Is Daylight Saving Shift Really Worth It? 652
Krishna Dagli writes "Two Ph.D. students at the University of California at Berkeley say that Daylight Saving Shift will not do any good or create any energy savings. We are already spending money for software upgrades in the name of saving energy and after reading following article I wonder has congress really studied the impact of DST shift? " I also read some back story on the concept; OTOH, I found TiVo's suggestions that I manually change everything on my Series 1 device to be somewhat...insulting.
Is it worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)
NO!
Only true if year round (Score:3, Interesting)
My understanding is that this would only be true if it were year round. Accidents increase [nejm.org] on both [abc.net.au] the days that we spring forward [selfhelpmagazine.com] (less sleep) and the days that we fall back (interruption in our "circadian rhythms").
Of course, it turns out that it might not even save lives if year round [standardtime.com] (search for "school bus accidents").
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Where I work, we have a reasonably fresh environment. Better than any other significantly sized business that I am familiar with, mostly due to several rounds of cleanups. Everyone aware of the costs below was LAUGHING about how we are so much better off than a few bigger businesses in the industry who's stories we heard. Let's consider th
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I think you underestimate just how large / bad the problem was/is. In larger companies it is a huge effort. You seem to think that deadlines for other projects were
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Tens of thousands of machines patched.
Hundreds of pieces of software considered.
Real projects were pushed back 4-6 weeks for this non-work.
Agree about "a day's work for a day's pay" angle you have. In fact, it's how we work around here-- any given day you can be off one project and on another random one that is now higher priority.
But, I'm pretty sure this cost us at least 2-3 weeks of real productivity.
Another case of academia vs. the real world (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd go for double daylight savings if I could.
Maybe the PhD guys should get out of their classroom and enjoy the day.
Re:Another case of academia vs. the real world (Score:5, Funny)
Why don't you just ask your boss if you can work 6-3
Re:Another case of academia vs. the real world (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Another case of academia vs. the real world (Score:5, Informative)
On /. we obey the laws of thermodynamics. You are absolutely, 100% using more energy running your headlights in your car. ALL of the energy used by your car comes from the gasoline that you put into it (with the small exception of any charge already in the battery when it was installed). Therefore, you are using more gasoline with your headlights on than you would if they were off. It might be too small to easily measure, but the difference is there.
If you want some tangible proof of this, find a small hand cranked generator and hook it up to a blinking light bulb. You can actually feel the crank get harder to turn when the light is lit and become easier when it goes off. So the more electricity used by your car, the more gasoline you use or your battery goes dead.
Re:Another case of academia vs. thereal wrld - YES (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Another case of academia vs. thereal wrld - YES (Score:4, Insightful)
But that has nothing to do with DST, that has to do with 1) what time you come and go to work and how long you stay there, and 2) the days are simply shorter in the winter because the Earth's axis. In extreme Northern and Southern climates (think North and South polar regions), its daylight and dark 24 hours a day depending on the season, and changing the clock will not change that.
I heard on NPR the other day, that the _real_ reason for DST is not to save energy, but rather to appease the retail sector. They have data that people are more willing to go out and spend money after work if its not dark. So people go motoring around in their fuel efficient SUVs, blow money, and thus energy is saved!
Personally, I don't understand why humans are so clock oriented vs sun oriented. It kills me that houses in the US are built in random directions (unless there is a nice view) instead of oriented around the Sun.
Sometimes I think humans are the silliest of all animals.
Re:Another case of academia vs. thereal wrld - YES (Score:5, Insightful)
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It would take that information and tell you what size AC you needed to cool it. With these measurements & no college degree (yet) I would come up with the same answer the boss did with his 20 years of expe
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You pay the agent if you buy through the agent. You write a big check, and some percentage or flat fee comes out of that money and goes to the agent. I don't care how they word it in the agreement (they can word it either way, depending on locality, whether they are a buyer's agent or seller's agent, or whatever) the fact of the matter is that money goes from you to the agent. The seller knows how much the agent is getti
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It's popularly difficult to interact, consume, create, foo unless you've got little deadlines controlling your movement. I blame grade school bells.
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I take a camping trip at the end of March every year and it will be SO nice to
News Flash (Score:3, Insightful)
I repeat DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME DOES NOT GIVE US MORE DAYLIGHT. It does not change the planets tilt, rotation speed, or smell.
