[Info-vax] The dangers of extended uptime. Was: Re: swap and page files

[Paul Sture]

In article <kc497f$s4p$1 at dont-email.me>,
 Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:

> Apple just got bagged by a corner case in iOS date handling with their 
> Do Not Disturb function, and the details of that are still just 
> filtering out.

Apologies if the following links have been posted here before, but IMHO 
they are worth a revisit:

One of the comments I read when looking up the iOS date bug was a 
pointer to "Falsehoods programmers believe about time":

<http://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-believe-
about-time>

and a follow up:
'More falsehoods programmers believe about time; ³wisdom of the crowd² 
edition'

<http://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-programmers-bel
ieve-about-time-wisdom>

>From the latter link:

71. You can determine the time zone from the state/province.
72. You can determine the time zone from the city/town.

I have variations on those:

* You can determine what human language I want your app to present from
  the date and time format used on the client.
* You can determine what human language I want your app to present from
  the date and time format used on the server.

I have given up with Windows apps here.  The easiest way to get them to 
default to English _and_ get something close to the date and time 
formats I desire is to select UK English (and then modify the time zone 
manually to reflect the one I am actually in).

Rinse and repeat for web sites offering downloads for software available 
in different languages.

Rinse and repeat for web sites offering downloads which try to determine 
my preferred GUI language from the IP address rather than the 
information offered by the browser.

(Both posts at the above links were inspired by the post "Falsehoods 
Programmers Believe About Names"
<http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about
-names/> )

-- 
Paul Sture