I don't know for sure the mentality behind the initial decision. I can imagine that it eliminates the need to maintain the names of the time zones in different languages. It would be easier for people that understand different languages to recognize the city that is nearest or most north/south of their location than to recognize whatever we call their time zone.
-wes On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Eric Wilhelm <[email protected]> wrote: > # from Russell Johnson > # on Wednesday 28 October 2009 12:55: > > >> i really dislike the city centric method for > >> choosing timezones. why is los angeles the choice for us/pacific? > >> why not portland, or seattle, or maybe it should be antelope :-). > > > >Oh, possibly because it's the largest city in the UNITED STATES on the > > west coast. Most people from the west coast know that LA is in the > > same time zone. (Sarcasm... ) > > Forget for a second that it is ridiculous for an internet-connected > computer to ask a human for the time of day... Why is choosing "a city > from the same time zone as you" supposed to be easier than typing the > name of your timezone? Now you have to know the politics of not just > your own city, but also of some arbitrary large city north or south of > you. Somebody in LA should get the city's government buildings to > switch to EST on Tuesdays just to keep things interesting. > > http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+time+is+it%3F > > --Eric > -- > "Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse." > --Murphy's Corollary > --------------------------------------------------- > http://scratchcomputing.com > --------------------------------------------------- > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
