Global: Forum will be....

[xmastree]

Ok, so the forum was down at whatever time, EST.

When is EST? For the benefit of those of us in the rest of the world, would it be possible to quote such times in GMT? I'll bet we all know where we are in relation to GMT, but EST? I haven't a clue... :confused:

I presume it's Eastern, but eastern what?
According to:this page (http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/) EST could be GMT-5, GMT+10 or GMT+11

There's only one GMT, that's why it's used as a reference point.

[aysiu]

The forum is based in America, and EST is Eastern Standard Time, which I think is about seven hours before GMT (I'm not 100% sure on this).

[xmastree]

My point exactly, you're not 100% sure. (US is behind GMT, btw)

However, I'll bet you know where you are in relation to GMT. So, if the announcement was quoted in GMT you'd know when the schedule was without having to look it up.

[MetalMusicAddict]

The forum is based in America, and EST is Eastern Standard Time, which I think is about seven hours before GMT (I'm not 100% sure on this).
EST is GMT -4hrs. 12am GMT = 8pm EST.

[xmastree]

Thank you for clarifying my point. You say it's -4, the web says it's -5, aysiu says it's about +7

Now, let's say the web one is correct, and it's -5. If the forum says it's going down at 9am EST, that's 2pm GMT. From that I'll bet we can all work out when it is for us.

However, quoting times in EST means that at least three of us don't know what it really means.

[aysiu]

Just for the record, I said seven hours before GMT, which means -7, and that was just a guess.

[xmastree]

Ahh, I took before as meaning ahead...

[rcarring]

Eastern Standard Time is five hours behind Greenwich Mean Time; Central Standard Time is six hours behind; Mountain Standard Time is seven hours behind, and Pacific Standard Time is eight hours behind.

I missed an hour of the opening match of the World Cup, because I forgot to add an hour for Central European Time.

When the US and UK are both in Daylight Savings Time then there is no hour's difference, occasionally, though our DST starts after or before theirs and then it gets a little confusing.

[xmastree]

Fair enough, but why should we be required to know that in order to understand the Forum's global announcements? If it were in GMT then everyone would understand it.

I'll bet if your world cup match time had been quoted in GMT you'd know when to watch...

[henriquemaia]

Fair enough, but why should we be required to know that in order to understand the Forum's global announcements? If it were in GMT then everyone would understand it.

I'll bet if your world cup match time had been quoted in GMT you'd know when to watch...

I agree 100% with you. I thought the same when I saw the announcement. For the sake of the of the rest of the community as a whole (I live in Portugal, Europe), I also think that mentioning GMT makes more sense.

just my opinion.

[Sutekh]

I know this is splitting hairs, but to me if a time zone is said to be before GMT, then it is GMT + n hours.

I am GMT+10 in Sydney, meaning 7:00pm on the 10th of June occurs 10 hours before 7:00pm on the 10th of June occurs in Greenwich.

Or have I got it backwards? Or is just Symantics?

[xmastree]

That's how I see it too. I'm GMT+8 here, so noon GMT is 8pm here. I consider that before, since things happen here before they to in GMT land. The sun rises before, I have lunch before they do, go to bed before they do, etc.

Oh, and since we're splitting hairs, it's semantics, not symantics... One is the meaning of words, one is a software company. :p

So, where are the forum staff when we need them? :mrgreen:

[23meg]

I agree; all times should be announced as GMT. Any website that doesn't strictly deal with an audience from a certain region should do so.

[Sutekh]

Oh, and since we're splitting hairs, it's semantics, not symantics... One is the meaning of words, one is a software company. :p

No that's Symantec. ;) I thought I'd spelt it right because I knew it wasn't the software company #-o

Oh well...

[imagine]

I agree with the topic starter.
Additionally I'd also like to see the international date-time-format to be used, instead of a country-specific one: YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss, where YYYY is year, MM the month, DD the day, hh the hour between 00 and 23, mm the minute and ss the second.
After all this is a global forum =)



And to continue the hair splitting: Timezones are based on UTC, not GMT.

[henriquemaia]

I agree with the topic starter.
Additionally I'd also like to see the international date-time-format to be used, instead of a country-specific one: YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss, where YYYY is year, MM the month, DD the day, hh the hour between 00 and 23, mm the minute and ss the second.
After all this is a global forum =)



And to continue the hair splitting: Timezones are based on UTC, not GMT.

Global date also a nice feature.

[jobezone]

And to continue the hair splitting: Timezones are based on UTC, not GMT.
Isn't UTC the now (for some years) the official name of GMT? Coordinated Universal Time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC)

P.S.- That seems to be the sinclair 48k :). My dad had to drill holes at the top (above the keys) because it would overheat a lot.

[xmastree]

Isn't UTC the now (for some years) the official name of GMT?
Only to Americans, who don't like to admit that a place in England is the centre of the world. :rolleyes:

[imagine]

Isn't UTC the now (for some years) the official name of GMT? Coordinated Universal Time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC)No, GMT is based on the rotation of the earth whereas UTC uses atomic clocks. Every once in a while a leap second is introduced into UTC to keep the difference to GMT less than 0,9 seconds.

[bruce89]

Yikes, whatever it is called, use it!

[mips]

The rest of the world is quite comfortable with GMT/UTC but I don't think the usa is and it is a usa forum (hosted on uk servers I think). Same goes for imperial vs metric, metric is not big in the usa therefore everything is in ancient imperial format which I don't care for as I'm comfortable converting a few of the imperial things on the fly.

Just one of those things, get used to it or simply ignore it, alternatively complain to the powers that be or the cc.

Personally I haven't a clue what EST means but I fully understand GMT/UTC +10.

[macgyver2]

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/UT.html

[mips]

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/UT.html

From the above link;
However, in the most common civil usage, UT refers to a time scale called "Coordinated Universal Time" (abbreviated UTC), which is the basis for the worldwide system of civil time. This time scale is kept by time laboratories around the world, including the U.S. Naval Observatory, and is determined using highly precise atomic clocks. The International Bureau of Weights and Measures makes use of data from the timing laboratories to provide the international standard UTC which is accurate to approximately a nanosecond (billionth of a second) per day. The length of a UTC second is defined in terms of an atomic transition of the element cesium under specific conditions, and is not directly related to any astronomical phenomena.

Maybe it's time we all adapt to international standards....

[kassetra]

For each user account, we provide options of choosing the time zone that each prefers.

The system announcements are made in a time zone local to the Owner of the forums, and while we appreciate that this is a global forum and that many users may be a little confused at first by the use of Eastern Standard Time as the reference when he posts any system-wide forum announcement, we hope that the need to post such messages will lessen to becoming a rare event, and the timezone in which he posts his message will become less important.

[isotonic]

.

[nocturn]

Ok, so the forum was down at whatever time, EST.

When is EST? For the benefit of those of us in the rest of the world, would it be possible to quote such times in GMT? I'll bet we all know where we are in relation to GMT, but EST? I haven't a clue... :confused:

I presume it's Eastern, but eastern what?
According to:this page (http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/) EST could be GMT-5, GMT+10 or GMT+11

There's only one GMT, that's why it's used as a reference point.

UTC would be the better term to use, but I'm a bit of a time-geek (GMT is the old term, UTC is location independant).

That said, you can use your Linux date command to translate timestamps to local time:

$date -d "10:00 EST"
Fri Jun 16 17:00:00 CEST 2006

or to UTC

$date -u -d "10:00 EST"
Fri Jun 16 15:00:00 UTC 2006