FW: [LINK] Re: Heads Up - troubles with time zones

[Daniel Rose]

I have some general comments.  Firstly, I hold that IT should be
designed and implemented in such a way that it conforms to the desires
or business processes of the owners.  A situation where someone says
they can't do something they way they want to because the software
prohibits it is a problem.  I have noticed people complaining that it
was irresponsible of the Govt to make this change, and that they ignored
the cost to business.  I say that if the costs to your business are high
then that's your problem, not the Govt's.

Secondly, it's also a bit precious to carry on a week before or after
the change complaining about Microsoft not doing the job for you.  They
are a for profit company and are not obliged to do these sorts of
things.  Except in special cases, you buy a licence from MS for a
particular piece of software, not a managed contract to grow, improve
and evolve the software over time.  As I see it, any patches you do get
are a bonus.

Next, appliance vendors need to make patches for their linux rack mount
appliances.  Otherwise we end up with the cost of the appliance and the
cost of managing it, which is a bit much.

The patch I got for Linux didn't have a Canberra timezone in it, so the
symlink didn't work anyway and had to be reset to Sydney.  Not a big
problem, but it shouldn't really happen -- but then I wasn't paying for
support services, so I have no solid objection to this.

OS X just needed an automatic update & all was well.  Everything else I
tried before that occurred to me just made things worse, synching from
the apple asia clock gave me 4am the next day...

The Windows patch gives you a new timezone to select, but it moves any
existing appointments during the affected week forward an hour.  When
you change the timezone back again, the appointments move backwards an
hour, so any that you created during that week will also be out again.

Essentially, the earlier the patches were applied, the less problems you
would expect.  IMHO, patching after the clock shift is irresponsible &
unprofessional -- but that's just a personal opinion.