[PLUG] DST Sunday morning - Check your system, Win users beware

[Keith Lofstrom]

As you know, they changed the algorithm for daylight savings time
and it starts this weekend, two weeks earlier than previous years. 
Folks with older distros or who have not recently upgraded may want
to check their time change dates with:

zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007

On my laptop, I get:

/etc/localtime  Sun Mar 11 09:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 PST isdst=0 gmtoff=-28800
/etc/localtime  Sun Mar 11 10:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 PDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-25200
/etc/localtime  Sun Nov  4 08:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov  4 01:59:59 2007 PDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-25200
/etc/localtime  Sun Nov  4 09:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov  4 01:00:00 2007 PST isdst=0 gmtoff=-28800

If you don't get the right answer, you will need to do more research
on a cure; automated updates took care of this for me.


Those of you running older Microsoft products are semi-f****d.  If
you are running Windows 2000, Exchange 2000, or Exchange 5.5, for
example, these are no longer officially supported and a patch will
cost you $4000 , according to:

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/12891/

It seems that Microsoft embeds the conversion times into the 
application programs, not a global file that all applications use. 
So even "supported" systems will need a lot of program patching.

The "drive off customers to Linux/Mac" team at Redmond is apparently
working late these days.  Expect a LOT of angry Microsoft users
driving home from work Monday.  Some are calling this "mini-Y2K".

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs