Daylight Savings Time Software Glitches
October 31st, 2007My cell phone has been waking me up an hour early all week because it thinks that Daylight Savings Time (DST) began last weekend. I can’t change the time because it’s managed by Cingular, so it’s the fault of their systems. Several local banks in Elizabeth City are broadcasting the incorrect time as well.
This is because the American Government adjusted the beginning and end dates for DST for 2007. Microsoft and Sun have both experienced a plethora of software glitches thanks to the adjusted dates, as have a multitude of other softwares across the world. Many programmers suffering from the change have whined about it (also see comments on this thread), but it happened anyways.
I have to agree with Daniel Read, when he says the programming problems are purely the fault of the programmers, and not a problem with DST changing. It took us a few minutes to adjust DST in the software we work on for the Coast Guard, without so much as a blip in our functionality.
We do have an ongoing issue with flights that occur at the change-over moment at the beginning of DST. This is because the hour from two to three in the morning doesn’t exist, which fouls up our flight time calculations, but this is the fault of the way our Ingres Database calculates times and out of our control. So we live with it.
As for all those software developers who were hurt by the change in Daylight Savings Time, and are trying to scapegoat it off on American politicians, I’m sorry that you are crappy programmers, but thank you for posting your rants. It lets the rest of us know who was too stupid to program an adjustable DST into their softwares! Ha! Ha! Thpppt!!! You suck! Fart on you!!!*
*Note: This does not apply to programmers who are suffering problems, but blame themselves. Don’t worry about it. Stuff happens. You can’t program the whole freaking world into your software. One day you will. Not today. Get your patches out and best of luck!
Note Note: Happy Halloween! Is it possible that DST has been extended into November because of pressure from the Candy Lobby?
Don’t most programmers simply rely on the system time in the operating system? I mean… Congress did break things and I disagree with the change specifically because it was obviously going to create the very problems you mentioned. I actually place the blame in Congress, myself. The world already is what it is, and they disturbed the balance.
Daylight Savings Time annoys me.
Daylights Savings Time anally rapes baby Jesus 666 times.
[...] Somma recently blogged about software glitches due to the extended Daylight Savings Time that was introduced by the US government’s Energy Policy Act of 2005. One of the issues that [...]
We can’t rely on system times at the Coast Guard because we’re dealing with six different timezones, some locations that don’t use DST, and we record 90 percent of our times in Zulu (GMT), but still use local times for some operations. So we maintain a database of who uses what and when. Plus, relying on system time still requires you to download patches when the times change.
I don’t mind DST. It maximizes use of daylight. To make it simpler, they should just make it year-round.
Ending Daylight Savings Time raises the risk for pedestrian deaths at dusk. “…pedestrians walking around dusk are nearly three times more likely to be struck and killed by cars than before the time change, the researchers calculate.”
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/03/time.change.ap/index.html
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