Sorry, but it just bugs me when everyone claims it gives us more daylight. DST should be abolished altogether. Any companies that want to change their business hours for the seasons should do so on their own. Factories in the M
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we're all aware of that. It must be nice to work in a business that can adjust business hours on their own without any serious repercussions but a lot of us don't have that luxury. I have to be at work when my clients are at work. That's one of the advantages my clients have to using us over using someone offshore. All of our clients live in an 8-5 world so I too live in an 8-5 world. I'm rather fond of my 8-5 world including more daylight after I get off of work. That's extra usable daylight which is the real pro DST argument as far as I can tell. I don't really think anyone believes that setting clocks a certain way impacts the amount of time the sun spends in the sky daily but nice straw man (a term I really think is overused but is unfortunately most appropriate here).
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There are very very few businesses where start / finish times really matter, though there are more where they are enforced. Service oriented you say? Contractors (carpenters, electricians, plumbers, sanitation, maintenance) not only can choose their hours as they please (with the exception of emergency calls), but the frequently do. Consumer banking keeps retail hours, so you need to be there when the storefront opens, but they have no regard for their customer's schedules; af
Re:News Flash (Score:4, Funny)
You'd be surprised. . . .
Usable daylight. (Score:3, Informative)
Before we had these time pieces, people got up at sunrise. Over the course of the six months between solstices, the change would be a minute a day at most in the temperate zone. This gradual adjustment went away when we started using sundials, which based the time of day on noon instead of sunrise.
Then we got clocks, which came in handy for things like train schedules. The railroads had a problem. When an Atchison, Topeka,
from another DST hater (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I hear someone talk about how awesome it is to have extra hours of daylight, I ask them why wouldn't it be better to just "recalibrate" the time zones so that "daylight savings time" is the new standard time, then just stop all this switching nonsense.
But time zones are another total pain in the ass, even if there's no switching back and forth. I recently found out the China has a single time zone, whereas the country would encompass about eight zones if they used our style of time zones. And have you seen the time zone map of the US? It makes no sense at all. Alabama is completely on central time, but if you go due north, Michigan is in . . . eastern time? WTF?
I personally advocate the abolition of time zones altogether. Let's all use Greenwich Mean Time, no time changes, and deal with it. Businesses and schools can just change their hours of operation, rather than messing with time itself. Sure, it would be weird to have sunrise at 6 pm and sunset at 6 am, but would it be any more complicated than the current system?
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Re:Another case of academia vs. the real world (Score:4, Informative)
When I camp I get up with the sun and set up camp around sunset regardless of what the clock says. DST doesn't give you more daylight.
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http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/11/news/economy/bc.e
Re:Another case of academia vs. the real world (Score:5, Insightful)
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My neighbors tend to frown upon me doing yard work at five in the morning. And my kids don't seem to want to get up before dawn to go ride bikes.
Yes! No! Maybe! (Score:5, Funny)
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So you're trying to tell me... (Score:5, Funny)
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Or rather than a bunch of politicians think they are smarter than two PhD students.
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Politicians are only people, you're a person too. Question what they do or you're simply a tool. Don't forget either that they work for you.
So yeah, mod parent down
Re:So you're trying to tell me... (Score:5, Funny)
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Value may not be measurable in economics (Score:2, Interesting)
It is measurable... (Score:2)
I was listening to a radio Show and the DST was the topic.
It turns out that the makers of BBQs and the Golf lobby told Congress that DST was worth hundreds of millions of dollars for them and to continue the DST practice.
Re:Value may not be measurable in economics (Score:4, Insightful)
(For that matter, if it's that big of a difference, why doesn't private industry decide to change business hours independently? Personally, I don't see it as a big enough change to be worth bothering -- but then, I exercise in the mornings rather than afternoons, and have an employer who allows me to shift my hours at will).
Who cares about "energy savings"? (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in Indiana, and I'm thrilled that we're finally doing DST.
Issues so far (Score:4, Informative)
Congress? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is already well-established that the US Congress doesn't bother to read the laws before they pass them.
If they don't even read the law, I doubt they would do any studies.
Move to Saskatchewan, Canada (Score:2, Interesting)
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All I know is... (Score:2)
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It's dependent on where you live (Score:2)
(Not to mention it's hot enough that the airconditioning will be on wherever I am, daylight savings or no, so I doubt there's much of an energy saving there either)
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Your distance from the equator and the season are the two critical factors. If you live far from the equator and it is closer to the summer solstice than the winter solstice then you have 'daylight to spend'. Where should we spend it? In the evening, or in the morning? Most people don't have any interest in getting up earlier than 6:00 AM, so shifting those wasted hours of sunlight to the evening makes sense. I
Short sighted at best (Score:2, Insightful)
Was there any in depth hearings on it, any experts called in to testify on the change, any representatives from industries affected by this change, actual debate on the subject? As far as i can remember, it was no on all accounts.
Congress passes a law without knowing the full consequences, simply so they would have something to show in the 06 elections.
Anyone who voted on this is/was a go
maybe (Score:2)
More driving? (Score:5, Interesting)
So wait, Washington passed a law to change DST early...the early DST change is now being used to justify gas price increases? Coincidence? Happenstance?
Sorry all, maybe my TFH is a little tight this morning.
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The other side (Score:4, Interesting)
From TFA:
But Ryan Kellogg and Hendrik Wolff, who are working on their doctorates in economics, say the reduced need for light in the evening will likely be negated by the increased need in the early morning.
That sounds logical, but it is not (IMHO). In the morning when I get up for work, I turn on maybe two lights (bedroom and bathroom). I am focused on getting ready for work, so there is not any entertainment (TV), stereo, really nothing except an electric razor. I brew my tea, and I am off to work (I don't think my headlights count as extra energy).
When I come home from work, well, all the lights in the kitchen, the halls, very soon the livingroom, the plasma TV, the surround sound, the computer. Lot's more things. Now, most of these don't change from summer to winter, except the lights. If it is light out, I do not turn them on (shocking). That is a savings of energy by not turning on the lights.
I really don't think this article took into account the different energy needs from the morning to night times. It is short sighted.
Spack
(ok, the gate is open for you to disagree, but really think about the way you do things different in the mornings and how most people do it different first)
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The only difference is the livingroom, kitchen, and hall lights. So assuming you have 3 bulbs in the kitchen, 3 in the living room, and 1 in the hall, that's 7 bulbs that are on an extra hour a day.
It sounds like you're already at least a little energy-conscious, too, as most people will turn on a light if it's not quite bright enough in the room. You just leave the
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So they're not exactly making it up and while you may think it's not logical, it does appear to be true. Whether the results apply to the US in the same way remains to be seen, of cours
I'm a "night person" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm a "night person" (Score:4, Insightful)
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Do you manually record everything? (Score:2)
Not really new. (Score:2)
However all you "man is the prime source of global warming" can take heart, I have already seen a few articles where they are ignoring the claim that the change will save energy to focus on sayi
The letter from TiVo (Score:3, Informative)
Dear TiVo Subscriber,
As Daylight Saving Time commences three weeks early this year, we
thought we'd beat the clock to let you know how this unusual schedule might
affect recordings on your TiVo(r) Series1 DVR. (Hint: Chances are
slim.)
While the TiVo service will continue to automatically record your
Season Pass(tm) programs and WishList(r) searches at the correct airtimes
without incident, there are two things to note:
1) For the three weeks that follow the new Daylight Saving Time start
date (March 11), your Series1 TiVo(r) DVR may display the incorrect
time.
Again, to be clear, this is only a cosmetic issue and should not affect
your Season Pass(tm) and WishList(r) recordings.
2) If you have any MANUAL recordings scheduled between March 11 and
April 1, you
will need to adjust those recordings as appropriate. Here's how:
- From TiVo Central, select Pick Programs to Record, then To Do List.
- Locate your Manual Recording (by channel, date, time) and adjust
accordingly. For example, if you have a daily manual recording from 8:00 am
- 9:00 am, you will need to change it to 7:00 am - 8:00 am on March 11.
(Quick Tip: If there are no recordings in this list preceded by the
word "Manual", there's nothing further you need to do.)
- On April 1 be sure to change it back to its actual time, i.e., 8:00
am - 9:00 am.
For more details, please visit www.tivo.com/dst
Thanks for being a TiVo subscriber and here's to a beautiful spring!
