<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 18:43, Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:olsona@dc37a.nci.nih.gov">olsona@dc37a.nci.nih.gov</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">I'm forwarding this message from Bill Unruh, who is not on the time zone<br>
mailing list.<br>
Those of you who are on the list, please direct replies appropriately.<br>
<br>
--ado<br>
<br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Bill Unruh [mailto:<a href="mailto:unruh@physics.ubc.ca">unruh@physics.ubc.ca</a>]<br>
</div>Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2009 6:35<br>
To: Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]<br>
Cc: <a href="mailto:tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov">tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov</a><br>
Subject: RE: Pacific-New<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
On Sun, 22 Feb 2009, Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] wrote:<br>
<br>
> The "pacificnew" file includes information about legislation that was<br>
> introduced (but not passed) in the United States Congress; it serves<br>
to<br>
> explain why a "Pacific-New" time zone was created in the first place.<br>
> Note that the last line of the file is a "Link America/Los_Angeles<br>
> US/Pacific-New" line, meaning that using either name now has the same<br>
> effect.<br>
<br>
</div>I guess I object strongly to including legislative proposals into the<br>
tzdata<br>
files. If we introduce a new file and a new timezone everytime some<br>
government<br>
official makes some silly comment about time, the whole edifice will<br>
collapse<br>
under the weight of that garbage. While the tzdata file is not an<br>
official<br>
publication it is regarded as pretty authoritiative by most people using<br>
computers in the world. It should therefore strive to be accurate and<br>
authoritative, and not get bogged down with irrelevancies, and political<br>
commentary or jokes (which is the only thing I can imagine that the<br>
Pacific-New timezone to be).<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
><br>
> As to jokes and idiocy: there used to be an obscure bit of word play<br>
in<br>
> an strftime.c comment;<br>
> it was eliminated in version 7.40.-)<br>
<br>
</div>Never saw it. I am not above jokes and wordplay but not when it extends<br>
to<br>
introducing new time zones in at least semi-authoritative publications.<br>
Are we going to get an Okeefenokie time zone because someone likes<br>
Pogo-- or a<br>
US/BUSH timezone (constantly set to midnight) as political commentary on<br>
the<br>
last president? That an ill-considered proposal popped up in Congress 20<br>
years<br>
ago but was never passed should not be memorialised by a new time zone<br>
in tzdata.<br>
<br>
My response was triggered when a Suse user said his distro assigned<br>
Pacific-New to him. Having never seen it before (Mandriva wisely does<br>
not have it),<br>
I looked at the tzdata file and found it. Please please remove it.<br>
<br>
><br>
> --ado<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d">><br>
<br>
--<br>
William G. Unruh | Canadian Institute for| Tel: +1(604)822-3273<br>
Physics&Astronomy | Advanced Research | Fax: +1(604)822-5324<br>
UBC, Vancouver,BC | Program in Cosmology | <a href="mailto:unruh@physics.ubc.ca">unruh@physics.ubc.ca</a><br>
Canada V6T 1Z1 | and Gravity |<br>
</div><a href="http://www.theory.physics.ubc.ca/" target="_blank">www.theory.physics.ubc.ca/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
</blockquote></div><br><br>I thought this was pertinent:<br><br><a href="http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/13.87.html#subj1">http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/13.87.html#subj1</a><br><br><div style="margin-left: 40px;">Paul Eggert <<a href="mailto:eggert@twinsun.com">eggert@twinsun.com</a>><br>
Mon, 26 Oct 92 14:47:57 PST<br><br>Several people on the west coast of the US reported that their Unix systems failed to switch from daylight savings time to standard time yesterday, 25 October 1992. The reason? When they originally configured their systems, they were asked to choose one of the following time zone rules:<br>
<br> US/Alaska US/Central US/Hawaii US/Pacific<br> US/Aleutian US/East-Indiana US/Michigan US/Pacific-New<br> US/Arizona US/Eastern US/Mountain US/Samoa<br> ...<br><br>Some people chose 'US/Pacific-New' instead of 'US/Pacific'. After all, who wants the old version when you can have the new version?<br>
<br>Unfortunately, 'US/Pacific-New' stands for "Pacific Presidential Election Time", which was passed by the House in April 1989 but never signed into law. In presidential election years, this rule would have delayed the PDT-to-PST switchover until after the election, to lessen the effect of broadcast news election projections on last-minute west-coast voters. Thus, US/Pacific-New and US/Pacific have always been identical -- until yesterday.<br>
<br>This problem comes from combining Arthur David Olson's deservedly popular time zone software (which you can FTP from <a href="http://elsie.nci.nih.gov">elsie.nci.nih.gov</a> in pub/tz92b.tar.Z) with some overly terse vendor-supplied installation procedures. No doubt Olson did not use a more informative name like 'US/Pacific-Presidential-Election' because of the 14-character file name length limit in many Unix file systems. In view of yesterday's experience, though, it seems unwise to make the hypothetical choice available under any name, since it gives free rein to Murphy's Law.<br>
</div><br><br>Steve Ward<br>