Mcr Warrior
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How about 11 months of 30 days, then a June with 35 (or 36 days), when the weather is usually good in the Northern hemisphere?
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Online petition calls for Leap Year Day to move to June: could it work?
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Purple Train
Established Member
Worse than that - it was Julius Caesar!
OhNoAPacer
Member
I think some if us we have made errors and forgot about tge occasions where there us a leap second, obviously we could ignore it and just have a leap day every 86,400 days 
I’m a member of the timezone co-ordination team at my work (not a joke). Leap seconds in general cause us a load of pain*, as do timezone changes that some countries have done with very little notice.
The normal software update cycle in large organisations means it takes weeks for things to filter through from design, development, testing and into production.
Examples of issues we’ve had to deal with where I work:
- software that parses text-based date and timestamps needs to be able to handle a time that ends with a :60 second
- lots of software isn’t designed to take into account the idea of time going backwards (even local time). When the clocks change and so go backwards, some of the organisations we interface with decide to instead “slew” the change over the course of a day etc by making each second in their timestamps be slightly less than an second until they fall in line with the correct time again. Of course different organisations do this at different speeds. We then have to convert this into the actual time
- we have some things that have to happen at a specific time of day in a certain country, happens to be the exact time that their clocks go back, so that time occurs twice. When do we execute that task?
Changing a country’s timezone offset and when they do daylight saving isn’t too bad though, as the existing data structures everyone uses already support this. But to change the date to be different to every other country? That’ll break almost all IT systems everywhere.
The normal software update cycle in large organisations means it takes weeks for things to filter through from design, development, testing and into production.
Examples of issues we’ve had to deal with where I work:
- software that parses text-based date and timestamps needs to be able to handle a time that ends with a :60 second
- lots of software isn’t designed to take into account the idea of time going backwards (even local time). When the clocks change and so go backwards, some of the organisations we interface with decide to instead “slew” the change over the course of a day etc by making each second in their timestamps be slightly less than an second until they fall in line with the correct time again. Of course different organisations do this at different speeds. We then have to convert this into the actual time
- we have some things that have to happen at a specific time of day in a certain country, happens to be the exact time that their clocks go back, so that time occurs twice. When do we execute that task?
Changing a country’s timezone offset and when they do daylight saving isn’t too bad though, as the existing data structures everyone uses already support this. But to change the date to be different to every other country? That’ll break almost all IT systems everywhere.
Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
Even if the systems work on GMT ( as UT* ) as an underlying value and apply a differential to that?
*UT, for those who aren't aware of this, is Universal Time which is for all intents and purposes the same as GMT**
**Greenwich Mean Time, before anyone asks.
dangie
Established Member
Taking everything you've said, most of which sailed over my head, the bonus is it helps keep you in a job, which itself is no bad thing. Embrace it
OhNoAPacer
Member
Amusing as posts here are in response to the petition, it is always worth remembering that date and time changes can cause real problems.
Anyone who has done any calculations of radioactive substances where needing to report the activity at time of sampling as opposed to time of measurement will know what can happen if time changes get missed, especially for shorter half life materials.
Busaholic
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I'm applying for a job with the Flat Earth Society on the same principle.Taking everything you've said, most of which sailed over my head, the bonus is it helps keep you in a job, which itself is no bad thing. Embrace it
Are you suggesting a timezone that is a whole 24 hours offset from UTC? That’d be… interesting.
Grecian 1998
Member
Britain did actually skip 11 days in September 1752 - people went to bed on 2 September and woke up on 14 September. This was due to switching from Julian calendar from Gregorian calendar and having to play catch up with the rest of Europe.
Be a bit difficult doing that now.
While it sounds pretty disappointing having to write off the first half of September (often a sunny and warm part of the year), in reality the weather was simply ahead of the date. All the seasons would have started and ended earlier than what the calendar said. The longest day of the year by that time would have been around 10 June and the shortest day of 1751 around 10 December.
Some Australian timezones are offset by 30 minutes from standard timezones (across most of the world the minutes of the hour are the same wherever you are - it's just the hour that changes). Must make national conference calls and the like interesting.
Be a bit difficult doing that now.
While it sounds pretty disappointing having to write off the first half of September (often a sunny and warm part of the year), in reality the weather was simply ahead of the date. All the seasons would have started and ended earlier than what the calendar said. The longest day of the year by that time would have been around 10 June and the shortest day of 1751 around 10 December.
Some Australian timezones are offset by 30 minutes from standard timezones (across most of the world the minutes of the hour are the same wherever you are - it's just the hour that changes). Must make national conference calls and the like interesting.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Not being au fait with computer searching properly, what is the number reached in this online petition at this moment in time.
birchesgreen
Established Member
Timezones can be a whole lot of crazy, especially around the international date line.
Enthusiast
Member
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I'm afraid I rather lost interest when I read this:
Islineclear3_1
Established Member
Actually, if this was done in January, this would make the month more bearable.... I would be perfectly happy to hibernate for 12 days during the harsh winter
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
But your employer would not have such a big staff payment in January in that case and you would be short of two weeks pension contributions.Actually, if this was done in January, this would make the month more bearable.... I would be perfectly happy to hibernate for 12 days during the harsh winter
Islineclear3_1
Established Member
True, but how my work-life balance works these days, sleep is far more important
I'm a big fan of 13 28 day months. So start on Monday Jan 1st each year. Last "day" of the year would be Sunday 28th Sunakius, and then we would have "Bojo" day as a nondescript day between Sunday of one year & Monday of the next to deal with hangovers. We would then still need the leap "day" but that could be "Trumpton" and again would sit between New year's eve and day.
