In the US and Canada it's time to "fall" back [Telecom]

"Spring Forward, Fall Back". :-)

Here (Silicon Valley (Calif.)) we used to have a special number one could dial, POPCORN, that provided the current time of day. I believe Pac Bell discontinued that service over 10 years ago.

I used to run the free BATS (Bay Area Time Service) that people could call from their computers (via modem) to sync time using multiple time standards; the antenna for my WWV (now NIST) receiver went down during the Loma Prieta Earthquake (Oct. 17, 1989) and, given the then ubiquity of NTP (Network Time Protocol), I didn't re-erect the (original) antenna and discontinued BATS.

Such is life.

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YARTA (Yet Another Recorded Time Announcement): Southern CT | +1 203 777 4647 (203-SPRINGS)

Cheers, -- tlvp

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Is this list up to date? The Philadelphia time and weather numbers were discontinued a while back (covered here.)

***** Moderator's Note *****

You're right: I just check the Philadelphia number, and it's wired IO. I deleted it.

Bill Horne Moderator

Isn't it a bit ridiculous to call it "standard time" when it's only observed for five months out of twelve? I think "winter time" would be a more appropriate name.

[...]

You may also get the time by tuning your HF radio to 2.5, 3.330, 5,

10, or 15 MHz, or by looking at your CDMA phone. If you want accurate time, EndRun Technologies sells a number of devices which can derive an accurate UTC timebase from the CDMA network. (My NTP stratum-1 at the office is driven by an EndRun Praecis Ct, since discontinued, which works quite nicely despite being in the middle of the fourth floor of a nine-story building.)

There are numerous public NTP servers which provide ~100 ms accuracy over the network.

-GAWollman

-- Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft snipped-for-privacy@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993

***** Moderator's Note *****

While it's true that WWV and CHU will tell you the correct *Universal* time, they can't tell you how to adjust your clock: some areas of the U.S. don't observe DST.

What's worse, I have a Scott "automatic" alarm clock is equipped to automatically adjust for Daylight Saving Time - but on the old dates, not the current ones.

My wife was an hour late for work last Sunday.

Bill Horne Moderator

These all give you GMT time, which you have to convert to local time using some algorithm.

Unfortunately that algorithm changed a few years ago; my parents have a couple appliances which automatically reset their time to adjust for daylight savings, but they do so on the _old_ dates and not the current ones.

I commend everyone to listen to Grandpa Jones' song on the subject. "I twisted my old clock around 'till it ain't worth a dime. I just don't understand this daylight savings time."

--scott

No, actually, they give you UTC. GMT is only used in the United Kingdom (and even there most sources which claim to report GMT are actually reporting UTC).

-GAWollman

(Dunno if the moderator thinks this posting is excessively off topic but here you go anyhow.) (You're allowed - BH. {Apologies to he-who-greps})

A literary appreciation of the Olson/Zoneinfo/tz database

"What I didn't appreciate, ... is the historical scholarship scribbled in the margins of this remarkable database, or document, or hybrid of the two. "

....

"But look at the rules for Feb 9 1942 and Aug 14 1945. The letters are W and P instead of D and S. And the comments tell us that during that period there were timezones like Eastern War Time (EWT) and Eastern Peace Time (EPT). Arthur David Olson elaborates: "

Tony

Yes I remember when the change was made. I was working at the RI Secretary of State's office and we had to run around and patch all the Windows boxes so they'd know the correct dates. Another example of political bovine effluent costing real money.

One of the two phone systems (Had a Definity Prologix G3iV11 and a Dimension G3iV6 system) the Prologix had a nice little calendar feature where you could specify the dates for daylight saving time occurence. I guess this was because at the time Avaya wanted to market the switch to the world. I know it supported Italian E1 signalling too.

The G3iV6 on the other hand had be manually reset. And the Audix system used a similar calendaring application to set the time change.