LURKER here, if they are four hours ahead, you would NOT Subtract the four hours. Look at a globe of the earth and see that if they are ahead, you ADD and if they are the other way you would Subtract. In California they are behind you by four hours so you Subtract the hours, because it is earlier in the morning. If they are to the East they would be behind you, after daily light. If it is 1538 hrs, 3:38 PM, in the Eastern Time Zone then it would be four hours later in the day a GMT or Zero meridian. HTH! At 02:59 PM 9/3/01, you wrote: >I know this is at least slightly off topic (well, it's a newbie >question, maybe not a Linux question) ;-) > >I'd like to make sense of the way times are reported in email. > >I'm in the Eastern (U.S.) Time Zone, with Daylight Savings in effect. > >Just a few minutes (3:38 PM) ago I sent myself a test email. > >Looking at the test email, the date and time (sent) is reported as: > > Mon, 03 Sep 2001 15:38:00 -0400 > >OK. Clearly the "15:38" is my local time. > >Then there is the "-0400", and if I'm not mistaken, right now (daylight >savings) we are four hours different than Greenwich Mean Time. > >So, I might jump to the conclusion that I can simply subtract 4 hours >(-0400) from my current time to get Greenwich Mean Time. > >Wrong! It's just the opposite (unless I'm really mistaken) -- I have to >add 4 hours to get Greenwich Mean Time. > >I might have hoped that whoever set this up had some thought of making >this somewhat mnemonic. In other words that the "-" would be the clue >to tell you whether to add or subtract to get to GMT. > >Either they didn't, or my head is twisted around backwards. It's easy >enough to change the sign (mentally) before applying the 4 hour >correction, but somehow I'm hoping that someone can give me another way >to look at this so it will seem logical. > >(I've mentally gone through this exercise a few times (that is, >reminding myself that I must change the sign), but it just doesn't >stick. (Maybe it will after writing this email.)) > >If it really is counterintuitive to everyone else also, let's make a >plan to change it. Will we have to wait and roll it in with the Y10K >changes, or can we sneak it in sometime before then? > >Randy Kramer > >Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? >Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com TIA, 'd' <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> San Antonio, Texas
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
