What time is it, really?
 

This is a nit-pick, but your legend under the posts says "All times are MST." Not so, at least now - they're MDT, one hour later. If you wrote "All times are US Mountain Time" and let people decide if standard or daylight savings time (summer time to our overseas readers) applies, you'd be covered year round. Otherwise, change the legend twice a year, or risk being attacked by a frenzied horde of purists!

>risk being attacked by a frenzied horde of purists.

Well, one, maybe two.

That's a good point Efrem and I'll look into it as soon as my time permits.

Thanks for pointing this out to me.

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ThanX...
Michael at WebFlyer

Michael,

Maybe you should post in GMT (zulu).

Dan

actually, the ability to set your timezone would be useful if it is possible.

Since users are all-over-the-world, GMT would be the best solution.
http://time.greenwich2000.com/

World Time is set Greenwich Mean Time - GMT.

How GMT is being used today...
Your email box is full of GMT references that you probably didn't know about!
Do your emails display something like:

"Tue, 29 Oct 1996 16:41:46 -0500 (EST)" and ever wondered what the -0500 (or equivalent number) means?

It is the time offset from GMT

I.E. In this example EST (Eastern Standard Time is 5 hours behind GMT)

Wonder what those cookies are?
They work on GMT and only GMT (Netscape description)

Preliminary Specification of HTTP Cookies

Today the US Space Shuttle uses Greenwich Mean Time.

What used to be known as GMT is now known as Universal Coordinated Time, or UTC.

I second the motion to run FlyerTalk on UTC, which all my computers are already set to, anyway. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

Not here it's not http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

By the way, I thought 'zulu' was local time wherever you happen to be, without daylight saving time taken into account. Thus, New York is always 5 hours behind GMT, so today at midnight GMT it is 1900 zulu in New York. (?)

[This message has been edited by james (edited 09-05-2000).]

A bizarre twist. Was at airport on Monday and the transcon flight SYD-Perth was scheduled to take off at 8.15pm to arrive at 8pm.

Be like NY-LAX arriving before you took off. Unusual in 1 country on very long flights.

NSW in its wisdom introduced summer time months early for the Olympics, and no other state bothered, so time zones here are NUTS.

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~ Glen ~

The time displayed is not simply a matter of personal preference--it affects the "Today's Active Topics" display. To have that reset at midnight GMT would put it in mid-evening in the US and Canada (eastern portions). With the current structure of basing it on Mountain time, the mid-evening reset only affects a smaller population (New Zealand, Hawaii, and points in between).

Silverpie, that isn't the only issue! If I go to bed at a sensible time, say 11 pm, that makes it 4 pm Mountain. I get up in the morning at 7 and lo it's midnight MT, so the whole of the previous evening's US posts have disappeared from the daily selection. Guess when the board is busiest. As others have stated before, the way round this is to modify that feature to 'active topics from the last 24 hours', or 'active topics since I last logged on'.

[This message has been edited by james (edited 09-06-2000).]

james: UTC (or GMT) is known as "zulu", which is the standard ICAO and ITU phonetic for the letter "Z". The zones start from "Alpha" in Western Europe and continue eastward. Eastern Standard Time is "Romeo". Since there are 24 time zones, there are enough letters with two to spare. Based on the sequence, GMT would otherwise have been "Whiskey", but it was declared to be "Zulu" to give it distinction.

And yes, I have one of those dumb pictures with my two feet straddling the prime meridian in the forecourt of the Royal Observatory.