[geeks] DST hell

[Mike Hebel]

On Mar 10, 2007, at 1:43 PM, Lionel Peterson wrote:

>> From: Joshua Boyd <jdboyd at jdboyd.net>
>> Date: 2007/03/10 Sat AM 11:52:50 CST
>> To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>> Subject: Re: [geeks] DST hell
>
>> On Sat, Mar 10, 2007 at 10:00:39AM -0600, Mike Hebel wrote:
>>
>>> If we're dealing with Win-blows boxes you would:
>>>
>>> 1) Patch the PDC for DST.
>>> 2) Use ntp to set it's local clock.
>>> 3) Turn off DST on the desktops.
>>> 4) Use "net time" in the login scripts to set the local time to the
>>> PDC.  (0)
>>>
>>> Mike Hebel
>>> (0) You _are_ making sure your users logout every night right?  
>>> Unless
>>> of course you've got third-shift people that is.
>>
>> Seems poor form to require that your users always logout at night.
>
> If your server stores *everything* in UTC, then your client 
> applications will need to be able to properly "decode" it based on 
> daylight savings time, right? All you've done is avoided the OS fix.

True.  But shouldn't you be converting the UTC time to display relevant 
to the desktop time anyway?  The code for that should already be there 
shouldn't it?

> As a "for instance" - say I've got a database that is storing 
> date/time stamps in UTC, but my users want to see DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM, 
> after the code retrieves the timestamp, the application will need to 
> convert it (or your DB will have to convert it, same diff really)...

If you're talking posted transaction dates/times and such then as long 
as the desktops point to something that is DST patched for their time 
sync then why would it matter?

Mike Hebel
----
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protect. There is a time you must take a stand, no matter what kind of 
pain awaits us. The man clad in the red coat took up his gun once again 
in order to stop the sadness, in order to stop the hate. I keep the 
word of the red geranium, which I was taught so long ago. I keep the 
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