Time to Dump Time Zones

[Lartok]

Do I know this because I've memorized the operating hours of people around the globe, or because I've been forced to look it up?

The second one as it is now but it'll be a lot easier to memorize the operating hours of everyone around the globe and eventually it'll be the first one.

[Baelic]

I'd rather be able to do stuff during the day and sleep at night thanks. My routine shouldn't be disturbed because some people up top decided that the world should start following one clock.

You realize that you'd still be able to sleep during the night, right?

[Surfd]

A universal clock would be a monumentally stupid idea. There is a very good reason why pretty much every time keeping scheme known to man revolves around structuring the "day" based on the positioning of the sun wherever you happen to be at the time. The middle of the day has always been when the sun is highest in the sky, and "morning" and "evening" logically follow with the rising and setting of the sun (barring special cases like living in the extreme north or south, with month long "days"). Anyone who thinks it is a good idea to arbitrarily decide that the planet will now revolve around a fixed schedule where "noon" is 5am on the clock in one country, and 6pm on the clock somewhere else is a moron.

I mean, seriously?!? Changing the clock an hour twice a year, or adapting to a different timezone, when at least 12 noon is always High Sun no matter where you go is hard? The average person would have a mental breakdown trying to adjust to a universal time. Just imagine trying to re-arrange your mental processes if you moved from britain (where high sun is 12 noon) to say, toronto, where i guess 12 noon would be sunset, or california, where "noon" would be midnight..........Jetlag would have nothing on that.

[ArmoredDragoon]

We don't do daylight savings in Arizona. To be honest, I've never understood the point in it. Yes, it gets dark at 6:00PM in the winter and 8:15PM in the summer...so what? In northern Alaska during the height of summer it doesn't ever get dark, with the opposite happening in the winter. And daylight savings is supposed to do what, exactly? And yet for some strange reason, they observe DST there.

[apepi]

You can ditch them all you want, jet lag will still be a fucking thing.

[Seditian]

Before you fix something huge like this (timezones, daylight savings time is horse shit and can easily be removed), you should probably start by putting your dates in a logical order. So day/month/year instead of month/day/year, it doesn't make any sense, 'murica.

[Surfd]

We don't do daylight savings in Arizona. To be honest, I've never understood the point in it. Yes, it gets dark at 6:00PM in the winter and 8:15PM in the summer...so what? In northern Alaska during the height of summer it doesn't ever get dark, with the opposite happening in the winter. And daylight savings is supposed to do what, exactly? And yet for some strange reason, they observe DST there.

The point was to help maximize "day light time" use in areas where there were moderate, but not extreme, offsets in the time of Sunset and Sunrise in locations at particular latitudes over the course of the year, thereby effectively increasing the amount of "productive time" one had in a day that was still ruled by a fixed 24 hour time scheme.

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Before you fix something huge like this (timezones, daylight savings time is horse shit and can easily be removed), you should probably start by putting your dates in a logical order. So day/month/year instead of month/day/year, it doesn't make any sense, 'murica.

I think you have that backwards.

Day / month / year is stupid as hell. Month / Day / Year always. When ever i ask anyone what day of the month it is, the response is pretty much ALWAYS November 7. I literally have never had anyone tell me that the date is "the 7th of November". It also flows better with progression of smaller caps on the number in the sequence. 31 /12 / 2016 looks retarded. 12 / 31 / 2016 looks much better. It also helps prevent cases of something like seeing 3 / 4 / 2016 and having no idea if the 3 represents a day or a month.

[Deleted]

It would be a total clusterfuck. Even simple databases use different timezones, you would cause huge damages by your experiment. You think they would drift time by fucking hours?
So, let me suggest something. You already have UTC, start using it. Nobody else wants to? You know, maybe because it's a stupid idea. You would have to FORCE others to use it.

Besides, it doesn't solve anything. Jet lag would still be there.
How is the current system unstable? What the fuck are these two fanatics raving about?

