Congress is extending Daylight Savings Time an extra month as part of a goliath energy bill.
More Daylight Savings: Energy Boon or Scheduling Snafu? (National Geographic)
This week the U.S. Congress is expected to pass a mammoth new energy bill that includes subsidies to oil and gas companies and encourages nuclear power. Yet the bill’s most controversial aspect may be its monthlong extension of daylight saving time. The move’s energy-saving potential is uncertain. So few data exist on the subject that the plan calls for a new energy-impact study to be commissioned after the proposal becomes law—but before clock changes would actually take effect in 2007. The bill calls for daylight savings to begin three weeks earlier, on the second Sunday in March, and to end on the first Sunday in November, one week later than daylight saving time currently does.
Advocates such as Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey, who is co-sponsoring the bill in the House of Representatives, say the plan is about more than just saving energy. “In addition to the benefits of energy saving, less crime, fewer traffic fatalities, more recreation time and increased economic activity, day light saving just brings a smile to everybody’s faces,” Congressman Markey said in a press statement.
Frankly, I wish they’d just cancel Standard Time and switch to Daylight Savings Time year round. I always prefer more light late in the evening to less light. Any economic or other social benefit that would also occur is just gravy.
Still, not everyone will be happy.
Proposed Change To Daylight Savings Time Could Affect IT (Information Week)
“Spring ahead, fall back.” That’s a phrase familiar to most Americans–but when to do those activities is about to change. Congress is on the verge of passing an energy bill that will lengthen daylight-saving time by about a month. If that happens, IT people may end up spending some of those extra hours fixing nits in their computer infrastructures.
Many computers, operating systems and applications contain code that automatically records the date and time of events or keystrokes. These programs often are set to make an adjustment to DST, just as they were set to record the year in only two digits, thus creating the Y2K mess. The daylight-saving problem will not be as nasty as Y2K but still could mean some extra work.
Not all computing devices require the exact time, but if clocks are not corrected, log files may be off by an hour. Many systems that make the automatic adjustment for DST will have to be patched. If a vendor doesn’t offer a patch, you’ll have to set the clock manually, just like you did in the 1970s. A better solution is to use a network time server, which will update the clocks on all your systems, correct for clock drift and take care of any future changes to the DST standard automatically.
I remember how arduous it was to change the clocks back then. Sometimes, it required the expenditure of 30 seconds or more effort.
