Re: ntpsec as server questions
On 2023-12-06, Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> wrote:
>
> Honestly, I don't see the appeal of using legacy time zone names. Is
> it just for the sake of contrariness?
>
No lack of contrariness around here. There exists such a thing as putting too
fine a point on a thing, a notion which appears to escape some technical
mentalities.
In defence of time zones (they don't really need it, I guess):
Why are the clocks in Urumqi, China, so far out of kilter with the cycles of
the sun? Because of a legacy of Mao Zedong and the Communist Party’s desire for
unified control. Though China is almost as wide as the continental United
States, the whole country is officially in just one time zone — Beijing time.
So when it’s 7 a.m. in the Forbidden City, it’s also officially 7 a.m. 2,000
miles to the west in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region — even if the
stars are still out there.
That can lead to headaches — and lost sleep. “It’s hard to adjust,” says Gao
Li, a sanitation worker in Urumqi. “I often think we must be the only people
who eat dinner at midnight.”
So schools, airports and train stations operate at odd hours; national exams
are sometimes given in the dead of night; and restaurants stay open for dinner
into the wee hours.
The eccentricities of the clock also tend to divide people in Xinjiang by
ethnicity. The Uighurs, Turkic-speaking Muslims who consider the region their
homeland, tend to set their clocks two hours earlier, to more closely match the
local day. But the Han Chinese who live there, members of China’s predominant
ethnic group, generally follow Beijing time. The discrepancies can be a source
of confusion and frustration, especially for younger people who frequently
socialize across ethnic lines.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/asia/china-single-time-zone.html
Reply to: