Know What Time it is? Daylight Savings Time Changes for 2007 (DST)

Back in the dog days of summer of 2005 the US Congress changed the law as to when Daylight Savings Time starts and ends. This was done in the "2005 National Energy Policy Act" signed on Signed 8/8/05. http://www.oe.energy.gov/energy_policy_act.htm

Inside this bill was the section changing DST from the current last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October to the second Sunday in March and end on  first Sunday in November . This means that DST will last four to five weeks longer than now.

The idea is based upon energy uses during the War To end All Wars, The Great War, i.e. World War I and again during World War II when electric uses went way up in factories. "Springing forward" meant that people showed up in the factories when it was just getting daylight started and left when it was still daylight. This meant that lights did not have to be used for that hour and thus electricity was saved.

This was in the era when most factories were lit with NATURAL sunlight and were just adding in electric lights so that the workers could now work their 10 hour days all year long and not just in the summer. Otherwise in the winter factories had to shut down to match the natural daylight because gas light just did not work well -- and there were no alternatives.

Now this seemingly innocuous law will cost businesses around 2 billion dollars (US) to implement.

Every single computer has to be updated. With around 30 million sold each year in the US, (pure guesses, could not find any figures for US only sales, only 2.2 million retail sold per year in California) but a few sources put the number in use at around 220 million in the United States. (www.c-i-a.com as of March 2005, others cite 235 million.)

If it only costs $10 per PC in personnel costs (time) you get 2.2 BILLION dollars.

These costs are not all hardware - 90% will be software costs to update each and every one with new software to calculate the new DST start / stop times. Someone has to go and either touch each and every system to update it - or they have to have the back end automation to do so. Having watched this before large business could spend $100,000 in personnel costs just testing and planning an update before even implementing it. Having the back end alone costs a few hundred of thousand dollars to have in place to even just run each year - all in just personnel costs. The vast majority who will pay out money in lost productivity - time - will be - as always - small businesses who will spend the most money to do this. IF they even know about it.

Add in the problems with embedded time clocks in hardware devices that cannot have software updates applied to them and now you have to buy new hardware and install it.

And if someone missed an old hard-coded software application that did time changes on its own (never read off the system clock) to do billing then lots more time will have to be done adjusting all those bills to reflect the actual time and not the time the software thought it was when it did the billing / payments.

This is really just a small scale Y2K problem (Year 2000 problem). So if you have not thrown away your old project from that big non-event - and add in the new software you have purchased over the past 6 years - your are set.

Just think how many old VCR, DVD, clock radios, car radios(!), electronic watches out there will be off by 1 hour once this first occurs on March 11, 2007?