proposed time zone package changes (Argentina, Mauritius, Niue, Syria)

Aurelien Jarno aurelien at aurel32.net
Thu Oct 9 13:16:00 UTC 2008


On Thu, Oct 09, 2008 at 07:48:36PM +0700, Robert Elz wrote:
>   | what will you do? Change the rules on the 18th to remove the DST?
> 
> No, because on the 18th we still will not know one way or the other, on
> this assumption (that no-one bothers to find out in advance.)   What would
> happen is that on the 19th we will find out what actually happened, and if
> we were wrong, we will correct it then.

If the prediction is false like for the 5th, then the lambda Argentinian 
user will be screwed once more. And then you can try to continue making
guesses to screw them more.

OTOH keeping the winter time you will screw the user only once if the
change is not made fast enough. Moreover the user will expect a problem
the day of the DST change, so nothing too dramatic. 

> That's obviously not ideal, but if no-one is going to say any more than
> "I haven't heard anything yet" then what choice is there?   The reason you
> aren't hearing anything may be because they assume you already know from
> earlier announcements (the actual "prepare to change your clocks" messages
> usually only start appearing a day or two before the actual event, even in
> places with very stable summer time rules.)
> 
> Note here that no-one simply decided that Oct 5, and then Oct 19,
> would be good days to screw with the Argentinian people.  They came
> from the most reliable information we have been able to find so far.

Maybe no one want that, but that's actually what happens... This can be
avoided (see above).


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