You would then be able to fix Christmas to being 21st Sunakius leaving a week between that and New Year like now.
You would then be able to fix Christmas to being 21st Sunakius leaving a week between that and New Year like now.
dangie
Established Member
I’d start my hibernation a week before Christmas and finish it a week afterActually, if this was done in January, this would make the month more bearable.... I would be perfectly happy to hibernate for 12 days during the harsh winter
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
But that would mean losing Bank Holidays.I’d start my hibernation a week before Christmas and finish it a week after
dangie
Established Member
I'm retired. I don't get Bank Holidays. I don't get days off. Every day is a work day
Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
No, the most it would be is 12 hours plus or minus GMT / UT.
That's exactly what we have on the planet right now actually... I am simply saying how they could ( and probably do ) avoid computer systems from tripping up over some places being a day different from others - which is an inevitable circumstance on a rotating planet ).
Shaw S Hunter
Established Member
The rather more populous countries of Iran, Afghanistan and India also have timezones at 30 minute offsets. Weirdest of all is Nepal which is 15 minutes ahead of India!
I find maps such as this (I'm sure others are available), fascinating, not just to see the actual timezones (The Chatham Islands are, as far as I can tell, the only other area with a non xx:00 or xx:30 offset, at +12 3/4), but also the distortions to fit local preferences, have the same timezone as trading partners, or simply to be first to see in the new year!
- Alaska is -9, but should actually be -10 or -11, presumably to keep it closer to the west coast's Pacific Time.
- Argentina and Uruguay are very firmly in the longitude for -4, yet are -3, presumably for trade with Brazil.
- Everywhere west of the France/Germany border should be on the same time as the UK, likewise Algeria and Morocco.
- Belarus is nearer +1, but keeps +3, presumably for connections with Russia.
- Large parts of Russia seem an hour adrift of where their longitude suggests they should be.
- China is the only large country that doesn't have different time zones, the entire country keeping Beijing's zone of +8, when the very west of the country sits at a longitude of +5.
I *think* the land border between China and Pakistan/Afghanistan is the largest land border time difference in the world, at 3 hours. 2 hour gaps appears between Poland and Belarus, Alaska and Yukon territory, Canada, and China and Russia at Vladivostok, as well as various internal Russian zones (+3 to +5, +5 to +7, and +7 to +9). The north/south gap between French Polynesia (-10) to Kiribati (+14), both of which should be -10 or -11, doesn't count, as there is no land border between islands!
- Alaska is -9, but should actually be -10 or -11, presumably to keep it closer to the west coast's Pacific Time.
- Argentina and Uruguay are very firmly in the longitude for -4, yet are -3, presumably for trade with Brazil.
- Everywhere west of the France/Germany border should be on the same time as the UK, likewise Algeria and Morocco.
- Belarus is nearer +1, but keeps +3, presumably for connections with Russia.
- Large parts of Russia seem an hour adrift of where their longitude suggests they should be.
- China is the only large country that doesn't have different time zones, the entire country keeping Beijing's zone of +8, when the very west of the country sits at a longitude of +5.
I *think* the land border between China and Pakistan/Afghanistan is the largest land border time difference in the world, at 3 hours. 2 hour gaps appears between Poland and Belarus, Alaska and Yukon territory, Canada, and China and Russia at Vladivostok, as well as various internal Russian zones (+3 to +5, +5 to +7, and +7 to +9). The north/south gap between French Polynesia (-10) to Kiribati (+14), both of which should be -10 or -11, doesn't count, as there is no land border between islands!
We had this with SAP when we implemented it. Frightening that a “world leading” system costing north of a hundred million quid needed an enhancement to manage this
315 at the moment. Maybe they’ll get up to 366 by February 29th
spyinthesky
Member
Another pointless change.org petition by a non-profit, profit making data selling company.
Never achieved anything here in the uk.
Never achieved anything here in the uk.
It would be psychologically slightly good because every 4 years, winter would be one day shorter and summer one day longer, though probably not enough to be worth the hassle.
Far better would be to reduce the period of the year when GMT applies, so we get Summer Time back earlier than the ridiculously late March 31 (and delay its start until mid-November, as in early Nov we have lop-sided days with a disproportionate lack of daylight in the late afternoons).
We used to have an earlier restoration of BST until 1980, then it switched to late March in 1981. Not sure if this was yet another of Thatcher's bright ideas...
Far better would be to reduce the period of the year when GMT applies, so we get Summer Time back earlier than the ridiculously late March 31 (and delay its start until mid-November, as in early Nov we have lop-sided days with a disproportionate lack of daylight in the late afternoons).
We used to have an earlier restoration of BST until 1980, then it switched to late March in 1981. Not sure if this was yet another of Thatcher's bright ideas...
You would think, but ...
New Zealand Daylight Time is UTC +13
Some Pacific islands are UTC +14
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