Hm, double speeding through an hour is a great idea, I don't know why it never occurred to me.
(I don't think it is more practical though. I think most normal people will set the time on an hour whilst they sleep, and not have to cope with it. Whereas trying to do anything while watching a clock whizz by would be fun but very disconcerting; and unhelpful if you try to specify any fraction of an hour.
And electronic devices probably have it easier adjusting an hour once. And anyone doing anything time-critical will have to deal with it.)
On the other hand, how about spreading the change over a day or two? That's even more mad, but possibly less perceptible for most normal operation...
I think most normal people will set the time on an hour whilst they sleep, and not have to cope with it.
Well, normal people can still set their clocks forward before they go to bed or after they get up, or cope with the time around the clock change however else they want as long as they get in to work on time. The important thing is that some systems really need to have the officially right time, and some systems need to have a monotonic clock for cron jobs etc, and some systems need both, and the latter are ill served by the current system.
On the other hand, how about spreading the change over a day or two?
If I were designing a DST system (and didn't just decide to say "sod it" and do without) I would actually go even further than that: I'd arrange continuous slow adjustment over the course of the whole year, to keep sunrise within a reasonable period. No sudden changes ever.
Downside is that everybody's clocks would have to be much more intelligent to cope, but then if I were designing a DST system at all it could only be because I'd revolutionised the world with mad new SF technology and then had to take over running it myself because nobody else could understand my crazy hacks, so everyone would have mad SF clocks conveniently available anyway :-)
The important thing is that some systems really need to have the officially right time,
Yeah, ok, good point. It *does* do that. Very well. I just have a bad feeling. Say, trains have to have a fixed time. But I'm sure having "12:05 BST, 13:05 BST, 13:05 GMT, 14:05 GMT" is easier to cope with than "12:05, 13:02, 13:32, 14:05". Admittedly that's mainly for human interaction.
Downside is that everybody's clocks would have to be much more intelligent to cope,
But on the plus side, that's probably fairly easy to do now, and does mean everyone has to make damn sure they do it when they design a clock, rather than just hoping people work out the time change "somehow"
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(I don't think it is more practical though. I think most normal people will set the time on an hour whilst they sleep, and not have to cope with it. Whereas trying to do anything while watching a clock whizz by would be fun but very disconcerting; and unhelpful if you try to specify any fraction of an hour.
And electronic devices probably have it easier adjusting an hour once. And anyone doing anything time-critical will have to deal with it.)
On the other hand, how about spreading the change over a day or two? That's even more mad, but possibly less perceptible for most normal operation...
Well, normal people can still set their clocks forward before they go to bed or after they get up, or cope with the time around the clock change however else they want as long as they get in to work on time. The important thing is that some systems really need to have the officially right time, and some systems need to have a monotonic clock for cron jobs etc, and some systems need both, and the latter are ill served by the current system.
On the other hand, how about spreading the change over a day or two?
If I were designing a DST system (and didn't just decide to say "sod it" and do without) I would actually go even further than that: I'd arrange continuous slow adjustment over the course of the whole year, to keep sunrise within a reasonable period. No sudden changes ever.
Downside is that everybody's clocks would have to be much more intelligent to cope, but then if I were designing a DST system at all it could only be because I'd revolutionised the world with mad new SF technology and then had to take over running it myself because nobody else could understand my crazy hacks, so everyone would have mad SF clocks conveniently available anyway :-)
Yeah, ok, good point. It *does* do that. Very well. I just have a bad feeling. Say, trains have to have a fixed time. But I'm sure having "12:05 BST, 13:05 BST, 13:05 GMT, 14:05 GMT" is easier to cope with than "12:05, 13:02, 13:32, 14:05". Admittedly that's mainly for human interaction.
Downside is that everybody's clocks would have to be much more intelligent to cope,
But on the plus side, that's probably fairly easy to do now, and does mean everyone has to make damn sure they do it when they design a clock, rather than just hoping people work out the time change "somehow"
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.10.html#subj1
http://fanf.livejournal.com/85472.html