[tz] The case against time zones

Patrice Scattolin patrice.scattolin at oracle.com
Thu Aug 7 13:21:44 UTC 2014


Swatch tried the timezone free time and it was a commercial failure: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

Presumably people didn't see enough advantages in the lack of timezone 
to adopt the new convention.

Note that for this to work, it would imply that the calendar and the day 
also has to be fixed in one timezone meaning that the transition between 
days will happen at different period of the local day, some switch at 
night, some in the middle of the day.

On 06/08/2014 7:39 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:
> In Vox yesterday Matthew Yglesias argued that time zones ought to be 
> abolished, writing "They were a good idea at the time, but in the 
> modern world they cause more trouble than they are worth."  It's 
> tempting to agree.  See:
>
> Yglesias M. The case against time zones: They're impractical & 
> outdated. Vox 2014-08-05. 
> http://www.vox.com/2014/8/5/5970767/case-against-time-zones
>
> Yglesias's underlying justification is essentially the same one that 
> McCarthy and Klepczynski used in their proposal to discontinue leap 
> seconds; see Steve Allen's summary of the resulting controversy in 
> <http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/>.


-- 


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