On 10/9/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Oct 9, 8:34 am, "Diez B. Roggisch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > On Oct 8, 1:03 pm, Carsten Haese <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >> On Mon, 2007-10-08 at 10:41 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > >> > For example, Windows has seperate listings for > > > > >> > Central America > > >> > Central Time (US & Canada) > > >> > Guadalahara, Mexico City, Monterry - New > > >> > Guadalahara, Mexico City, Monterry - Old > > >> > Saskatchewan > > > > >> > but they are all GMT-6 > > > > >> But they could have different rules for Daylight Saving Time. > > > > > Which only matters if you're setting your clock. > > > > That's BS. If I'm supposed to be attending a video-conference that spans a > > few continents which is scheduled using a web-app, it's VITAL that I get > > the invitation and reminder rendered in MY local timezone, DST included. > > > > And for the matter of > > > > """ > > There are only 25 timezones: -12, -11, ... -1, 0 (GMT), +1, ... +11, > > +12. > > """ > > > > who says that timezones have to be separated by one hour each? > > The Earth says. It takes 24 hours to revolve. It only takes 24 hours for the Earth to revolve once because we defined an hour as 1/24 of the time it takes for the Earth to revolve once. We could have said an hour was 1/10 that time, or 1/2, or 1/27.284.
> > > Or why don't we have a global time? > > Like UTC? What about GMT? I hear that much more than UTC. > > > > > Your 25 timezones are an abstraction the same way > > Not the same way at all. The 25 timezones I speak of are > not merely an abstraction, but related to longitude. > > > as are the 400 apparently in use by people all over the world > > Where the correlation to longitude is much looser. > Granted, it doesn't need to be for non-navigational > purposes. And although governments can legislate things > like DST, they can't legislate longitude. > But your 25 timezones are only useful to the people that use those 25 timezones. And the time zone I use is not one of those 25 timezones. > > - and last time I checked, there was no > > fundamental law in physics or such that limited the allowed or sensible > > number of timezones... > > Isn't there some law somewhere that says the circumference > of a sphere is 360deg? Doesn't that same law mean that no two > points on a sphere can be seperated by more than 180deg > longitude? Doesn't that make GMT+13 non-sensible? A timezone is an arbitrary geographical designation. It has nothing to do with latitude or longitude. While some time zones may be defined as a geographical region between two longitudes, others may be defined by geographical borders or convienent terrain features. Take a look at the international date line. It doesn't follow a longitudinal line, but instead jogs east around Asia and then west around the Aleutian Islands. -- -Bill Hamilton -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list