Morocco Decides To Scrap Seasonal Time Changes (bbc.com) 95
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Morocco has decided to scrap winter time and will instead keep its clocks at summer time, GMT+1, all year around. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the time measured on the Earth's zero degree line of longitude, or meridian. The announcement comes less than two days before the clocks would have gone back by one hour on Sunday. Avoiding the switch would save "an hour of natural light", Administrative Reform Minister Mohammed Ben Abdelkader told Maghreb Arabe Press. The north African nation joins a number of others, mainly in Africa and Asia, which do not use daylight saving.
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well obviously you're not selling GPS watches with hardcoded timezones, or having a videoconference scheduled with Moroccans that now falls outside of their work hours. Otherwise you'd give a damn.
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Well obviously you're not selling GPS watches with hardcoded timezones, or having a videoconference scheduled with Moroccans that now falls outside of their work hours. Otherwise you'd give a damn.
The product in your first example is bad and no-one makes products like that.
The video conference example is also bad since not everyone changes to DST at the same time anyway and you already have that problem. It's just that it now becomes less of a problem.
Re:Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. (Score:4, Insightful)
They decided to cancel DST change a day before it was planned. Good luck getting your software updated to take into account new order.
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having seem companies panic when Morocco switched to Ramadan time ... nothing new here
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i was JUST thinking that. I worked at a school several years ago when they decided to mess with DST hours. About 100 computers running an older OS were not going to get an update to correct the DST change, so we had to manually change 100 clocks. Then (2 weeks?) later we had to fix them again, because the OS changed them when it shouldn't because there was no way to stop it from trying to adjust for DST.
It won't be the end of the world, but it it WILL be a big headache for some, and in many cases, an une
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If you sell GPS watches with hardcoded timezones, you deserve to go bankrupt.
That video conference can be rescheduled.
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Two days notice ! (Score:4, Insightful)
With this little warning just consider the confusion that this will cause. Computer systems with time changes programmed in; transport crossing international boundaries, eg a plane will leave France and timetabled to arrive at a certain (local Moroccan) time; diaries printed months ago and already on sale, etc. Did the political muppets think about this ? For anything like this 18 months is needed.
Re: Two days notice ! (Score:1)
Don't be so naive. If more time was allowed, the system would just try to exert the norm and no change would be made.
It's uncomfortable but not catastropic. Other regions don't change and they will join them.
Re:Two days notice ! (Score:4, Informative)
Meh. Morocco changes their clocks for Ramadan if it occurs in the summer. They're used to confusion. When I was there nobody was sure if the time was going to change until the morning it did change. I had a plane to catch.
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Morocco changes their clocks for Ramadan if it occurs in the summer
Isn't that cheating? Or do they change it back to their geographical time during ramadan?
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They switch from DST to standard time.
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Confused former Muslim here. Why did they change the clocks for Ramadan exactly? I've literally never heard of such a thing.
Of course, that doesn't mean you're wrong. Even before I turned to apostasy, I was a pretty terrible Muslim.
I do get the not knowing until the morning of (or actually the night before). The start of Ramadan is based on the Moon, so you don't know the exact date until the night before (although you usually know it's going to be one of 2-3 days).
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I have no idea. I assumed it was to make fasting easier. If you sleep in an extra hour in the morning you've got one hour less of sunlight. Except I think the change was in the other direction.
News story from last year. No explanation though.
https://www.moroccoworldnews.c... [moroccoworldnews.com]
Re:Two days notice ! (Score:4, Informative)
Morocco was different from France before, and will be different from France after the change. And very few people in Morocco have any regard for time anyway - I am pretty sure it runs on "African Time" ie an hour late for everything. I think you chose the wrong example here.
The reality is that DST sucks. In some countries, the length of the day changes by less than an hour anyway. Here in the UK, it changes (gradually) between 18 hours of daylight and 6 hours of daylight. So DST might be considered to "help" for about an hour, for about a month, During that month, dawn and dusk are not when your body clock expects, leading to more accidents, especially for people driving to or from work. Six months later, it goes the other way, with similar "benefits".
As for the theory that it helps farmers - I have news for you - cows and sheep don't wear watches, not even Apple ones, and goats would disregard them even if they could tell the time. The sun shines and rain falls with absolutely no regard for the church clock, and have done since church clocks were introduced roughly 1,000 years ago. So, no. No use to farmers. But, changing the (solar) time that "Farmer's World" is broadcast, probably costs it significant audience share.
As for political muppets "thinking", what planet are you on?
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eg a plane will leave France and timetabled to arrive at a certain (local Moroccan) time
Morocco was different from France before, and will be different from France after the change. And very few people in Morocco have any regard for time anyway - I am pretty sure it runs on "African Time" ie an hour late for everything. I think you chose the wrong example here.
