I predict that there would be significant problems in our business if the bi-annual clock changes stop. I regularly encounter projectors and servers that have not had any software or firmware updates since they were installed 5-10 years ago. No matter how much of an information campaign manufacturers and industry bodies (e.g. ISDCF or ICTA) put up, a lot will not be updated, and theater managers will have shows start an hour early or an hour late, because the server has applied an hour's change from UTC when it shouldn't have done.

We did a similar education and information campaign about media block batteries going flat during the covid shutdown, but yet I still encountered many that had gone bad when it came to reopening, including in the theaters of people I'd reached out to. The same problem in another form will happen if DST is made permanent or abolished completely.

My GPS Rubidium locked satellite clocks that are from Near Trinity Site have DIP switches on the back that give you +/- 12 hour change ability depending on location. I only know they are from Trinity site because the Govt tech that removed them didn't erase the stored coordinates that are saved in memory.

[Peter Mork]

If the government really does go ahead and f*** with daylight saving time again (and IMHO, that would be a really bad idea, unless we go to year-round standard time, which I would support),

The Senate approved the switch, but the House is showing little interest in picking it up, from what I heard. I have a feeling it will not go any further.
I'm rather annoyed that any time is being spent on this, when important bills like voting rights languish. They did this back in the 70s, and it was not popular. Yes, we hate changing our clocks, but doing so was a compromise we could live with, there's no solution that will make everyone happy.

[Randy Stankey]

I'm okay with Daylight Saving Time, in principle, but not in current practice.

Legend has it that Daylight Time was conceived by Benjamin Franklin, during the Colonial Era, when he noticed that streetlights in Philadelphia were still burning during the early morning daylight hours. At that time, streetlights usually burned candles or oil lamps. Franklin, being a "waste not, want not" kind of guy, wanted to conserve candles and oil by shifting the time ahead by one hour during the summer when days were longer. It is unclear whether he actually proposed shifting clocks by one hour or whether others who came after him proposed it and credited Franklin.

It is also known that Roman clepsydra (water clocks) had variable markings that corresponded to the lengths of the days at different times of the year. Regardless of whether it was Franklin, the Romans or somebody else, the kernel of the idea still "holds water."

Daylight Time wasn't actually used in common practice until the middle of the 20th Century, especially in the 1970s, in order to save fuel... which it does very well.

My problem with Daylight Time is that it has become little more than a political football. Daylight Time is changed and used differently in different areas based on traditions and beliefs. When used as a political thing, Daylight Time can lose its effect.

When used properly, it saves fuel and makes travel safer because people don't have to drive home from work, etc., when it's dark out.
When used for political purposes, it loses its effect when the length of the day changes and, during the fall, when the time changes, it suddenly becomes dark while people are trying to drive home, making travel more dangerous.

If some really smart people, for instance, somebody at the Naval Observatory, would do the math and determine when Daylight Time should start and end, based on astronomical conditions, I think it would be a good thing but, the way things are, now, I'm with the rest of the crowd... "Bah! Humbug!"

Wait a second! Hasn't the U.S. Naval Observatory already done the math? Why aren't we listening to them?

[Leo Enticknap]

DST has been a surprisingly hot button political issue. I picked up this book in a thrift store a few years ago, and was surprised to read about the extent of the time zone and DST chaos that went on before the legislation in the 1960s which reduced the number of the time zones in the lower 48 to 3, determined that no jurisdiction smaller than a state could have its own DST arrangement, and required states either to change their clocks on the same day as all the others that choose to, or not at all. The author describes one three-hour bus ride in Kentucky, during which a passenger would have to change their watch eight times! For a few years, even a single city (Palm Springs, CA) advanced its time by 30 minutes from the rest of the state, because a large mountain immediately to the west made it get dark a bit earlier. One of my favorite anecdotes about this was from not so long ago, when an American Airlines pilot advised his passengers to set their watches to "Chavez time" upon landing in Caracas (Venezuela is 30 minutes offset from the nations surrounding it), and got himself briefly jailed and then deported as a result.

