Time, [Ladies and] Gentlemen, Time! [Was Re: Email as legal evidence]

[Rachel Polanskis]

Roger Clarke writes:
> 
> Jennifer Cram wrote:
> >Interesting sideline to this one, I have just noticed that emails I send
> >from Queensland are "datestamped" one hour later than they were sent - we
> >aren't on daylight saving though the rest of the Eastern States in the
> >same time zone are.....
> 
> This is a widespread and seldom-discussed problem.
> 
> It could have something to do with the fact that many users aren't aware
> that they have a Control Panel (or equivalent) that supports date and time,
> and in many cases even a daylight saving setting.
> 
Microsoft's Win95 has a known bug with daylight saving in Australia.
They originally developed 95 when Queensland still had daylight saving time.
This gets turned on at the same time of the year as NSW etc.

WHen someone complained to MS that Qld. no longer had daylight saving, 
they came back and said "Well it did when we wrote the code" 

:)
Bill does it again...

Most people don't notice until they start checking email and other things.

A colleague of mine uses 95 at home for high end graphics software 
like photoshop and for scanning.

Daylight saving clicked over, and now nothing works anymore.

Go figure...

> And of course there are many deprived souls whose operating systems don't
> offer much in this line anyway.
> 
And of course broken operating systems, that implement it poorly...

> I advocate the compulsory integration of a GPS (global positioning system)
> device in all computers, together with a feature in GPS to synchronise
> every computer's clock to the appropriate time according to its location.

No need - at least for Networked computers.
The NTP protocol has been in use on the Internet since the dawn of time ;)

Just get an NTP client for your Mac or PC (Unix has a simple one built in)
and point it to your your favorite time host.
Tardis for windoze is a good choice and free too.
Select "munnari.oz.au" for the eastern states, or even your local Uni,
(provided your admins are on the ball)...
and the time server will magically set your clock to the right time.

You can run it out of the Winsock dialin script.

> [And someone in NSA probably thought of it a looooong time ago ...].
> 
They had ;)

> Sorry - it's been a hard week.
> 
me too...

rachel

-- 
Rachel Polanskis                 Kingswood, Greater Western Sydney, Australia 
grove@zeta.org.au                http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html
r.polanskis@nepean.uws.edu.au    http://www.nepean.uws.edu.au/ccd/
                Witty comment revoked due to funding cuts