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On the other hand...
When typical open-source developers try to write "documentation", the result is frequently so that you wish they had never tried, but stuck to coding.
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It IS a programming question, but as I do not really want an answer (more interested in flame war  and your philosophy) I do post it here...
So... you have to set up in a system some online exams, including date and time of opening an closing... As the system interprets anything stored in the DB (a Unix timestamp) as UTC (good old practice), you send them UTC via the API...
You may be surprised, but it even works... until the move your clock, just we did last night... At that moment the server moves (automatically) and now it adds only 2 hours to the stored UTC, instead of the 3 it added at summer-time...
So in the DB is stored 9:30 UTC, which is 12:30 Local in summer time, but 11:30 in winter...
As we all learned, to store UTC is the best way to resolve timezone changes... except when it is not...
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge". Stephen Hawking, 1942- 2018
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: As we all learned, to store UTC is the best way to resolve timezone changes... except when it is not...
The problem here is not on the display side, but on the data entry side. In the data entry side, there should be some way to check whether a series of appointments cross a time zone change. If it does, the series should be split into two series, one for before the change and one for after the change.
The same applies to a single appointment. If the time zone at the date of the appointment differs from the time zone at the date the appointment is made, the appropriate adjustment should be made when entering the date in UTC.
The only problems that can occur are e.g. when the start/end of DST is changed. In this case, a query + update will be necessary to adjust the affected appointments.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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The only problem is, that it is not my system... It has no the ability to work with local time (which is the most logical way for us, as we do not move around and our system - that exports data - is always here in Israel)... It can not record under what timezone/DST the time was recorded... It do not have any information to make any corrections when timezone/DST changes...
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge". Stephen Hawking, 1942- 2018
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You're a software engineer; if you don't like the software you're given, write your own!
(This especially goes for O/Ses, office suites, and other software with thousands of man-years behind them...)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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You don't store timezone information at all?
Storing UTC is great, storing ONLY UTC is not so great...
What happens when one of the students or teachers travels abroad and logs in to the system? Do they suddenly get the times in their new time zone?
The EU wants to stop doing winter/summer time in two years, I just hope they stick to winter time (our actual time zone with long winters and short summers)
Of course when they do, all our software will break because of all the winter/summer time zone fixes in place 
I worked on a travel system where a trip could take you -30 minutes if you crossed a time zone or if winter time kicked in
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It is not me... It is an external system... I have no control over it... That's what makes it so frustrating...
(In our system we realized that no other time than local time is logical for this kind of system so we record them as local and everybody is happy)
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge". Stephen Hawking, 1942- 2018
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: It is an external system... I have no control over it
In that case it's easy.
Go to your boss and tell him that whoever picked the external system is a moron and you can't fix this until you start getting some decent tools to work with
Bonus points if your boss picked the system.
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"Do they suddenly get the times in their new time zone?" But of course.
Or, the client should support "home" and "travelling" time zones if appropriate.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: "Do they suddenly get the times in their new time zone?" But of course.
I'm asking because it doesn't make sense that when you're at home you've started an exam at 13:00 and when you're on vacation you've started it at 15:00.
The time you should see is always the local time at the place where you took the exam.
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So you've started an exam at 13:00, but now that you're on a vacation it shows 15:00 and you don't find that weird?
Please explain 
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If you live two time zones east of me, and I talk to you over the phone and tell you "I'm going to take this three hour exam in ten minutes, at 13:00 - I'll call you after that to tell how it went", and you say: "That is 15:00 over here, and I'll leave the office at 17:00, so call me at my home phone number" ... that is not weird at all. (Except that noone has fixed line telephone any more  )
If I go on vacation to your place, I will label absolute points in time by your labels. If I refer to that phone call, I will accept as the reason why I had to call you at home that you go home at 17:00, one hour before my exam was completed. That is the labeling of absolute time that is appropriate when I am at your place. I will not insist that you leave work at 15:00.
I honestly think that China ("which we call Red China") did the right thing when they abandoned time zones, making the entire nation a single zone. 13:00 is 13:00 everywhere. Even with time zones, some people go to work at 07:00, others at 09:00. The easternmost points in Norway have surise two hours before the westernmost points; yet we are one time zone, and handle it well. Making USA, say, a single time zone would widen the limits quite a bit: Some people (i.e. those on the east coast) would go to work at 05:00, others (those at the west coast) would not go until 10:00, five hours later ... but that's how it is today! I don't see the need for having identical going-to-work-time-labels across the nation, when time times are really different.