Before broadcasting and telecommunications became widespread in Britain, small towns and villages far from London often made the distinction between "railway time" and local time, because the railways were the only industry that absolutely required the time to be standardized across the island. Local time was determined by reference to a sundial in the village square, rather than the mechanical clock at the railway station.

[Randy Stankey]

Yeah! Timing on railroads is pretty critical!

If two trains left their stations, one in New York, heading west and one in Chicago, heading east. Each one starts in a different time zone.

If they end up on the same track without accounting for time differences, bad things could happen!

As I understand, the driving factor for the use of time zones was in order to prevent just that kind of thing from happening.

Consider this... It often takes a mile or more to stop a fright train, even in an emergency situation.

That means that, if two trains are on a collision course, they have to be two miles apart when they hit the brakes or else they are likely to crash.

Consider, also, that, because of the curvature of the earth, it is only possible to see approximately two miles to the horizon. The engineers of the two trains might not even be able to see each other before they hit the critical, point of no return.

Even if they can see each other at such a distance, two trains traveling at 60 MPH, would have less than one minute...more like thirty seconds...to pull the emergency brakes and prevent a disaster!

Accurate and precise timing is the only way to prevent disasters like that!

It's funny how things like that are so interrelated. Isn't it?

There's an old joke that I heard, long ago:

The Space Shuttle had to be designed so that it's rocket boosters could fit on the bed of a train car so that they could be hauled, from place to place, cross country.
The size of a train car is based on the guage of the rails.
The guage of the rails was based on the distance between the wheels of the wagons that were used to haul goods before trains were invented.
The wheels of a freight wagon were spaced apart so that two horses could pull the wagon, side by side.

If you think about it, that means that the Space Shuttle was designed, based on the width of a horse's ass!

What's worse... Our clocks are, now, all synchronized by politicians who have little to no understanding of what they are doing.

Why are we letting a "horse's ass" tell us how to set our clocks?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

What's worse... Our clocks are, now, all synchronized by politicians who have little to no understanding of what they are doing.

Why are we letting a "horse's ass" tell us how to set our clocks?

Actually, not at all true. Our time was originally designated and designed by the US Naval Observatory which began in 1830, and now by the NIST lab in both Gaithersburg, MD and Boulder, Co which both actually perform the same time keeping job. And it is their time signals that are broadcast via short wave. Both have a long history that is really interesting. But I'm not going to get into that here. To DST or not to DST is what's up to the politicians and I could really care less if they keep it or get rid of it.

[Leo Enticknap]

Yes - maritime navigation was about the earliest application for which really accurate timekeeping was essential. The killer app that enabled Captain Cook to find islands barely twice the size of a football field in the middle of the Pacific over and over again was the chronometer: combined with the sextant and star sightings, it made dead reckoning an order of magnitude more accurate than it had been previously. In the case of a ship doing 50 to 100 miles a day, accurate timekeeping made dead reckoning as accurate as would ever be needed. The accuracy of this technique declines the faster you travel (and/or the less accurately it is possible to measure or guess your speed), as, sadly, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan found out the hard way.

[Randy Stankey]

Both the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and the Naval Observatory in D.C. still drop a time ball every day at noon.

I don't think they fire cannons anymore but, as I remember, they also flash a strobe light, now. Or, maybe is it other time stations... Memory fades.

[Frank Cox]

When I was a kid everywhere municipality in Saskatchewan set its own time zone. The small town that we lived in was sixty miles from a city and our town was on a different timezone than the city. I can't remember if we were one hour ahead or one hour behind the city time, and I actually have a vague memory of being something like thirty minutes different rather than a full hour at certain times of the year.

Anyway, this caused a lot of problems, especially as the province was modernizing and people were starting to move around more so in the mid-1960's a provincial law was passed to put everyone on the same time zone. And we don't do daylight saving time either.

[Peter Mork]

Nov. 6: "Fall Back" - it didn't. But I presume it will correct itself in a day.
Superfluous screenshot - note Windows time is 2:51, but the GDC-TMS shows it an hour earlier. Whoo.