OK, so Exchange is an easy target. Sorry. But it has found a new and
exciting way to suck!
For more years than I care to remember, it has sent out meeting
notifications thus ...
> When: 06 July 2010 14:00-16:00 (GMT) Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin,
> Edinburgh, Lisbon, London.
> Where: Room 1234
Note that it says GMT in mid-Summer, when we're on BST instead. What it
has always *meant* is local time in a geographic area that Microsoft
call GMT.
Now, however, it sends them like this:
> When: 06 July 2010 14:00-16:00 (GMT) Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin,
> Edinburgh, Lisbon, London.
> Where: Room 1234
>
> Note: The GMT offset above does not reflect daylight saving time
> adjustments.
So they've acknowledged that they are in error, but instead of just
fixing the bug, they've added another layer of confusion! Now it would
be reasonable for someone to read either that that means 14:00 local
time, or that it really does mean 14:00 GMT and not 14:00 BST. It's
just as ambiguous as before!
A real fix would be to either:
* spit out the right time zone abbreviation (for the pedants in the
audience, I'd like to point out that GMT is the right time zone
sometimes, and saying something pedant-compatible like UTC is stupid
as it will confuse people who don't spend their lives dealing with
timezone pedants, also saying things like +01:00 is just as
confusing for normal people); but if that's too difficult ...
* not say the timezone name at all, just the list of cities, so
something like "14:00 (Dublin/Edinburgh/Lisbon/London timezone)"
--
David Cantrell | Nth greatest programmer in the world
Blessed are the pessimists, for they test their backups
