Why do I get the feeling that this will be just a flood of instant cash for tech companies specializing in the Y2K7DST problem?
When eBay's clocks failed to jump forward an hour in 2001 to reflect daylight-saving time, the timing on auctions ran into snags, prompting some head-scratching from sellers and bidders.At the time, eBay blamed the glitch on a bug in Microsoft's Visual C++ code. Microsoft had released a fix.
On Monday, President Bush signed a sweeping energy bill that will lengthen daylight-saving time by four weeks starting in 2007--raising the possibility of a smaller-scale repeat of Y2K-like problems.
For most computer users, the effect would likely be an inconvenience at worst: Their computers will be updated with new software by then, or configured to connect to network time servers that will know the correct time. But because not everyone's computer is networked or updated, some glitches could occur--especially in consumer electronics devices that aren't designed to be reprogrammed. [...]
More complex networks of computers, such as systems that run power plants or financial institutions, would likely have to undertake more intense reprogramming, which could prove costly, said Robert Cresanti, vice president for policy for the Business Software Alliance.
"Those systems are generally nonstandard and so they're unique to that institution," said Cresanti, a staff member on the Senate special committee on the Y2K rollover. "I think there'd probably be some more work that needs to be done there."
Well, since the US uses 20 million barrels of oil in one day, 100,000 adds up to small potatoes. Arizona and Hawaii get along just fine without observing DST. It's about time we look at scrapping DST altogether. Lost productivity due to the change is enough to warrant an inquiry.