Does local time zone need a name?

[Torsten Rahn]

On Monday 02 April 2007 16:22:44 Matt Rogers wrote:
> I'd prefer to see the name of the time zone that I'm in. To me, it's better
> presentation of information to say that I'm in the Pacific time zone rather
> than "Local Zone" or some other such thing. WTH is "Local Zone" supposed to
> mean anyways? It's too context dependant, IMO. I don't want to keep track
> of what time zone I'm in. The computer is supposed to do that for me.

Isn't that like argueing that e.g. daily file system scans should be described 
in the interface to happen on "Monday" just because today is "Monday" and 
what exactly is "daily" meant to mean anyways in terms of days of a week? ;-)

"Local Zone" would exactly make sense if the user does not want to have to 
deal with the timezone names and if the computer is able to retrieve all 
information about times and timezones automatically. E.g. If I ask my 
computer to wake me up each day at 8:00 then I certainly don't want to 
specify a fixed timezone for that if I happened to travel quite fast and 
frequently: If I did, the computer would translate the timezone to 16:00 in a 
different timezone and might wake me up way too late (or too early).

Torsten

-- 
 Torsten Rahn
 Tel.: +49 (0)21 61 / 46 43-0
 
 credativ GmbH, HRB Düren 4052 
 Karl-Heinz-Beckurts-Str. 13, 52428 Jülich 
 Geschäftsführung: Dr. Michael Meskes, Jörg Folz, Pasquale D'Alessandro