As long as people insist on time zones, we will have to accept that as different times have identical time labels, identical times have different labels. You cant expect to have identical time labels across time zones both for a fixed time (like the exam start) and for a variable time (like start of working hours).
People are too much fixated at those time labels. Every year, milk farmers complain at this time of the year about disturbing the daily rytm of the cows. I never understood that: Last Saturday, they were milked at 06:00, on Sunday they were milkes at 05:00, but why would they notice? The cows don't have watches! Farmers create problems because they insisted on sleeping an hour more that night. If they rather had a normal nigth's sleep, getting up at the normal time, it would'd matter what their watch said.
So let us start a worldwide movement to abandon time zones and use UTC everywhere!
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Despite everything you said it still doesn't make sense.
You started the test at 13:00, no matter where in the world you are.
You WOULD have started at 15:00 were you taking the test at your current vacation location, but you weren't. You were at a location with a time zone where you started at 13:00 and nothing you will ever do can change that (unless you invent a time machine).
Saying you started at 15:00 at that location is just misleading!
You don't correct for inflation either, do you?
I paid €3,10 for that ice cream back in 1995.
No, I paid f0,50 (or something like that).
It's nice to know that same ice cream would cost me €3,10 now, but back in the day I paid f0,50 and not €3,10.
Member 7989122 wrote: So let us start a worldwide movement to abandon time zones and use UTC everywhere!
I could live with that, but I live in UTC + 1, so it won't really affect my day.
Other people, however, suddenly have to live their lived from 22:00 to 16:00 or some such
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Exam did NOT start at 13:00 regardless of what is your reference point for the 13 hours, i.e. midnight. There is nothing universal about "13:00", making it a more "correct" value than others. If you say "13:00 Central European Time", then it is universal. I don't remember what the time zone of the Finns are called, but the same universal time would be "14:00 Finish time". The Brits would call it "12:00 GMT" (I guess that their traditions will keep them from replacing GMT with UTC )
As long as we have time zones, a clock time not qualified by a specific time zone is interpreted, by (strong!) tradition as "local time". So 13:00 in Central Europe is the same as 12:00 to the Brits and 14:00 to the Finns, according to their local times. That is what time zones are all about!
If you want to compare time zones and UTC to inflation - or for that sake, cost of living in various countries: For how many minutes will an average worker have to pay for an ice cream? That will give a far more correct impression of real price developments.
And, your "13:00" is like saying that the ice cream cost 3,10 "something", without stating the currency. If that is to make sense, I need a correction factor (here: for multiplication, not for addition) for it to make sense to me. If the currency is Euro, I know that the factor between 9 and 10 to give med the price in NOK. (But what kind of ice cream cost 3,10 Euro in 1995? Even today, you can buy a two liter box of ice cream for that amount!)
I still think "Other people, however, suddenly have to live their lived from 22:00 to 16:00 or some such" .. but that is no problem at all! It will take you a few weeks to get accustomed to. What's in a name? A time of day by any other name would make make you as tired.
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Member 7989122 wrote: Exam did NOT start at 13:00 regardless of what is your reference point for the 13 hours
So you sit at the exam and the teacher says you can start.
You look at the clock and it says 13:00 (ok, it's actually points to 1).
Later, you log in to the portal and find out you actually took it at 15:00.
You take another flight and now it says 22:00.
Yes, that's an excellent point of reference!
You must miss a lot of appointments...
Member 7989122 wrote: I still think "Other people, however, suddenly have to live their lived from 22:00 to 16:00 or some such" .. but that is no problem at all!
Yeah, sure. People actually die from summer/winter time, but I guess this will be ok...
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Sander Rossel wrote: I just hope they stick to winter time
Nope, the idiots have chosen summer time, because they actually intend to follow the results of a survey that < one percent of the population has responded to.
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All conversion to/from UTC must be done by the client with the time zone selected by the user.
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And how that exactly would solve the problem here?!
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge". Stephen Hawking, 1942- 2018
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Timezones and DST can be a real pain... we use NodaTime, check it out, when you have time 
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I tested and fixed the Hebrew calendar part for that library a few years back... A great effort...
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge". Stephen Hawking, 1942- 2018
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Nice. The Hebrew calendar is complicated! I only know a little bit about it from the Biblical feasts, etc.
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I keep some backups at Box.com in the form of 250 MB 7Zip files. My current internet provider is mobile phone hotspot, so it's ... spotty.  I figure that there is some app that can help this by somehow continuing the connection, etc., until the download is complete.
Any ideas?
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