Most peole do not put much thought into daylight saving time, until it is time to adjust your clocks. In SHRM’s recent newsletter, they offered a short article that got me thinking that there is more to it than this. A quick Google search revealed there are over 500,000 articles that come up when you search on daylight saving time.
I had forgotten that the law was actually passed back in 2005 and at the time I was amazed as to why they were not going to implement the change until 2007. For decades, candy manufacturers have lobbied for a daylight saving time extension through Halloween. What is interesting about this is last week before moving our clocks back, my teenage kids told me that this is the reason for moving the dates. Most people remember the mild debate in our nation around these changes – it is actually a result of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
One article I found provides several reasons behind the opposition to the bill. Some of the reasons:
- School Children – will possibly wait in the pitch dark for the school bus.
- Business – the airline industry claims it will cost millions of dollars to adjust schedules.
- Computers, Clocks and Gadgets – many electronic devices automatically adjust for daylight saving time. Some of these devices will show incorrect times. Some computer software will have to be reprogrammed.
The last one surprised me. You mean that my cell phone, computer,TV and etc. don’t change automatically? These are things that I really didn’t think about and have taken for granted. So I looked at a few more articles about these technology issues – here are some interesting points:
Cisco Systems’ technical support has pages of detailed technical information on solving DST problems afflicting its servers and routers. Oracle’s online discussion forum is filled with posts from developers seeking help handling esoteric DST challenges.
Many of us have a Microsoft operating system we use on our computers, which maintain an accurate clock. Peter Houston, Microsoft’s senior director of servicing strategy, had this to say about the upcoming change, “We’re aware of the upcoming change, and will make sure that Windows handles the transition smoothly.”
I learned that “smoothly” doesn’t necessarily translate to “flawlessly.” Microsoft’s support Web site contains dozens of articles related to DST hiccups, varying from broad problems — some multiprocessor computers running Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 or 5 have trouble adjusting to DST — to minor oddities. In Windows Millennium Edition, the operating systems’ DST adjustment accidentally reset HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) wallpaper background images to a bitmap file.
I learned that my Sprint phone didn’t make the change until I turned it off and back on again. Okay, this is not as big of an issue as Y2K was, but it has created a variety of issues for technologists. Come next spring when the daylight saving changes go into effect, know that much programming had to occur for such a simplistic change.