Re: 780 files in /usr/share/zoneinfo/

["Martin McCormick" <martin.m@suddenlink.net>]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
> Suppose a hacker logs into your computer from far, far away, say
> from somewhere in Nepal.
> 
> Surely you'd want this person to see the time adapted to their
> locale? That's the least courtesy you can be expected to provide?
> 
> ;-P
> 
> Now putting my tongue out of my cheek again: in Unix, a computer
> "has" no time zone or language -- people have those. And since,
> again in Unix, several people can be logged in [1] at the same time,
> it's up to the user's environment [2] to decide on time zone,
> language, etc.
> 
> This concept is surprising at first coming from other cultures,
> where Microsoft was happy to sell you another complete version
> of Windows if you wanted your computer to talk to you, e.g.
> Portuguese (and yet another for Brazilian Portuguese, greedy as
> they are).
> 
> Of course, Microsoft has caught up (they are trying since the
> mid-90s), but not without some spectacular messups. Remember that
> one where (I think it was Windows 95), while trying to automate
> the spring DST transition were spotted dithering endlessly between
> 2AM and 3AM?
> 
> Unix has had this abstraction always: there's the internal time,
> and there's the time shown to the user, which depends on the user.
> 
> There's the error itself, and there's the error message shown to
> the user. And so on.
> 
> Cheers

	I just cd'd to that directory and it looks like there's
about 1 GB there.  I think it is cool to have all that info and I
even configured a linux system for BST so cron would record shows
I was interested in from the BBC.

	It works perfectly when we go from Summer time to
standard time in Winter because North America and the UK don't
switch at the same time but it all works.

	I've wished one could just set certain parts of the
computer to other times but I can also understand why this could
be a problem.

	By the way, I have never been outside the United States
but am an amateur radio operator and learned at a very young age
to appreciate those time zones if one wants to know when to
listen for interesting things.

Martin