- Your friends at TiVo
TiVo, Season Pass(TM), and WishList® are trademarks or registered
trademarks of TiVo Inc's subsidiaries. ©2007 TiVo Inc. 2160 Gold Street Alviso,
CA 95002-2160. All rights reserved. Please feel free to review our
Privacy Policy.
Depends on your lattitude (Score:4, Interesting)
However, for those North/South of about 30 degrees, the difference is significant. Not to mention the (measured, reference unavailable) reduction in traffic accidents due to fewer people driving home from work in the dark.
I've got an idea (Score:4, Funny)
Energy has nothing to do with it (Score:4, Insightful)
Any other government explanation is a lie. No exceptions.
In a word: No (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a reason that American Chamber of Commerce has strongly support DST since it's inception.
It's an ineffective, stupid move. (Score:4, Insightful)
If the government was really interested in "saving energy", it'd clamp down on emissions and fuel efficiency, and promote more effective techniques. Banning incandescent lighting and enforcing energy-saving bulb usage would strip several percent off of electricity demands year round and would cause a whole lot less annoyance than timezone changes. The EU and Australia have already figured this one out. [scotsman.com]
Updating Java for DST can break something else too (Score:3, Interesting)
Golf industry pushed the change? (Score:3, Interesting)
Whether or not this is true I have no idea but here is a link [go.com] from ABC from back in 2005 which says the exact same thing.
Conspiracy? You decide.
Re:Golf industry pushed the change? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
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Should be like religion ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Stock prices vs Savings (Score:3, Insightful)
Worth it? Psychologically, absolutely. (Score:5, Insightful)
The coldest hour (Score:4, Informative)
If you live in the northern US and are doing the responsible thing and turning your central heating down overnight, then getting up an hour earlier means you're turning the heat back up earlier. Why is this wasteful? Because on sunny days in March there's significant solar gain once the sun's up. In my house that can be enough that the heat doesn't even need to be turned on in the morning - unless we get up too early.
In the evening, both the house and the outside environment lose their heat relatively slowly. The darkest hour isn't literally just before the dawn, but the coldest hour is. It's much better to spend the coldest hour under the covers - from an energy use point of view - than to get up during it or right on its tail and turn the furnace up to compensate.
Of course, if the government just looks at electrical use, this may not show in areas that don't primarily use electric heat. The increase in oil and natural gas use though, from this idiocy, will be real and significant.
I love DST! Let's keep it all year! (Score:3, Interesting)
On a normal work schedule, DST gives me more sunlight when it matters most: in the evening when I'm home. It also preserves a bit more afternoon sunlight in the short, dark winter days.
As for morning sunlight, I don't care. I'm getting up before sunrise much of the year anyway. I might as well suffer a bit there to have a better evening.
The cost of springing forward (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a toddler. Toddlers don't spring forward very well. Put them to bed an hour early and they'll spend two hours fighting it. Then get them up an hour early and see how happy they are to see you.
Please, please, either ditch it completely or use it all year long. I really like having an extra hour of daylight to spend outside with the boy, the dog, and the missus.
Re:Already spending money? (Score:5, Funny)
I live in Indiana (a midwestern US state). Up until last year, we'd never done DST before at all (with a few exceptions in towns whose economies were linked to cities across the border in other, DST-observing states).
Before we had DST, it was HELL. All year, it got dark at like 2:00pm. There was no Little League Baseball, no football (american or otherwise) for the kids. Most of our youth joined gangs, who roamed the incessant darkness in large, heavily fortified bad-mpg SUVs, kicking puppies and beating up old ladies just for fun. There was no Christmas and no birthdays, and if we saw the Easter bunny we ATE HIM.
Though many people had the misconception that we were "America's Breadbasket", in fact the darkness prevented us from raising any sort of sustenance crops and most of us resorted to cannibalism to survive. Most Hoosiers (that's what we're called, it means "land of eternal darkness" in a Native American tongue) eventually starved to death, which was viewed as a welcome respite from the hellish, unstoppable night. Dogs and cats, living together, you get the picture.
