Longer daylight saving may cause trouble (trouble only for lazy people!)

CNN - AP ^ | 8 Aug 2005 | Associated Press

[JRios1968]

Personally, I think too much is being made out of this aspect. So, now people would actually have to learn how to program their VCR clocks...then again, not knowing how to program their VCRs hasn't really affected a lot of people's lives.

The safety aspect for our kids is more critical, as kids in many states will be going to school in hours of darkness. We'll see how this plays out.

[MEGoody]

I have heard that there are some programming issues with certain applications. I'm not a programmer myself, but that could be expensive and time consuming to deal with.

[AzSteven]

There are some software issues, which generally can be fixed with patches. The real concern is so-called firmware like your computer's BIOS system or some cell-phone systems, which may have been encoded to assume a certain DST schedule. These systems can usually be reprogrammed, but it is less simple to do, and in some cases the hardware is designed to require a service visit to allow firmware upgrade.

Like anything else in computer/electronic land, it can be solved, but there is a cost associated with it.

Living in one of the few places sane enough NOT to participate in the DST scheme, I am still amused at the idea that folks think legislating the time of sunrise will make much difference in power use. If its sunny outside, or pitch black, the lights and AC systems in every office in America are on during business hours, and the number of those hours isn't going to change.

[Ingtar]

12:00... 12:00... 12:00...

[cvq3842]

I agree with you about the schoolkids.

I know this is overly simplistic, but we get the same darned amount of daylight no matter what the clocks say. I find myself going to sleep earlier when it gets dark earlier, etc.

But that's just me.

[RobertP]

It's all Bush's fault. Women, children, minorities, and lazy people affected the most. /sarcasm

[tfecw]

"I'm not a programmer myself, but that could be expensive and time consuming to deal with."

It could be, the legacy systems might have to be patched (again) which will make management reconsider maintaining old obfuscated code. Anything written since 2000 *should* be okay. If it's not lazy/unknowledgable coding is going to be the cause and again the company will suffer for cutting corners.
All in all that sort of thing should be a minor problem at best. The farmers and other professions that are early risers are going to have a better reason to cry out on this one.

[Russ]

I heard similar dire predictions concerning Y2K. We certainly are a nation of handwringers...

[fish hawk]

Makes no difference to us here in Hawaii. We don't have DSTime at all.

[tfecw]

Good call on the Firmware. Forgot about that one.

[hadaclueonce]

Ok, lets change it one time by thirty minutes and forget it. That will work. lol...

[Paved Paradise]

What I want to know is when will we turn the clocks back and lose the hour? We do it now on the 3rd Saturday of October I think. I just love knowing I'm going to lose an hour the week of Thanksgiving (a very busy week for most women!).

[Alberta's Child]

2006 is going to be the first year of my "Death to Daylight Savings Time" crusade. I'm going to make a deliberate point of keeping all my clocks set on Standard Time when DST starts, and see how hard it is to go through the entire spring and summer without ever acknowledging DST at all.

[mysterio]

They just stuck us with it in Indiana. DST is just another encroachment of government into our daily lives.

[kellynch]

The safety aspect for our kids is more critical, as kids in many states will be going to school in hours of darkness. We'll see how this plays out.

I don't know how many of you were kids in the early 1970s, when Nixon tried the same thing to save energy. I was in Junior High at the time, was not eligible to take the school bus, and had parents who were unalterably opposed to driving children a mile to school when they had perfectly good legs. But, since I had to leave home when sunrise was still around an hour away, my parents realized that this was an unforeseen circumstance, and a neighbor who had to drive past my school to get to work used to drop me off.

Not everyone has this option, and children are in more danger than they were when I was 14.

[pollyannaish]

So, if you can't figure out how to fix your VCR, et al, you will have to do, like, math for a month.

Oh, the humanity!

[MEGoody]

I heard similar dire predictions concerning Y2K.

You heard it predicted that programs would need to be changed and money would need to be spent? That prediction came true. Maybe you didn't know that.

[JRios1968]

I think that could be fun. I should try it myself.

[MEGoody]

If its sunny outside, or pitch black, the lights and AC systems in every office in America are on during business hours, and the number of those hours isn't going to change.

I agree. The same would be true of homes as well.

[BenLurkin]

WHOO-HOOO!!!!

My favorite rant!

NO. We do NOT need daylight Savings Time at all.

NO. There is NO NEED to reset our clocks twice a year.

NO!. There is no need to re-set our biological rhythms twice a year.

The time for DST is long passed (assuming there ever was a real need in the first place.)

BURY DST forever!