Re: dst and IsDaylightSavings

On 2/13/07, Mark Aurit <[email protected]> wrote:
> I suppose the corporation I work for is not unlike everyone elses -
> there is some major paranoia going on with dst.
> Im working on an app that uses some calendar controls, just brought one
> up in vs.net 2.5 - and noticed an "IsDaylightSavings" property.  Please
> tell me this wont be an issue - both at the ide and framework level.  Im
> hoping neither use internal algorithms, instead depending on the OS.
> That makes it someone else's problem (whether one exists or not).

Until last year, the trivia question of, "What three states don't
observe Daylight Savings Time" was answered "Indiana, Arizona, and
Hawaii".

Indiana always had a few counties near Chicago, Cincinnati, and
Louisville stay in tune with those cities.  The nice thing in
mainframe days was to set the boxes to be Z-5 and never touch it.

The Indiana State Legislature was receiving more & more pressure each
year by businesses[1] to affirm that stance or switch.  The biggest
point was it would screw businesses[2] up because six months of the
year, we be (in my terms) "Chicago time" the other,  "New York Time".
In addition to the State Legislature's passing, the Federal Gov't had
to do a bunch of legwork as well.  The decision was made to go Eastern
(New York) time and any counties which wanted to go back to Central
could do so. Any county which touched a state line or touched a county
which had already stated their intentions[3] (That would be a fun ACM
Programming problem to deal with) and I don't think everyone
understand just how complex that could be.

The bottom line?  DST exists pretty much everywhere except for Arizona
and Hawaii and only a handful of Indiana counties.
_________________________________________


[1] This was the easiest way to explain it to people because trying to
give a two minute tutorial re: time zones, etc.  It was just as easy
to say, "We're on 'Chicago Time' right now."  I started doing that
back when I was in the arena of publishing computer books and have
since continued the practice.

[2] Many years ago, farmers tried the argument, "It'll screw up the
cows and cost us money."  No one figured out a carefully worded
argument, but [as for me] having spent a *long* time on a couple of
farms, anyone trying that argument with me was met with, "Can you show
me the clock in your barn the cows use?"

[3] That would be a fun ACM Programming problem to deal with.  They
still don't allow recursion, do they?

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