So really, what would it solve? There would still be timezones. You would still have to imagine what "timezone" it is somewhere who knows where. You'd be pretending it isn't there, maybe you would call it some other name, but it would STILL be there.

Most stupid idea of the year.

P.S.: probably "can do math, but can't wipe his own ass" type of professors

[Dispraise]

When ever i ask anyone what day of the month it is, the response is pretty much ALWAYS November 7.

Maybe try asking on a different day?

[breadisfunny]

first we need to abolish daylight savings time.

[frogger237]

The second one as it is now but it'll be a lot easier to memorize the operating hours of everyone around the globe and eventually it'll be the first one.

Knowing somewhere is 5 hours ahead of you is alot easier than trying to remember the business times of every place on the planet. And its alot easier to look up time conversion than googling the business hours of multiple places just so you know what time they do shit at.

The only thing it would be useful for is not having to set your watch when you cross timezones.

[Zindai]

31 /12 / 2016 looks retarded. 12 / 31 / 2016 looks much better..

I disagree, I think 12/31/2016 looks confusing.

It also helps prevent cases of something like seeing 3 / 4 / 2016 and having no idea if the 3 represents a day or a month.

If everyone used D/M, then no one would be confused. If everyone used M/D, then no one would be confused. It's 100 % about what you're used to, and the confusion stems from not knowing if for example websites have been adjusted to your way of writing it.

2016/12/31 FTW.

[Deleted]

Nice try watchmaker industrial complex!

[Othraerir]

daylight savings is awesome

[Docturphil]

Daylight savings, sure. Time Zones? No. That's just stupid.

No, actually it's not. For one thing it would do wonders for software developers. Take a look at this:





Basically, time zones are a huge headache when dealing with all the different cases and exceptions. It would simplify things to just get rid of it all and have everyone go off of UTC. The "inconvenience" you would have getting used to the sun going up and down at different times pales in comparison to the convenience you would get from the simplification of getting rid of time zones.

Also, it makes way more sense to say the sun goes down at 1PM in Australia then to say in Australia it's 3AM right now. Not to mention the fact that it's an entirely different day in some parts of the world. How the fuck does that make sense?

At the end of the day time zones are just a completely pointless complication. They accomplish nothing but confusion.

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Daylight savings time is dumb. Getting rid of time zones is dumb. Technically, nothing about time changes of course. But our measurements of time are based off the high and low points of the sun. Those will always be different in different parts of the world. So, no shut up mister.

Who said anything about changing when you get up or go to sleep? The only thing that would change is what your watch says. You would still get up at the same time relative to sunrise/sunset.

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Daylight savings is useless, but time zones? No, they actually serve a purpose as the sun is not shining everywhere in the world at the same time. Disturbing the day & night cycle is not a good thing.

Why does everyone think that changing what time it says means you have to adjust when you go to sleep? All getting rid of time zones means is it says the same thing on everyone's watch. Your sleeping schedule would not have to change.

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I'll refer to the age old adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

I would say that it's pretty broken.

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If this happens, we need to adopt a base 10 system as well. This arbitrary 24 hour and 60 minute and 60 seconds is bullshit.

Actually there was a very particular reason 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour was chosen. 60 is pretty much the opposite of a prime number. It's divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30 (I think I got them all...). That allows us to say things like "a quarter past three" or "half past eleven" etc... So no, it's not arbitrary at all.

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I'm all for getting rid of daylight savings time. But time zones... no. It'd mess up my inner clock too much... seeing it dark outside at 4PM during the winter here is weird enough for me :/

Another person not understanding that we wouldn't change when we get up...

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A universal clock would be a monumentally stupid idea. There is a very good reason why pretty much every time keeping scheme known to man revolves around structuring the "day" based on the positioning of the sun wherever you happen to be at the time. The middle of the day has always been when the sun is highest in the sky, and "morning" and "evening" logically follow with the rising and setting of the sun (barring special cases like living in the extreme north or south, with month long "days"). Anyone who thinks it is a good idea to arbitrarily decide that the planet will now revolve around a fixed schedule where "noon" is 5am on the clock in one country, and 6pm on the clock somewhere else is a moron.

