[LEAPSECS] Time is changing in Venezuela

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Magnus Danielson said:

> I was quite supprised to hear the news from Venezuelas president Hugo Chavez

> that he is to shift the Venezuela time from GMT+4 to GMT+4:30, and that on

> Sunday. That gives the Venezuelans a half-a-week of notice to have their

> computers aligned to the new time-zone. That ought to hurt!


Um, this has been on the time-zone mailing list for more than half a week.


> Chavez dismissed criticism that moving the time only a half hour was quirky,

> questioning why the world had to follow a scheme of hourly divisions that he

> said was dictated by the imperial United States.

> 

> Now, let's leave the politics of this matter totally to the side of things and

> only discuss the implications and factor of motivation. I don't think the

> hourly division can be fully blamed/cretidet to the USA. The offset being 4 or

> 4:30 is more a geographical matter in relation to Greenwich in UK.



>From memory, the hourly spacing comes from the Washington Conference, the

same one where basing it on GMT was agreed. But it applied to time zones at
sea, not on land.


> The hourly division is kind of coarse geographically speaking,


On the contrary, people deal easily with being an hour or two away from
mean solar time. So using an hour, which is one of our standard time units,
seems reasonable.


> Also, we already have several countries which is 15 or 30 min off,


Lots of 30s, yes, but I don't thing there are any 15s left.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
Internet Expert     | Home:  <clive at davros.org>  | Fax:    +44 870 051 9937
Demon Internet      | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646
THUS plc            |                            |