Did Patched Versions Of Software Foul Up The Time At Gatwick Airport?

from the did-everything-right-but-figure-out-which-country dept

Tue, Oct 30th 2007 2:39pm — Mike Masnick

Yesterday we wrote about the minor glitches spotted thanks to computers not knowing that Congress moved out Daylight Saving Day. However, there was an odd time glitch over in the UK that is worth examining. Apparently, at Gatwick airport, computers were all screwed up because they hadn't changed times properly. You see, in the UK this past weekend was the conclusion of British Summer Time, the equivalent of our Daylight Saving Time. So what happened here? My guess is that the systems that run the computers at Gatwick were patched... for the US change. In other words, while the computers would have made the change properly beforehand, somehow there was some confusion and a patch meant for US users was applied (or some other setting indicated that it was a US-based computer system), meaning that the computers didn't switch -- not because of confusion over the date of the hour shift, but because the system had been patched for the wrong country.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: daylight savings

7 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

The Swiss Cheese Monster, 30 Oct 2007 @ 3:21pm

Maybe they had told that they were in CST, MST, PST, or EST, instead of GMT. And instead of setting the clocks and adjusting the time zone, they just set the clocks.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2007 @ 3:23pm

Re:
Or maybe their IT people are complete idiots who can't read release notes.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The Man, 30 Oct 2007 @ 4:13pm

Re: Re: Release notes?
They make those? Anyway, reading is for suckers!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Max Powers at http://ConsumerFight.com, 30 Oct 2007 @ 4:22pm

Early Trick
It was by accident? Maybe it was done on purpose. You just can't trust employee's like you used to.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 30 Oct 2007 @ 9:06pm

Local-timeitis again?
Sounds like another screwup caused by systems maintaining the clocks in local time, instead of UTC. That's the only way they could have been thrown off by a change to rules that were only supposed to affect US time zones. Unix/Linux systems maintain their system clock in UTC, and only convert to local time when somebody asks for the local time; this makes them a bit more robust against time zone and daylight-saving stuffups.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
unknowledgable geek, 31 Oct 2007 @ 6:21am

Re: Local-timeitis again?
Yeah, but end users have NO idea what time it is.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dumb flamer user with a f'ed up calendar, 31 Oct 2007 @ 7:11am

Re: Re: Local-timeitis again?
"...end-users have NO idea what time it is."

Sure do, time to quit fucking with what time it is and get to work! Now, if I could just figure out what time my appointments really are for...

Yours Truly,

"Let's burn multiple weeks worth of time and energy, trying to save energy, by playing with the clock."
[ link to this | view in thread ]