The reason that I chose an airplane is because its published timetable depends, in part, on it leaving, say, Paris at a certain time according to French time, then arrives in Marrakech 2 hours 30 minutes later and published according to Moroccan time. The return flight, leaving 45/whatever minutes later will be published in Moroccan time. The published Moroccan times for next week will now need to be changed. This will cause confusion as to when collect friends from the airport and more importantly when to
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Anything that operates internationally or trans-nationally should just be running off GMT/ZULU time anyway, so it shouldn't adversely impact that.
So you want people who fly once in their lifetime to know that the plane at their airport is nodeparting 13:00 local time but at 13:00 ZULU? And you exoect them to calculate the correct time themselves?
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The idea here is that the airport would (as I suspect they already do, esp. for an international flight,) operate on GMT/Z.
No, they operate on local time. What else would they do?
People simply underestimate how complicated it is in real life to work in your head in a different time zone.
The idea of what I was writing was that to freak out and demand they delay a minor change like this to the status quo, just because they didn't give very much lead-time, seems overblown and almost hysterical, hence the sarc
Does anyone have a good argument (Score:5, Insightful)
i am hard pressed to think of any reason why we keep going through with this ritual. Pick a time and stick to it. If you have a specific need for daylight, schedule appropriately.
Re: Does anyone have a good argument (Score:3)
Only if all needs are uniform, which they're not. Home Depot changes its hours with the sun despite DST. How could we ever find out when they're open, then? If only we had an Internet with integrated calendars and navigation!
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Or, there's this little magic box about the volume of a deck of cards that can put you into contact with the store by [*gasp*] voice.
Heaven forbid, someone should have to use one of those weird little things.....
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Which totally explains why Americans change theirs different from everyone else.
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If you have a specific need for daylight, schedule appropriately.
Often, schedules need to match other schedules, outside of our control. For instance, many people can't just decide to shift their work schedule.
Re:Does anyone have a good argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost no one has a job need for daylight. The few that do will obviously base their work around that need.
If a farmer wants to harvest their crop starting at daybreak, they do not need a time change to help them figure out when the sun will rise.
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Yeah, who cares if their kids are waiting for the bus in pitch black?
I guess he would, but not me.
Re: Does anyone have a good argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, who cares if their kids are waiting for the bus in pitch black? You idiot virgin.
Yes, it's a wonder people in Canada, northern Europe etc. survive when all our kids get eaten by a grue.
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Yeah, who cares if their kids are waiting for the bus in pitch black?
Is that a question? The answer is very few people.
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Almost no one has a job need for daylight
No, but job schedule determines other things, such as commute and free time.
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I have never met ANYONE that doesn't want that extra sunlight in the afternoon.
I would vastly prefer that noon in my timezone was roughly balanced on average observed solar noon in the middle of the timezone so that sunlight would stay roughly balanced on either side of noon (except for the seasonal variation between mean solar time and observed solar time). I hate fighting my body's circadian rhythm to arise in the dark due to early onset/late departure DST. We haven't met, so that doesn't invalidate your argument, but please don't think that people who would prefer not having DST
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please don't think that people who would prefer not having DST don't exist or don't understand what the consequences would be
Here is visualization that shows the effects of solar variation throughout the year as well as the step-change created by DST https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/@7174408 [timeanddate.com] (the link shows time/light for the city of Seattle - you can change it to your locale). Note that in March, when sunrise is at a comfortable 6:30 am, DST happens and pushes sunrise back to 7:30 am. In October, the switch back from DST doesn't happen until sunrise has been delayed until almost 8 am.
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If you have a specific need for daylight, schedule appropriately.
I tried, but the bank manager refused to open the bank just for me.
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This has been studied multiple times and the energy savings, at best, are minor. It's not 1945 anymore, and we no longer use a significant fraction of our electricity just for lighting. In hot climates, it can even be counter-productive, as it's better if everyone is at the office later in the afternoon and you only have to keep one, large building cool than it is for everyone to go home during the heat of the day and crank up their home AC.
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Actually GMT is consistent and doesn't change. It's not UTC but it's close (insert smiley emoji here).
Britain, the home of GMT is currently, at least for the next 12 hours or so, on British Summer Time (BST), an hour ahead of GMT and UTC. The "clocks go back" Sunday 28th October at 02:00 in the morning resulting in a return to us being on GMT.
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(insert smiley emoji here).
You mean :-)
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
GMT is *not* a reference time zone. It used to be decades ago, but since GMT is subject to DST like the rest of Europe, it no longer serves that purpose.
Had you spent 30 seconds looking for a source to cite for this, you would have discovered you're simply wrong. Here are the actual facts, right from the horse's mouth [greenwichmeantime.com]:
Greenwich Mean Time or GMT is the clock time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. It is the same all year round and is not affected by Summer Time or Daylight Saving Time .