Then, we elected a new Governor who brought us into the light (literally). With the introduction of DST, and the seemingly random (almost whimsical, really) distribution of our Counties between two time zones, our lives were changed forever. Now, it's light outside pretty much twenty-four-fucking-seven. Our kids are all on at least six sports teams and never shoot each other anymore. They call you "sir" or "ma'am" (these words were not used before, as it was difficult to discern gender in the darkness), shine your shoes for you, and present you with ice-cold lemonade from stands with amusingly misspelled signs. We discovered oil everywhere, we grow more crops than the world could ever possibly use (which has ended hunger globally) and we're all filthy, stinking RICH. All the women have big perky boobs, all the men are RIPPED, and everybody has an IQ of at least 160.
Yes Sir, I don't know what we'd do if it weren't for good ol' DST. I have to assume that with the new DST-extending rule from our good friends in the US Congress, we'll probably just evolve to a higher state of being and shed these silly, out-dated husks to become super-intelligent beings composed of pure energy.
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That said, funny shit.
Re:Already spending money? (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of them are cultural.
Some of them are inherent physically.
People who have the currently popular versions of smart are treated as smart by society.
In the french court, calculus counted for nothing- but you could basically kill a person with the right witty saying.
Re: Indiana, former land of perpetual darkness (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Already spending money? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Already spending money? (Score:4, Insightful)
My wife says that she wishes DST was all the time, as she has no problems waking up in the dark but tends to work long hours and we regularly stay up until 11 or 12.
And yeah, as a reminder to programmers it's great, but it's also great for all people to realize that time is abstract and can pretty much be whenever. I don't think I've ever heard an elderly person lament the time when we were all standard time.
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That assumes programmers learn from experience (Score:3, Informative)
I'd buy into that if there was any evidence that programmers ever learned from their mistakes. But in my experience, the opposite is true: We keep making the same damn mistakes, over and over.
Hell, look at buffer overflows. Still the #1 cause of security bugs. It's not like bounds checking is a radically new idea.
If you're of a historical mind,
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The last project delivered by IBM (three "teams" of basically college kids under three seasoned vets) had some extremely boneheaded obvious mistakes. The basic design was pretty good (effect of the vets probably) We spent over 4 years fixing what we could but without a clear ROI some things will never be fixed.
Hiring inexperienced programmers alwa
Re:Already spending money? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Already spending money? (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, WWV includes a DST flag so that at least those so-called "atomic clocks" (actually radio clocks) automatically changed at the right time.
Re:Already spending money? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't understand why you wouldn't use the flag -- it seems easier to just read the flag than to calculate the start/stop dates. There's even a countdown so you can miss several days of syncing before the switch and still know when it should happen. Apparently not all clock designers share my hatred for calendar calculations.
FYI: Common radio clocks use the 60kHz WWVB signal not the 2.5-20 MHz WWV signals. They both contain the digital timecode information, but WWV and WWVH also include frequency information (440 Hz, 500 Hz, 600 Hz, 1000 Hz and 1500 Hz beeps) and vocal timestamps, and reports about the weather, GPS health, and solar/radio conditions. In general WWV/WWVH are intended for manual use (all the time information is available in a format useful to human ears) and use outside the WWVB range, but WWVB is more accurate where available (better straight-line propagation) and less complicated to decode electronically due to the extremely low bit rate (a standard serial port can decode directly from an AM amp).
Re:Already spending money? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Already spending money? (Score:4, Funny)
Or at the very least, the acronym DST should change. Since the so-called "standard" time lasts from the first Sunday of November to the second Sunday of March which is 19 weeks, and the "daylight saving time" lasts the remaining 34 weeks, the one which lasts longer (summer time) should be called "standard time", while the winter time, opposite of DST, should really be called "daylight wasting time".
Really, if we're so save daylight, why not save it all year long? Otherwise, we're just wasting it.
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Re:Already spending money? (Score:5, Informative)
In the US, it was changed federally in 1918, 1920, 1942, 1945, 1966, 1974, 1975, 1985, 1986 and 2007. That averages out to about once per decade. Up until 1966, many individual states also fiddled with the times. Even today, states are allowed to opt in and out of DST altogether, and Indiana just recently changed its rules.
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All this work so kids can trick-or-treat longer.
The funnest part of this whole thing is that in a couple of years, if things don't work out, DST goes back to the old dates.
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1% Energy Savings
2 Billion spent in software/device updates
3 Weeks until the next set of issues
Forlorn It Techs everywhere