Daylight savings shift to cause phone havoc Down Under
Strewth!
Unsuspecting Aussies could be in for a spot of aggro this weekend, because Down Under network operator Telstra has warned that some phones won’t support the country’s upcoming daylight savings adjustment.
Daylight savings will come into effect three weeks earlier than usual this weekend in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and the nation's capital, Canberra.
The time shift is all part of a plan to make summer longer for Aussies and to boost tourism. Sounds like something cooked up by The Hollowmen...
However, Telstra stressed that the software on some newer mobiles and smartphones may override its own network settings and change times to reflect the traditional beginning of daylight savings. Some of the phones that might be affected include Nokia’s 6120c, phones running Windows Mobile and BlackBerry talkers.
The company told customers to carefully check the time displayed by their phones, to ensure that it’s legit. However, the company’s also set up a website for customers confused about what the real time of day it is.
COMMENTS
Australia isn't small...
As well as the distance from Perth to Sydney being about 3000km (as Luke Speer pointed out), the eastern states cover a longitudinal distance of around 3500km (south Tasmania to the north point of Cape York in Queensland). This is why Queensland doesn't have DST and Tasmania has historically (but not at the moment) started DST earlier and finished it later.
The people closer to the equator would prefer it to be later in the physical day when they get home, so that it isn't so bloody hot. The people further away (Tassie) would prefer it to be light in the evening for their activities, rather than the sun to start coming up so early - the official sunrise in Hobart would be at 4:30am without DST, but in practice it gets light quite a while before the official sunrise due to the long twilight.
East Anglian Times
The reason we change from summer to winter time in the UK is for the farmers. Or more specifically in East Anglia it provides the winter sugar beet crop with an extra hour of daylight in the mornings. Do they have sugar beet problems in AZ?
Mines the scruffy barbour with the bailer string coming out of the pockets.
geography
"The original "standard" working hours of 09:00 to 17:00 were chosen so that even on Midwinter's day, when the sun does not rise over London until 08:00 UTC, a man (for it was only men, in those days) would have some daylight by which to shave and dress for work."
Fine for London, what about Edinburgh, or Belfast? Don't forget that until the coming of the railways and the need for standard time, each part of the country kept it's own time based on local midday, and if that meant that Old Amos had to get up at 4am to milk t'cows, so what.
The best thing about all this modern computer stuff is flexible working hours, which translates nicely into "go to work when it isn't rush hour"
@ A J Stiles
"The logical thing to do, if one wished to make the best use of the available hours of daylight after work, would be to get up earlier in Summer in order to make use of the light evenings; perhaps altering business hours to, say, 08:00 to 16:00..."
Yes, that's called Daylight Saving Time (or Summer Time in the UK).
The only difference between individual businesses (or individuals within businesses) choosing to go to work earlier on a case by case basis and the organised rolling back of the nation's clocks is that the former produces a chaotic condition where no one can reliably predict which business has changed it's opening/closing times, and which has not (or by how much), and the latter coordinates everything into one organised transition.
I like your idea, but they already thought of it ;)
Daylight saving is bollocks anyway
Daylight saving time is a heap of bollocks anyway.
At any given latitude, on any day except the two equinoxes, there will be unequal amounts of daylight and darkness (the minimum and maximum hours of daylight occurring at Midwinter and Midsummer, respectively). However, on any day including the equinoxes, the hours of daylight will be evenly distributed either side of midday (which is how it got the name). The timing of midday varies according to longitude.
The original "standard" working hours of 09:00 to 17:00 were chosen so that even on Midwinter's day, when the sun does not rise over London until 08:00 UTC, a man (for it was only men, in those days) would have some daylight by which to shave and dress for work.
Of course, at the vernal equinox, the sun rises over London at 06:00 UTC; and by Midsummer, the sun rises over London at 04:00 UTC and does not set until 20:00 UTC.
The logical thing to do, if one wished to make the best use of the available hours of daylight after work, would be to get up earlier in Summer in order to make use of the light evenings; perhaps altering business hours to, say, 08:00 to 16:00 (or maybe even 07:00 to 15:00 in latitudes closer to the equator), between the Vernal and Autumnal equinoxes.
Forcing everyone to adjust their clocks for the summer and pretend that it is 13:00 when it is midday was probably the bloody stupidest idea any idiot could have come up with.
