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Dan you wrote:
"Think of all of the software  that just broke and became obsolete:
Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD -  millions of computer systems
quietly are affected."

I think most of  them are probably ok. The OSes usually do this time zone
business right. They  have named zones that you can select which are not tied to
fixed geographic  locations. Try changing your time zone in Windows. You can
select Eastern (-5)  or Indiana (-5) or various others (e.g. Quito, Ecuador
which has the same  offset to GMT as New York City but of course has no use for
DST). Sometime next  fall, most Indiana Windows users will have to go into the
Time Zone tool and  select ordinary "Eastern" instead of "Indiana". The time
zone tools don't  include all possible options, but all currently active
options. And if some  country adds a new DST system that doesn't match any of the
currently active  options, it's a straight-forward matter of adding a new
definition. Apart from  the OSes, some software on the market does it wrong. For
example, there is  astronomy software on the market that will let you select your
time zone by  clicking on a map. This can be risky (unless the underlying
system is rather  smart). When Windows 95 first came on the market, they had the
same problem: you  could select your time zone by mousing over the global map
in the Select Time  Zone function. Because this is subject to various
difficulties, the clickable  map was later turned off. But the map graphic remains and
now serves only a  decorative function.

And you wrote:
"I say we should abolish all  Daylight Savings Time changes and just
stick to time zones."

Did you  read that article on DST history I linked earlier? It's really very
interesting.

-FER
42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N  72.1W.
www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars

   

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