I just received a message from one of my website visitors that contains information new to me. He says that most computers dealing with international commerce use UTC (formerly Greenwich) time, which means that 2000 arrives at 7:00 PM on December 31, 1999 rather than at midnight. He also says that an official at the Northern States Power Company in Sioux Falls, SD told him the power grid also uses UTC time.

I don't know if he's referring to hardware or software, nor do I know if he's right. Anyone out there have any knowledge about this? If it's true, Dick Clark might as well stay home on New Year's Eve.

-- cody varian (cody@y2ksurvive.com), February 14, 1999

Answers

Cody,

While I'm not sure about the power grid uses of UTC, I do know that some computer systems use UTC - I have written at least 5 that do.

But - the systems I've written demanded cross time zone compatability and I used Zulu (common reference to UTC) plus or minus some number to indicate the correct time zone. This is a sort of pseudo windowing for time.

Everything occuring on a system in CST is recorded in Zulu but the "offset" is -9 while EST systems would use Zulu -8. This allows systems to communicate realtime while mainitain the integrity of the "local time" bias of the data transactions"

-- Greybear

- Got mechanical watches?

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), February 14, 1999.

Greybear, Right on about wind up watches!

-- Finding (sspicer@nas.net), February 14, 1999.

Don't sweat the five hours. Y2k will be quite apparent prior to December 31, 1999.

-- No Spam Please (anon@ymous.com), February 14, 1999.