The President will sign an energy bill on Monday that will, among other things, start Daylight Savings Time three weeks earlier and end it one week later. An AP article released today claims that "technologists" are worried that software in a number of common appliances may fail to handle the change properly. The article cites such tragedies as VCRs and DVD recorders starting their recordings at the wrong time, or cell phone companies giving you an extra hour of free night time minutes. (Trust me, if it's going to cost them money, companies will fix the problem long before next March.)
The greatest tragedy of all is detailed by Reid Sullivan, vice president of the entertainment group at Panasonic Consumer Electronics Co. He states, "In some cases, depending on the product, they may have to manually increase or decrease the time." Now, there we have the ultimate horror!
All hoopla about the potential software failures aside, the real issue is the need for DST in the first place. American society now functions 24x7. The idea of saving energy by shifting the time of sunrise and sunset no longer applies in a society that works around the clock. It's time - no pun intended - to simply pick a standard and stay with it year round. Here on the east coast, that simply means deciding if we will be GMT-4 (daylight time) or GMT-5 (standard time) year round. Stop changing the clocks twice a year. It no longer serves any useful purpose.
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