Well, under the hoods of DST, every employer is changing their schedule (relative to the sidereal midnight) at once anyway, by agreeing to abide by DST and forwarding their clocks at once.
Then why not agree to change the office timings at once?
It's less legislative work for them to do it this way (and more work for the programmer). What you want is less work for the programmer and more work for the legislator.
My second question: Why do countries prefer to use DST when they could achieve the same effect by changing the work timings, school timings, etc. That is say, the work timings are 9 AM - 5 PM. Instead of applying DST in summer, they could instead change the work timings to 8 AM - 4 PM. Why is this not preferred? Isn't it simpler to keep the clock constant and the work timings variable than keeping the work timings constant and the clock variable? Personally, I think it is simpler for me to understand changes in work timings than changes in DST. Several times, I have had to perform mental gymnastics to figure out which way the clock moved and how it affects my schedule, i.e. whether I need to be sleeping an hour earlier than usual or an hour later than usual.
DST just moves the entire "coordinate" system, so all schedules adjust together. Suppose some store opens at 8 and you want to go there before school. You have time for that because school is at 9. But, oops, now school is at 8, and the store still opens at 8; the store didn't adjust its hours, whereas your school did.
“Stalin changed the clocks in the spring of 1930,” Downing explains. “He forced all of the Soviet Union onto [daylight saving time]. And then in October he forgot to tell the Soviets to fall back. So the clocks in every Russian time zone were off by an hour for 61 years.”
Having mini-Stalin again, Russia started to play with time again:
"Since then Russia has experimented with permanent “summer time” and now, as of 2014, eschews daylight saving time altogether for permanent Standard Time. "
Why does it make sense to have permanent DST instead of a permanent change in office timing? Why permanently change the meaning of what it means to be a midnight w.r.t. the sun when one can elegantly achieve the same effect by permanently changing the office hours?
Less paperwork presumably. Everyone already knows what Russian summer time is. If Russia unilaterally bumped time zones that would require a lot of administrative work.
Honestly, if the sun is such a big deal then having summer office hours would make more sense than changing time-zones.
I've had the thought floating around for years to start the day at 8AM at sunrise each day, and allow for longer/shorter day durations by just jumping the clock to 8AM the next morning at civil twilight.
I know with 100% certainty it will never happen, but I might just build my own custom clock like that for when I retire and don't care who else knows if I'm up or not. ;-)
Then trains were invented, and it became a pain-in-the-ass when every damn city had 12:00 noon at a different time. And then time-zones were invented and life became sane for the east-west travelers.
Regarding trains, it was a safety issue. Standard Time (and time zones) were invented to keep train schedules sane. The reason is because two trains occupying the same section of track simultaneously causes loud noises and news articles and paperwork.
It was safety, not passenger convenience. As long as engineers kept to schedule—and railroad pocket watches were legendary for accuracy—blocks of track over the horizon could be shared by trains even going in opposite directions at different times.
Accuracy of railroad watches is a fascinating subject in itself: "a technology program that would require a level of innovative engineering that would not be seen again until the moon landings", to quote this excellent article: http://everything2.com/title/Antique+railroad+pocket+watches
I have two questions that I will ask as two separate comments.
My first question: How does forwarding the clock by 1 hour in summer give one extra hour of daylight? Say, without DST on a certain summer day, the sun would normally (without DST) rise at 5 AM and set at 7 PM. Also, say that I normally work from 9 AM to 6 AM. Without DST, I am working when the sun is there. With DST in effect (clock being one hour forward), the sun would rise at 6 AM and set at 8 PM my 9 AM to 6 AM working hours still fall within the time when the sun is there. What is gained? Can you give an example of times and working hours that demonstrates the usefulness of DST in summer?
Most people wake up with just enough time to prepare and go to work to arrive on time. They go to bed at whatever time gives them enough sleep given the time they'll wake up.
For your example, imagine it takes you 30 minutes to get ready in the morning, and 30 minutes to commute. You wake up at 8AM, leave at 8:30, arrive at 9. You get done with work at 6PM and return home at 6:30PM. You go to bed at midnight, giving you 8 hours of sleep.
Without DST, the sun rises at 5AM and wasted on you for three hours until you wake up at 8AM. You then return home at 6:30PM and benefit from 30 minutes of sunlight at home.
With DST, the sun rises at 6AM and is wasted for two hours. You get 90 minutes of sunlight at home after work.
Yes, the total amount of sunlight is the same either way, and you could rejigger your schedule to take advantage of it. But people don't.
The purpose is to put more of the daylight hours in the evening when people are able to enjoy it. And/or when it may reduce the use of electricity (though studies show it probably doesn't have much or any effect).
If the sun rises at 5am, few people will be awake to take advantage of that light, so shifting it to 6am has not much effect. But shifting sunset from 7PM to 8PM gives people an extra hour of daylight in the evening.
It wouldn't affect your working hours, but you'd enjoy one more hour of sunlight after work (instead of sunset at 7 PM without DST).
Personally going home from work when the sun is still up makes me feel I still have a lot of time to do stuff, and conversely, I hate going to work when it's still dark, and/or coming home from work when it's dark already.
Putting clocks forward benefits retailing, sports, and other activities that exploit sunlight after working hours, but can cause problems for outdoor entertainment and other activities tied to sunlight, such as farming.
It additionally mentions that DST was most heavily implemented during the energy crisis of the 70's.
The reason DST exists is to shift the electric grid peak load time. As the summer base load is larger due to air conditioning during office hours, you can postpone turning on the street lights by one hour while the offices turn off their air conditioning units, avoiding bringing up peak power plants just to supply this one hour demand.
Where do you live that office buildings turn their HVAC off except for maintenance? Sure, there is less load on the system when nobody is there, but it never shuts off.
I used to work in Downtown Dallas: the building turned off their HVAC on weekends and holidays. I don't remember if they did the same for nights.
But I distinctly remember that whenever a holiday was coming up, they'd post notices on every entrance warning that the building would be closed on the holiday, pointing out that you'd have to use your badge to enter and that HVAC would be shut off all day.
Then again, that building was terrible. They operated on a shoestring budget. For example, they once cut water to the bathrooms for maintenance on a work day because they didn't want to pay more to have their maintenance people on a weekend. For another example, the elevators were scary and they were lax on maintenance: I've been stuck in them, most of my co-workers got stuck in them, and I've actually been in the elevator when it violently shook on the 6th floor and then slowly drifted to ground level. They were notoriously unprofessional, and they were literally the only property management company I've ever had to file a complaint with the city about (though it wasn't over their maintenance issues).
At least in southeast Brazil it is pretty common to turn off HVAC at night when the workers leave and turn it back on at sunrise, even large companies and buildings do this.
I work at a giant multinational company and you have to request an exception for HVAC and lighting outside office hours.
Where I've worked the AC shut off every night at 8pm and on weekends, though I think it was on 8-12am on Saturdays. Got unbearable sometimes in the summer. (California)
I work in a major bank SecOps. Here we use RSA Security Analytics for aggregating packets and logs from all over the network, fire alerts and do our analysis.
I would like to know if someone here has used both RSA Security Analytics and Security Onion, and what they think about how they compare against one another. The last time (which was about 2 years ago) RSA Sales people came to our site and showed the capabilities of their product, it seemed to exceed the capabilities of Security Onion, but I am still a junior guy in SecOps and I still have a lot to catch up and learn, so I don't have the sufficient knowledge and expertise to determine how they compare against one another and what the pros and cons of each product are.
Then why not agree to change the office timings at once?