Bob Shell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Several years ago I bought two of those "Atomic" clocks, one for my
> house and one for my studio. They set themselves based on a radio
> signal from the National Atomic Clock. One attraction was that they
> automatically set themselves for DST when it started and back to
> standard time when it ended. Apparently the National Atomic Clock
> wasn't told about the change, since neither of my clocks reset itself
> this morning and I had to manually reset them. They've corrected for
> the changes automatically for four years before. How much do you
> wanna bet that they will reset themselves on April 1 ??!!
[Caveat: I am speaking'ex recto' on this matter ...]
I don't know how those clocks and the national broadcasts works,
but I rather suspect they work like various network clock
synchronization protocols on the Internet. With the 'net ones,
the synch messages are sent in Universal Time (aka GMT), and
it's up to the receiving device to know how many hours to add
or subtract for the time zone it's in and whether it's Daylight
Spending Time or not.
If I'm right, then a) your clocks will reset themselves 1 April
as you guessed, and b) it's not the National Atomic Clock's fault
(though feel free to continue to blame the Congress).
For the same reason, just knowing that your computer gets its
clock set by NTP or timed or some other network time service
doesn't mean it'll have automagically adjusted itself this morning
unless the OS was told in advance about the new schedule.
(As for why I referred to it as "Daylight Spending Time", well
it turns out that it doesn't save energy -- gasoline consumption
by folks taking advantage of the extra daylight more than
offsetts any reduction in electricity consumption for lighting,
and if schoolkids are going to school in the dark then it means
lights are being turned on before dawn instead of after dusk
and we're not even saving electricity yet -- and it doesn't
save most people any money. In fact, the retail industry and
the golf industry are the biggest supporters of DST because
with more after-work daylight, _people_go_shopping_ (and golfers
play more golf). So it's alllll about the _spending_ baybee!)
-- Glenn, currently with
2/3 of the clocks, 1/2
of the VCRs, 1/7 of the
computers, and 1/3 of
handheld devices in
the house set to the
official time so far.
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