Sunday, 30 October 2005

Tech

Like clockwork

You could set your watch by it. Or maybe your calendar. Around this time every year news outlets run the same old story about summertime.

Historically the end of British Summer Time was set by an act of Parliament every three years or so. There was no requirement for a formula, a fact that in 1993 caught out Sun Microsystems who rushed out a patch to their operating system to avoid an early change. For the past few years though the UK's deferred to Europe to set the date.

But here's something I've just learnt: the dates set by Europe are driven by logic and not by some politicians' whim. Directive 2000/84/EC has the details: the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October.

No doubt Sun are happy.

Posted by pab at 17:02 | Comments will be back later in the year. Please email me instead!