On 23/6/24 12:08, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
On Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 11:02 AM Stefan Monnier <monn...@iro.umontreal.ca
<mailto:monn...@iro.umontreal.ca>> wrote:
> Yes, I realise that. The times are being displayed by the gettys,
> controlled by the /etc/issue format string. Jobs are being run
> by cron, logs written by rsyslogd, and so on. And the term is … ?
Maybe there simply isn't such a term. The subject is sufficiently
complex/delicate that there can't be a term for every single situation.
I think we are losing sight of the fact that all of timekeeping is an
abstraction and over-generalization. Time zones were created to help
regularize railroad schedules over wide areas. Timezones are an
abstraction that permit us to _pretend_ that it is (physical) noon at
the same clock time over an extended area. When in fact physical high-
noon, determined by the sun's position in the sky, cannot be at the
exact same time just a few centimeters west or east of my eyeballs.
Stefan
I can't resist.
Have you ever pondered why the 'international date line' is so convoluted?
I reckon it would have been (almost) straight if UTC was set about 11°
west of it's current position.
Any chance of fixing it? Probably even less now that UK has left the EU.
As for odd time zones, we have a narrow one, somewhere between the West
Australian border (with Sth Aust) and the first notable town on the road
West - Norseman. It's 45 mins different from Sth Aust and the a further
45 mins to main stream West Aust. There might be 10,000 people live
within it. I think that somewhere is Baledonia. I'll check next time
I drive over, but that'll be sometime next year, if I'm lucky.
--
All the best
Keith Bainbridge
keithr...@gmail.com
keith.bainbridge.3...@gmail.com
+61 (0)447 667 468
UTC + 10:00
