[LEAPSECS] Real April Fools' Joke: GMT Abolished

[Matsakis, Demetrios]

http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/paris-meridian-gmt-obsolete.html

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Today's Topics:

   1. Forgetting summer time (David Malone)
   2. Re: Forgetting summer time (Rob Seaman)
   3. Re: Forgetting summer time (Poul-Henning Kamp)
   4. Re: Forgetting summer time (David Malone)


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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2014 22:35:19 +0100
From: David Malone <dwmalone at maths.tcd.ie>
Subject: [LEAPSECS] Forgetting summer time
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>
Message-ID: <20140402213519.GA38251 at walton.maths.tcd.ie>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I've only seen this reported in the UK news, and not Ireland apocryphal, but it's a good story:

	http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/10739277/Device-exploded-in-bombers-face-after-he-forgot-about-clocks-changing.html

David.


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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2014 15:50:19 -0700
From: Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu>
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] Forgetting summer time
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>
Message-ID: <83DE3F3B-EC2A-4010-A903-F38DAE919FCC at noao.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Apr 2, 2014, at 2:35 PM, David Malone <dwmalone at maths.tcd.ie> wrote:


> I've only seen this reported in the UK news, and not Ireland 

> apocryphal, but it's a good story:

> 

> 	

> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/10739277/Devi

> ce-exploded-in-bombers-face-after-he-forgot-about-clocks-changing.html


More than a little suspicious of the April 1 date...

...but going along as a hypothetical, do we understand what the police's theory would be?  It sounds like they are saying the bomb went off at the time specified, but the bomber had failed to leave the area because his watch remained set an hour behind the new local time?

This assumes that the bomb was triggered by a timekeeping device.  Fair enough I suppose (having remarkably little expertise in this area).  Such a device is either a countdown timer or an alarm clock.  (At least in the movies.)  If the former it isn't obvious why the change to summer time would matter as long as the bomber was self consistent.  If the latter I guess the thought is that the alarm clock was itself of the kind that automatically resets to summer time?  (In the U.S. these are annoyingly called "atomic clocks".  What do they call them in the UK?)  In any event, there is nothing in the report or the various echoes on the web to suggest any evidence of this.

So if not a joke (in poor taste) escaped into the wild, perhaps this is just a naive assumption due to happening on the date of such a transition?  Are there other examples of such stories?  Aside from millions of variations of getting to work an hour late?

Rob



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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2014 06:01:01 +0000
From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] Forgetting summer time
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>,	Rob Seaman
	<seaman at noao.edu>
Message-ID: <93191.1396504861 at critter.freebsd.dk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

In message <83DE3F3B-EC2A-4010-A903-F38DAE919FCC at noao.edu>, Rob Seaman writes:


>This assumes that the bomb was triggered by a timekeeping device.  

>[...]


A surprisingly popular choice is old mobile phones without SIM card:

Usually you can still use the alarm function, and there is good drive current to the vibrator motor.

The missing SIM card would be the key here:  Without that the phone doesn't set its clock from the  network.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.


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Message: 4
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2014 08:59:12 +0100
From: David Malone <dwmalone at maths.tcd.ie>
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] Forgetting summer time
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>
Message-ID: <20140403075912.GA57013 at walton.maths.tcd.ie>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Wed, Apr 02, 2014 at 03:50:19PM -0700, Rob Seaman wrote:

> More than a little suspicious of the April 1 date...


The bomb and the injured man seem to be real. They've been reported in a reputable news source before April 1st:

	http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0331/605645-dublin-car/

I'll see if I can find anything to support the speculation about the clock change.

	David.


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