Message-Id: <199603261224.HAA05681@CS.UTK.EDU>
Date:        Tue, 26 Mar 1996 13:12:22 +0100
From: Eric Thomas <ERIC@VM.SE.LSOFT.COM>
Subject:     Re: timezones & Date
To: drums@cs.utk.edu
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 25 Mar 1996 22:42:02 -0500 from "Perry E. Metzger"
             <perry@piermont.com>

On   Mon,   25    Mar   1996   22:42:02   -0500    "Perry   E.   Metzger"
<perry@piermont.com> said:

>What was said  was simply this: if  you can expect to  have to configure
>your copy  of Eudora with  your name, the  nearest POP and  SMTP server,
>etc., I think  it isn't much of  an imposition to also ask  for the time
>zone for the configuration file. Its  at most a few bytes of information
>that any idiot knows

I'm sorry Perry, but you're very wrong  here. Maybe in the US every idiot
knows whether he's on Eastern or Pacific time. But, again, most countries
actually fit on one time zone. Actually,  most of Europe fits in one time
zone, so most people over here think in terms of European time vs US time
vs the time the  Brits use because they can never do like  the rest of us
;-) When I  configured the first system  I was in charge of  and it asked
for the 3-letter  abbreviation for my time zone and  the GMT offset, call
me an  idiot if you will  but I had NO  CENSORED IDEA. As far  as I knew,
Greenwich was in the UK, and we were not on the same time as the UK, so I
figured it would probably  be +1 (it was +2 actually at  that time of the
year). I  used the default,  and then  I asked my  Dad, who works  for an
airline. Because  of his job he  knew the GMT  offset (just as I  now do,
because my job now requires it). Nobody knew what, if any, was the proper
three-letter abbreviation.  Admittedly this was  15 years ago,  but there
are still a lot of non-technical people who positively wouldn't know what
their GMT offset is. And, above all,  they aren't going to remember to go
into the config and  change it twice a year, so it will  be wrong half of
the time. Bottom  line, if the *system* doesn't provide  and *maintain* a
GMT offset for you, in most cases you don't know the local time zone.

  Eric