On Fri, 24 May 2002 06:10:39 PDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@fourpalms.org> said:
> ...
> > But anybody using Unix dates as "general dates" has leaped into exactly the
> > same sort of trap that caused people to get so paranoid about Y2K.
> Certainly true. We don't use Unix dates as "general dates", we use the
> Unix time zone database and API for dates and times within the year
> range of 1903 to 2038. Well, up until now anyway...
I don't think going past 1970 is particularly safe; it certainly doesn't
seem to fit with ANSI...
By the way, the seemingly relevant link to look at for TZ info is
http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm, linking to the data used by
various Unix implementations.
> Prior to the 1900s, the concept of time zones was more localized and
> not universally adopted. In the US, a first round of time zone
> standardization came with the transcontinental railroads in the 1860s.
> After 2038, it is a good bet that time zones will resemble those in
> use today, but they are as much a political construct as a physical
> one so the details are subject to change.
Some of the zones are quite peculiar if you head to Africa and Asia;
there are some sitting on 15 minute intervales, rather than the usual 1h
intervals.
(The classic Canadian timezone joke is "World ends at 9:00; 9:30 in
Newfoundland". For more information, see TZ='America/St_Johns')
--
(concatenate 'string "chris" "@cbbrowne.com")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/spreadsheets.html
"Heuristics (from the French heure, "hour") limit the amount of time
spent executing something. [When using heuristics] it shouldn't take
longer than an hour to do something."
