Oh Those Lovely Timezones

[Elomin Sha]

Some interesting facts and interactive globe on the planet's timezones.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12849630

[House MD]

Don't you just love how it works out. The date line is easily the best bit on there.

[Lord Chrusher]

I am glad they included south eastern Queensland on the list of messed up time zones.

[empath]

As usual, they don't even mention GMT-3.5h, but I'm surprised they mention Iran's irregularity in the text, yet make it look like it's part of GMT+3h.

It wouldn't have taken much to just draw the lines of GMT+3 & GMT+4 to each exclude Iran - not even create an 'extra setting' for it but still show it stands apart from the neighbouring nations.

[Lord Chrusher]

Half hour off time zones are not that rare. Besides Newfoundland and Iran, India, Afghanistan, South Australia, Burma and Venezuela all have half hour times.

[Keab42]

The one I find strange is China, it's all on one timezone.

[Ed.]

i kind of like chinas logic the office hours change rather than the time

[gcninja]

my time zones weird as my state is the only one not to observe DST, yet the reservation does but not the hopi one inside it, just the navajo one surrounding it. We even have our own selection on menus

[Vigafre]

More info on time zones and their strangeness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84aWtseb2-4

[Ed.]

AH you beat me too it was going to post that vid. I have always been in favour of ditching DST abolishing winter time.

[Elomin Sha]

Hey Ed. You do know you've spelt Swansea wrong?

[Ed.]

oops should pay attention when swapping back and forth.

IDEA

[Dibria]

I've never seen the need for time zones, I think it makes more sense to just say 'I work from 21:00 to 05:00' - especially as it makes it easier for people in other countries to work out when you'll be available.

But that may be as I'm on GMT so I'd be the same anyway

[Master Gunner]

Uhhh.....what?

How can you not see the need for time zones? Going by your example of "I work from 21:00 to 05:00", I still have no idea when you'll be available, even if the world worked on one time zone, without knowing more information. At your longitude, assuming we adopt GMT as universal time, that would be a graveyard shift, so you'd probably be going asleep soon afterwards, and get up a bit after noon. However if you lived near me, that would merely be a late night shift. If you're out west in BC, that would be simply a late shift, and you'd be around for several hours afterwards. Over in Australia, that would be anywhere from an early shift to a regular shift.

So with one global time zone, giving me a time only works if I also know your rough longitude, or time zone, from which to work out what that would be in local time to figure out your habits and when you'd be available, and then compare it myself. Or, you could just tell me your local time and timezone, which would tell me exactly what I need to know about your situation, and figuring out the offset from my own is easy (especially when timezones are given in the format of GMT+/-X).

And no, there is no chance of half the world waking up and working in the middle of the night just so regular "9-5" shifts happen at the same time simultaneously worldwide. That would be silly.

[Duckay]

And that's not even getting into problems like, for instance, television broadcasts across a country. If a show is on at 1900 hours on the east coast of a country (which, for these purposes, we'll pretend is, say, dinner time), is it going to be on at the same time (1900) on the west coast, which is when people will be getting home from work, or at the same timeslot (2100 hours, or dinner time)? Because if it's the former, people in one place are going to be missing things, and if it's the latter, you can't use countrywide advertising, TV guides, etc.

[Vigafre]

Television programming wouldn't really be a problem. They could easily just list the different times it comes on (1700 on the West Coast, 2000 on the East Coast, for example) if it does come on the same time across the country. Residents of whichever part of the country would know whether or not they could watch it.

It would work just like they have now (in America) with the 8PM (implied eastern time)/7PM central time stuff, except now they just have to list one time.

[Duckay]

I possibly didn't think my example through very well. I should have stuck with just fervently agreeing with Master Gunner's point.

[Vigafre]

S'cool. Honestly, I don't even know if I made sense. I edited that post so many times.

[Metcarfre]

And then, of course, if we all worked at the same time, there would be the massive spikes of power consumption that happen around 6pm anyways (when people get home they all turn on lights, ovens, heaters etc.), except it would be all of the earth, probably disabling the entire power grid.

Sweet.

(This is why daylight savings time is still around, incidentally)

[Vigafre]

Why would everyone get home at 6PM? I sure people wouldn't work based on what time it is after the switch. A person who gets home at 6PM on the West coast would get home at 4PM with Central Time.

[Duckay]

I think the point being made here is that it all being the same time everywhere is meaningless unless we also all adopted roughly the same schedule. Which would never happen, because of people's circadian rhythms, and also would bring with it a bunch of new problems.

In short, yeah, time zones are useful.

[Vigafre]

Oh right, I forgot the argument was about time zones, not DST.

[the_lone_bard]

Time zones for other countrys have a purpose. Timezones within the US have a purpose.

The fact that for half a year darwin is 2 hours behind me, 1 and a half hours behind me for a little while and then at the same time as me for the rest of the year is just stupidity.

I propose a new rule. If i can get on a flight to you that takes 3 hours, you can just damn well use the same time, and run on the "It gets dark a little later here than in melbourne." logic.
I already use this logic BECAUSE of these stupid timezones, for example, it got dark at 9pm last night... 6 months ago it got dark at 5:30pm.

[Dibria]

My point was not that everyone would work at the same time but that everyones clocks would be the same, so my example of someone working from 21:00 to 05:00 was a supposed to be someone who works 9 to 5 in say Australia (maybe wrong but off the top of my head I think they're GMT +12).

I meant that things would be easier in the sense that if you go to a website and it says their office hours are from say, 16:00 to 01:00, that is when you phone them on your clocks, rather than trying to work out what they're time zone is and taking or adding that number from the time on your clock.

@Master Gunner - When I said I don't see the need for time zones I meant as a function of changing clocks not as 'why don't we get up and go to bed at the same time world wide' as that would, as you quite rightly pointed out, be ridiculous.

[Duckay]

It might be useful for things like that, Dibria, but all that really means is that it would be really handy to have a timezone converter available. In almost all other contexts, it's still meaningless because you have no context to those hours.

To take another random example, if you don't know where I live, my comment that I don't want to start work at 17:30 is meaningless, because you don't know if I'm complaining about working nights, mornings, or the middle of the day. (Of course, maybe you just don't care about my whining anyway. Which is fair.)

Plus, it'd just be a pain in the ass to start thinking of weird hours of the day in times that don't make sense to anyone except people around GMT.