* * *
GMT is also a time zone, used by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) when Daylight Saving Time is not in use , from October to March.
GMT is still widely used as the standard time against which all the other time zones in the world are referenced .
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They fell for an old troll trick.
For any story, write a post with the subject "Wrong". Pick a fact from the summary that could plausibly be wrong, and then convincingly write that it is wrong.
Try it, it works.
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GMT doesn't include DST changes, it's fixed and exactly the same as UTC.
In the summer the UK goes on to BST, or British Summer Time, or GMT+1, or UTC+1. But GMT stays fixed.
The main bit of ambiguity is that astronomers were using GMT to mean the period from noon to noon, so that all their observations from one night fell on the same date. That's pretty obscure though.
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The UK have DST, yes. But that is not GMT. ... like UTC. Read a book about it, it is to complicated to explain the difference between GMT and UTC in a /. post.
GMT is fixed
Point is: you are wrong.
Right back at you (Score:2)
If you're going to come across so strong and authoritative it would help if you were actually right. Have some knowledge:
GMT is a reference timezone linked to mean solar time.
GMT does not have any daylight savings time.
The UK does not use GMT, they use British Standard Time (BST) which includes Daylight savings (UTC+0 and UTC+1) depending on the time of the year.
Despite the UK's standard time not being linked to GMT directly, some countries legally do reference GMT as their reference timezones.
In the Englis
MODS, YOU'VE BEEN TROLLED (Score:2)
When I first replied nearly six hours ago, this nonsense had only attracted one reflexive "informative" mod.
After I and five other people pointed out how parent is laughably, demonstrably incorrect (including actual supporting citations), it continued to get modded all the way to +5.
Slashdot - half truth for nerds.
Thanks for doing your part to keep that average low.
Good idea but... (Score:2)
It seems there is a lot of software that automatically changes the time for you. It won't be Y2K but it will be interesting to hear what happens if everything doesn't get updated in time. It is hard enough doing meeting with people in Arizona at this time of the year but at least software like Outlook keep the times right.
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It's chronological nationalism at its worst! (Score:2)
Think of the history that will be wiped out when people in the future can't be sure what time something happened in the past.
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Think of how many legal decisions are based on knowing a sequence of events. If you can't be sure what time something occured, you can't make good decisions. It's just one more way the far right is trying to destroy history.
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That's why you do all your time logging with UTC.
Slippery slope (Score:3)
Step 1: People working 8 am to 4 pm
Step 2: Clocks shifted so that people start work 1 hour earlier wrt the sun, but still nominally 8-16
Step 3: People getting tired in the mornings and gradually shifting their workday to 9-17
Step 4: GOTO 1
This is my issue with DST. Once you detach the definition of time from (suitably quantized) solar time, you lose all sense of reference. I'm OK with changing working schedules, but at least if you keep noon at 12, it's easier to see how things are changing. (Imagine changing the measures of length and weight willy-nilly just because some things feel too short or too fat.)
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High sun at noon splits daylight in half, requiring people to adjust their alarm clock to take advantage of an earlier sunrise.
Instead of pinning 12 to high sun, we should pin 7(?) to sunrise.*
This method maximizes daylight letting you wake up the same time everyday.
Ideally, as most people get their time for their cell phones, "7" could be adjusted everyday to match the current sunrise. No one would notice a time change of a minute or two.
* yes, i realize "7" would only be true for a specific location in
No slippery slope (Score:2)
If the common reference were noon (sun furthest overhead), there would be no issue. In winter sunrise would come a bit later, sunset a bit sooner. But people like to (or liked to in the past) start their day with sunrise. In winter this assures you have the maximum am
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The time change is done to keep sunrise around the same time (by the clock). ... and it has nothing to do with farmers.
That is bollocks.
First of all you can read up why DST was introduced
Secondly, if you looked at a globe and made your mind up, you would grasp what bollocks you just wrote.
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but at least if you keep noon at 12
What do you call noon? You talking the time when the sun is at its apex? Large portions of the world's populations don't feature this in their current time, not in summer, nor in winter if they actually change their clocks.
If you want a reference, get a mechanical or electrical wristwatch and throw your sundial away.
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Basically if it was beneficial to the economy, they would fiddle with hours, years, inches, you name it.
Good point. I've also been thinking about Spinal Tap's "this one goes to eleven" as another analogy: it demonstrates a lack of understanding of amplifier technology. Each amplifier has a certain maximum level, and it doesn't change no matter how you divide the scale. Similarly, a lot of things in the real life are limited and you can only fool people so long by changing the measures.
Wish the USA would stop it also (Score:2)
If only Morocco had done this years ago (Score:2)
Ugarte might still be alive, and Victor Laszlo might’ve had an easier time getting out of there.