Reply #8: Too late to complain, Ixion. See the Internet for information on...

[Radio_Lady]

how to comply. Sorry to be the bearer of "bad news."

In the news this morning:

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/16678210.htm

That’s ‘spring forward’ this year on…March 11?
While few of us were taking notice, Congress set a new start for daylight-saving time.

From The Washington Post

WASHINGTON | It seems so simple and familiar: Spring forward, fall back.

For 20 years, that’s what Americans — and their technology — have done with clocks on the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October.

But in August 2005, Congress lengthened daylight-saving time by four weeks in the name of energy efficiency. The change starts this year on March 11.

That has angered airlines, delighted candy makers and sent thousands of technicians scrambling to make sure that countless automated systems switch their clocks at the right moment. Unless changed by one method or another, many systems will remain programmed to read the calendar and start daylight-saving time on its old Sunday start date in April.

It’s one thing to arrive an hour late for church on the first day of daylight saving. It’s another for a security system to log the wrong time of crucial events, for pilots to misunderstand their takeoff times or international communications components to stop synchronizing. But such scenarios are possible without the fix to vast numbers of the nation’s technical systems.

As IBM noted on its Web site: “Any time-sensitive functions could be impacted by this change. … It is important for users to assess their environments and develop appropriate plans for applying the necessary changes.”

The challenge carries faint echoes of the year 2000 scare, when governments and corporations feared that computer systems would go berserk the instant 1999 flipped to 2000. But it has received nothing near the same level of attention. In fact, large swaths of private and corporate America seem oblivious to the approaching change, according to analysts and technicians who track Web sites and swap information with colleagues nationwide.

“After building bunkers in the desert for Y2K, we’re not even talking about this, and it’s happening in less than two months,” said Matthew Kozak, an information technology specialist at Rutgers University who monitors numerous sites and discussion groups.

Even in the banking industry, where ATMs time-stamp every customer transaction, awareness of the March 11 change is limited.


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Daylight-saving time expands

WASHINGTON | For many widely used devices, automatic updates to the new daylight-saving time should prove easy.

Cell phones should flash the correct date and time because they receive such information directly from their service providers. Similarly, the Internet will automatically update clocks on many personal computers that use relatively up-to-date software.

But Microsoft cautions that some of its older products — including Windows XP SP1 and Windows NT4 — will require manual updates. The company’s Web site provides detailed instructions on how to update various products, although it is pushing against the deadline in some cases.

Updates and tools “are being developed and tested,” the Web site says, and some will “be released through early March 2007.”

As a fallback, Microsoft urges customers to double-check meetings scheduled during the four weeks being added to daylight-saving time this year.


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| The Washington Post