GMT plus or minus

GMT plus or minus

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Can somebody clarify for me what the standard is, with respect to the time
offset from GMT? I am in the Eastern US Time Zone, five hours earlier than
GMT (soon to be four) and much of the software I have seen uses something
like "-500" next to the time stamps on my email etc. Clearly that does not
mean "my time - 500" but "GMT - 500". However, nettamer insists on using
+500 as the offset, and MICQ also seems to use "+" as the offsets for
North American time zones. Does anyone know for sure which is correct? I
just gave "-5" for my GMT offset in MICQ and may have ended up in eastern
Europe or somewhere!

Chuck.


My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh (I C Q = 67363342)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.

Re: GMT plus or minus

[Geoff Shang]

Hi Chuck:

No, you are right ant nettamer and micq are wrong.  I've been meaning to
write to the micq guy about it but haven't yet.

Geoff.

Re: GMT plus or minus

[cpt.kirk]

I would guess that they are looking at the offset to correct the "average"
person's PC time back to GMT. While not discounting the usefullness of
semantics (like which key is the backslash), I would say that it does come
into that. The standard is to specify the difference FROM GMT. But one
could as easily think of it as the difference TO GMT.

Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
------------------

Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).

Re: GMT plus or minus

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Hi Kirk -
Yes. The nettamer docs even emphasize the rationale you describe as
"difference to GMT" and if you never looked any farther, you might be
persuaded!
Chuck.


On Wed, 29 Mar 2000 cpt.kirk@1tree.net wrote:

> I would guess that they are looking at the offset to correct the "average"
> person's PC time back to GMT. While not discounting the usefullness of
> semantics (like which key is the backslash), I would say that it does come
> into that. The standard is to specify the difference FROM GMT. But one
> could as easily think of it as the difference TO GMT.
> 
> Kirk Wood
> Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
> ------------------
> 
> Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh (I C Q = 67363342)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.

Re: GMT plus or minus

[cpt.kirk]

Well, at first glance it does make sense. But, since most of the world
calculates it the other way, I would go with them. But at least they
didn't do the MS thing. M$ would "adopt" the standard while modifying it
in such a way as to make the rest of the world not interoperate with it.

Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
------------------

Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).

Re: GMT plus or minus

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Hi Geoff -
I wonder if the problem might be beyond the control of the MICQ author. It
looks to me like MICQ is only a tool to access the Mirabilis data base,
which is mostly accessed by different tools - 'ICQ' instead of 'MICQ' -
and every one of the entries there has it the wrong way around: Moscow is
GMT-3, California is GMT+8, etc. When I entered by country's phone code as
'+1'  the MICQ program correctly translated that into 'USA'  but when I
left the GMT offset blank, it plugged in '0'. That suggests the problem
may not lie with MICQ, but with the other tools that access the Mirabilis
data base.

Anyway, thanks for your reassurance. Nettamer is another matter. The docs
there even try to persuade the reader of the 'truth' of the plus offsets
for North America.

Chuck.


On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Geoff Shang wrote:

> Hi Chuck:
> 
> No, you are right ant nettamer and micq are wrong.  I've been meaning to
> write to the micq guy about it but haven't yet.
> 
> Geoff.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh (I C Q = 67363342)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.

Re: GMT plus or minus

[Geoff Shang]

Hi Chuck:

I reckon it's probably something micq can do something about, as it's all
about displaying data.  If it's all one way around, then it can be changed
at the display stage.

geoff.