Daylight-saving bug could foil computers

[Dracos]

For three weeks this March and April, Microsoft Corp. warns that users of its calendar programs "should view any appointments ... as suspect until they communicate with all meeting invitees."

Wow, that's sort of jarring -- is something treacherous afoot?

Actually, it's a potential problem in any software that was programmed before a 2005 law decreed that daylight-saving time would start three weeks earlier and end one week later, beginning this year. Congress decided that more early evening daylight would translate into energy savings.

Software created earlier is set to automatically advance its timekeeping by one hour on the first Sunday in April, not the second Sunday in March (that's March 11 this year).

The result is a glitch reminiscent of the Y2K bug, when cataclysmic crashes were feared if computers interpreted the year 2000 as 1900 and couldn't reconcile time appearing to move backward. This bug is much less threatening, but it could cause head-scratching episodes when some computers are an hour off.

Full Story :http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/02/19/daylight.saving.bug.ap/index.html

[tanyev]

1. "Congress decided"?

I seem to recall Our Glorious Leader crowing loud and long about it.

[FiveGoodMen]

2. The toilets will back up, satellites will fall from the sky...

...hoard water, take a year's salary out in cash...

Deja vu.

[RC]

4. Don't forget cars dying going down the street and coffee makers

getting confused and clocks running backward.

[Cass]

3. Oh no, not this again! Everyone was freaking out about the Y2K thing.

Now the media can ignore vitally important news and instead obsess over this thereby whipping the public into a panic again.

:evilfrown:

[northofdenali]

5. DST? Alaska really, really matters here, folks.

:rofl: