Dst 2007
I feel too lazy to post the details at the moment, but basically, this upcoming Sunday and Monday, a lot of people are going to have problems getting in to https / SSL websites because clocks are going to be fucked up, mostly in the US and Canada. If you are not in the US or Canada, you may have problems getting to some server that is in the US or Canada for the same reason. Even if the clock on your computer is correct, the clock on the server that you are trying to get to might not be. This is all part of the US plan to save energy by wasting billions of dollars to pay people to fix the problems when the clocks are fucked up. According to my research, any potential energy savings from DST is pretty much eliminated by additional demands for A/C during business hours, because people don't burn fucking candles anymore and it is no longer the 19th century.
This is a really good idea.
Ignoring that disgusting comment. How on earth do you know these things Meathinker?!
Do you work for the government?
[QUOTE=corellion;937851]Ignoring that disgusting comment. How on earth do you know these things Meathinker?!
Do you work for the government?[/QUOTE]
Sort of. I work with computers and do some contracts for state and local government, but also do stuff for a lot of small businesses, and we have some of our own servers that host websites and shit. This week, we're pretty much double-checking to make sure we didn't miss any computers that were supposed to be patched for this change. Last night, I was even dreaming about this stuff, dreaming about patching and checking computers, just because I've been doing so much of it last week and yesterday.
Honestly, it should be a non-event, but people can get real emotional if their computers don't work right I think because they feel a loss of control--they have no clue what is going on and no idea how to fix it, so they freak out. Typical scenario for next Monday, some chick can't get into her online banking website because the clock is wrong, or even the bank's server's clock is wrong, and she's going to blow it all out of proportion and be like, "My computer is broken and I can't get my work done and I have umpteen very important things that I really need to get done!" OK now take a fucking chill pill and check the clock on your computer. It's a good thing that I'm not evil or I might say something like, "Your computer is punishing you for being a bad person." I'd say that there are primarily 2 things that I really get paid for: 1) having a very high level of frustration tolerance; 2) keeping my cool and keep moving when things blow up big time.
This is a really good idea.
My husband has been working on this issue with his company for a while now. It has been a nightmare trying to get the changes made on hundreds of servers. I know they are still trying to get the last bit of it done.
I think it is hitting the news now though and more people will know about what IT people have been trying to fix for weeks. "So [I]that's[/I] why he gave me the finger when I asked about my printer speed!"
Good coffee is like drinking Rock and Roll.
[QUOTE=DAN9108;937850]Ooooh I heart candles.:tapedshut[/QUOTE] Well can I enjoy candles? He said no one lights candles, but I still do...
"Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals." --Oscar Wilde
Whatever you do, do NOT simply manually change the system time, you need to change your time zone to one that results in displaying the correct time--the problem is not really the time per se but the offset from Universal Coordinated Time (UTC sic). Manually changing the clock is bad and stupid advice (for reasons that I will explain shortly) and will require that you fix your clock 4 times during the course of the year if DST does not work right on your computer. I have another fix where you will only need to change the clock twice.
Computers really use Universal Coordinated Time (UTC sic, same thing as GMT) and don't really care about the local time, that is just for human convenience. Time zones are defined as an [I]offset[/I] from UTC and the offset is what changes during DST. For example EST is UTC-5, but during DST it becomes EDT which is UTC-4. The problem is that if the offset is incorrect and you manually change the clock, your computer's idea of UTC is now off by one hour, which means that you will probably have problems connecting to secure websites and network resources, maybe even problems sending and receiving e-mail.
The more correct fix is to set your timezone to a zone that: a) does not observe DST; 
has the correct offset for DST in your timezone. For example, EDT is UTC-4, so if you change the timezone to "(GMT-04:00) Santiago" now your computer's clock will be correct until November 4 when you need to change the timezone back to your real local timezone, plus your computer will still have the right idea of UTC. If you had manually changed your clock instead, you would need to change your clock again at the old start of DST, the old end of DST and finally the new end of DST, plus your computer's idea of UTC would be completely screwed up for a couple weeks before and after the old DST change dates.
This is a really good idea.
Was this the non-event of the century or what? I'm sure that somebody somewhere fucked it up royally, but I haven't heard about any problems yet.
This is a really good idea.
are you counting Y2K as last century?
i mean, yeah, it was last century but still
We had guys in here on Friday diddling with our cumputers and downloaded a program or some crap so that the times corrected themsleves on all the computers. I came in this morning and only one of the computers systems we use (state run laptops) had fixed themsleves. I had to correct the rest. The one I could'nt correct was the one that we use to creat our events/reports on. I had to call my boss in to change the time on the server fro that one... twice. Seems like it went back an hour on the hour change. Hopefully I don't have to call him back at noon.
Ooooh I heart candles.:tapedshut
"Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals." --Oscar Wilde