I mean, seriously?!? Changing the clock an hour twice a year, or adapting to a different timezone, when at least 12 noon is always High Sun no matter where you go is hard? The average person would have a mental breakdown trying to adjust to a universal time. Just imagine trying to re-arrange your mental processes if you moved from britain (where high sun is 12 noon) to say, toronto, where i guess 12 noon would be sunset, or california, where "noon" would be midnight..........Jetlag would have nothing on that.

You clearly do not understand the benefits. Let me break it down for you.

Say you want to keep track of when people get into car accidents. Bob in California gets into an accident at 1:33PM. Jill in Wisconsin gets into a car accident at 9:37AM. Timmy gets into a car accident at 10:47PM in New York. Now, let's assume you don't know where these people are from and they just give you times. How the fuck are you actually going to know when they were in an accident? People run into problems like this all the time, especially with software. That's why we already do have universal time. It's a good idea to convert a time to UTC when storing it in a database instead of using the time zone where the database is.

So no, a universal clock is absolutely not a stupid idea. It's actually quite smart and it makes far more sense than the shitty time zones we currently have. Sure, there would be a few problems with switching to UTC, but it would solve more problems than it would create.

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I think you have that backwards.

Day / month / year is stupid as hell. Month / Day / Year always. When ever i ask anyone what day of the month it is, the response is pretty much ALWAYS November 7. I literally have never had anyone tell me that the date is "the 7th of November". It also flows better with progression of smaller caps on the number in the sequence. 31 /12 / 2016 looks retarded. 12 / 31 / 2016 looks much better. It also helps prevent cases of something like seeing 3 / 4 / 2016 and having no idea if the 3 represents a day or a month.

Day / Month / Year is not stupid. It should either be Day / Month / Year or Year / Month / Day. Actually Year / Month / Day probably makes the most sense because then you could have 2016:11:08:23:13:47. The longest time measurement starts on the left with years and goes down as you go right to month, day, hour, minute, second.

Just because you're used to something doesn't mean it's the best way to do it.

[Powerogue]

I mean obviously it'd be really confusing at first due to us being used to things like "9 to 5 jobs", but we'd get over it eventually.

[Noradin]

Day / month / year is stupid as hell. Month / Day / Year always. When ever i ask anyone what day of the month it is, the response is pretty much ALWAYS November 7. I literally have never had anyone tell me that the date is "the 7th of November". It also flows better with progression of smaller caps on the number in the sequence. 31 /12 / 2016 looks retarded. 12 / 31 / 2016 looks much better. It also helps prevent cases of something like seeing 3 / 4 / 2016 and having no idea if the 3 represents a day or a month.

That is only because you write the month first.

[Jotaux]

I think you have that backwards.

Day / month / year is stupid as hell. Month / Day / Year always. When ever i ask anyone what day of the month it is, the response is pretty much ALWAYS November 7. I literally have never had anyone tell me that the date is "the 7th of November". It also flows better with progression of smaller caps on the number in the sequence. 31 /12 / 2016 looks retarded. 12 / 31 / 2016 looks much better. It also helps prevent cases of something like seeing 3 / 4 / 2016 and having no idea if the 3 represents a day or a month.

Day/Month/year or year/month/day are the most logical order and not based on your feels. Year/month/day is probably better just because it follows the largest to smallest unit of measurement order we are accustomed to when writing numbers.

[Surfd]

Day/Month/year or year/month/day are the most logical order and not based on your feels. Year/month/day is probably better just because it follows the largest to smallest unit of measurement order we are accustomed to when writing numbers.

It has nothing to do with "feels". Day / month / year is stupid for the same reason asking someone what time it is and getting 22:08 is. It is November the 8th, and 8:22, NOT "The 8th of November," and "the 22nd minute of 8 o'clock"

[breafstank]

time zones are just making everything a confusing mess. i say good riddance get rid of them.