While this isn’t as bad as the y2K problem, and we don’t observe Daylight Savings Time (DST) in the State of Hawaii, Canada and the the rest of the United States will start DST early and end it late. Clocks, computers and other devices will need to be patched or replaced to handle this man-made change in the natural order of things.
March 11 is the official start of DST for 2007, as a result of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. That’s the second Sunday of March. DST will last until the first Sunday of November (November 4, 2007).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/31/AR2007013102318.html?nav=hcmodule
According to the Washington Post, US and international companies are only now planning for the change. Microsoft Windows, MacOS and other operating systems include functions to handle DST, but these are keyed to the traditional start and end dates (the first Sunday of April and last Sunday of October).
Microsoft states that they will have patches ready by early March. Cutting it a bit close, huh? According to Rod Trent, Microsoft’s DST rebasing patch will cause existing Outlook and Exchange appointments to be off by one hour.
Microsoft has a page of DST-related information at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007.mspx
That page includes this little gem: Mexico will NOT observe the new US DST guidelines, but Canada WILL. Canada agreed to follow the US changes last year, but Mexico didn’t.
Among the business-related topics mentioned by the Post are ATMs. Banks time-date stamp every transaction, and on many ATMs, the electronic clock is built into the machine. So ATM transactions that involve Mexico in some way will be affected by the new guidelines.
Airlines have to coordinate schedules across multiple time zones and jurisdictions.
Most of the world is only now figuring out that the US and Canada are changing their implementation of DST, which most of the world refers to as summer time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time
Tags: Canada, hardware, Mexico, Microsoft, software, time, Windows
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