Daylight Savings time Patches for this weekend

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:58:56 -0500, "A. Joseph Ross" <joe@attorneyross.com> said:

> What are the EU rules?

In the rather terse description of the timezone database:

# Rule  NAME    FROM    TO      TYPE    IN      ON      AT      SAVE    LETTER/S
Rule    EU      1981    max     -       Mar     lastSun  1:00u  1:00    S
Rule    EU      1996    max     -       Oct     lastSun  1:00u  0       -

This means that, starting in 1981 and running through the heat-death
of the universe, EU countries will switch to DST on the last Sunday in
March at 0100 UTC, and likewise from 1996 on they switch back to
standard time on the last Sunday in October at 0100 UTC.  The switch
times are specified in UTC so that everyone switches throughout the
whole EU at the same time (unlike here, where the switch happens an
hour later in each time zone as you go west).  As an attorney, you may
be interested in Joseph S. Myers's essay "History of legal time in
Britain", <http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jsm28/british-time/>.

The US and the EU have never agreed on the starting date, to my
knowledge, which causes no end of confusion in the period between the
two.  (ObRadio: although the BBC World Service runs on "GMT" all the
time, they typically do schedule changes at the same time as the time
change.  So the program that Eli introduces next Saturday morning at
1:30 will not be on at that time two Saturdays from now -- but if
history is any guide, it will be back three Saturdays from now when
the BBC schedule is rejiggered.)

-GAWollman