Thread: Why is this site based on GMT time? Any way to change this?

I don't understand, isn't GMT European time? And yet Turbine is based in the East Coast, and all the maintenances happen during EST early morning. Is there any way to change this setting? Or is it set that way permanently? If it is, could someone explain why it's based on GMT time instead of EST? Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer =]


--I know in the WoW community forum site times are based on your location, wondering how come it's not like this here

Originally Posted by Echos_21

wondering how come it's not like this here

It is. You have GMT selected. Go to My Forums Settings, General Settings, and change your time zone.

Originally Posted by Echos_21

I don't understand, isn't GMT European time?

Actually, GMT is UK time (and Portugal). Europe is on Central European Time.

Because the British established the Greenwich Meridian 'way back when, and because there was a long time during which the sun never set on the British Empire, GMT has become the standard, default, Planet Earth time.

I quote Gerald Weinberg quoting what he calls Boulding's Backward Basis: "Things are the way they are beause they got to be that way."

Originally Posted by mjk47

Actually, GMT is UK time (and Portugal). Europe is on Central European Time.

Actually, uk is BST not GMT

Originally Posted by Nakiami

It is. You have GMT selected. Go to My Forums Settings, General Settings, and change your time zone.

Ty very much! And to all the people who corrected me about the GMT zone thing, yes, you're technically right....but the UK IS in Europe =] so i was half right =P

Originally Posted by djheydt

Because the British established the Greenwich Meridian 'way back when, and because there was a long time during which the sun never set on the British Empire, GMT has become the standard, default, Planet Earth time

You know why "the sun never set on the British Empire"? Because God didn't trust what an Englishman might get up to in the dark.

Actually, when Greenwich was established as the Prime Meridian, there were many other candidates. The French, for instance, wanted it to go through Paris.

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

The modern Greenwich meridian, based at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, was established by Sir George Airy in 1851. By 1884, over two-thirds of all ships and tonnage used it as the reference meridian on their maps. In October of that year, at the behest of U.S. President Chester A. Arthur, 41 delegates from 25 nations met in Washington, D.C., for the International Meridian Conference. This conference selected the Greenwich meridian as the official Prime meridian due to its popularity. However, France abstained from the vote and French maps continued to use the Paris meridian for several decades.

As of 2012 the most used prime meridian for the Earth is the IERS Reference Meridian (IRM). It passes 5.31 arcseconds east of Airy's transit circle or 102.5 metres (336.3 feet) at the latitude of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London. A current convention on the earth uses the opposite of the IRM as the basis for the International Date Line.

The IERS Reference Meridian (IRM), also called the International Reference Meridian, is the prime meridian (0° longitude) maintained by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS). It is also the reference meridian of the Global Positioning System operated by the United States Department of Defense, and of WGS84 and its two formal versions, the ideal International Terrestrial Reference System (ITRS) and its realization, the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF).

Incidentally, one of those 25 countries was The Kingdom of Hawaii!

And I am sure that is much more than you ever wanted to know!

Originally Posted by Woodbiner

Actually, uk is BST not GMT

Of course, but BST is actually only GMT+1.

The Internet and computers in general largely run on UTC, which quite conveniently is essentially the same as GMT. In fact, most people use the two terms interchangeably.

Little known fact: your computer's internal clock keeps time in UTC, even if you're running Windows and it shows your local time. The displayed time is merely calculated with an offset that corresponds to your timezone, but if you were to directly query the clock without specifying an offset you'll get back UTC.

Originally Posted by Echos_21

And to all the people who corrected me about the GMT zone thing, yes, you're technically right....but the UK IS in Europe =] so i was half right =P

Ah, it all depends who you ask.

Alleged British newpaper headline from the 1930s: "Fog in Channel - Continent Cut Off".

Originally Posted by mjk47

Ah, it all depends who you ask.

Alleged British newpaper headline from the 1930s: "Fog in Channel - Continent Cut Off".

The other one like that is supposed to have been...

80 degrees again today; no relief in sight.


However, while not about Britain, the one I like is from the 1980s...

Name the only popularly elected, female, head of state in Western Europe.

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer

Being a Brit myself id like to point out to you rebellious colonials that we were the greatest.

If only we COULD turn the clock back......

Originally Posted by Kheld_GB

Being a Brit myself id like to point out to you rebellious colonials that we were the greatest.

If only we COULD turn the clock back......

I'm sure those in Rome say the same thing about Britain.

Originally Posted by Woodbiner

Actually, uk is BST not GMT

Actually UK is on BST at the moment. It's standard is GMT.

Originally Posted by whheydt

The other one like that is supposed to have been...

80 degrees again today; no relief in sight.

I feel I should point an essential difference here.

In Britain we have an bad climate, but excellent weather. In many parts of the US, you have an excellent climate, but hardly any weather.

I well remember spending 6 weeks in California and the weather was identical every day. The only variation was whether or not the temperature would be just under or just over 100 degrees. Where I live, even at this yime of year, we can still get all 4 seasons in one day. If you don't like the weather, waiting a hour or two usually changes it.

This probably explains why we Brits talk about the weather such a lot.

Originally Posted by whheydt

However, while not about Britain, the one I like is from the 1980s...

Name the only popularly elected, female, head of state in Western Europe.

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer

Hmmm, define "popularly". Does it require more than 50% of the vote, something no political party has ever achieved in the UK in my voting lifetime.

It isn't Angela Merkel, as she is not the Head of State in Germany.

(I have to confess to resorting to Google.)

Dalia Grybauskaitė from Lithuania.

Originally Posted by mjk47

Originally Posted by whheydt

However, while not about Britain, the one I like is from the 1980s...

Name the only popularly elected, female, head of state in Western Europe.

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer

Hmmm, define "popularly". Does it require more than 50% of the vote, something no political party has ever achieved in the UK in my voting lifetime.

It isn't Angela Merkel, as she is not the Head of State in Germany.

(I have to confess to resorting to Google.)

Dalia Grybauskaitė from Lithuania.

So who does it refer to? Not Margaret Thatcher because she wasn't head of state either although she was definately elected (in 1979) and in power during the 80's and for a certain amount of time popular.

Originally Posted by whheydt

However, while not about Britain, the one I like is from the 1980s...

Name the only popularly elected, female, head of state in Western Europe.

I don't think anyone quite fulfils those criteria.

Vigdis Finnbogadottir (yes, I had to look up the spelling!) was elected President of Iceland in 1980, but that's not Western Europe. Mary Robinson was elected President of Ireland in 1990, but that's not the 1980s. Malta had a female President in 1982, but she wasn't elected. And Margaret Thatcher wasn't a Head of State.

Originally Posted by mjk47

Hmmm, define "popularly". Does it require more than 50% of the vote, something no political party has ever achieved in the UK in my voting lifetime.

No, it means simply elected by the people rather than by (for example) the legislature.

Originally Posted by mjk47

It isn't Angela Merkel, as she is not the Head of State in Germany...Dalia Grybauskaitė from Lithuania.

The question specified the 1980s.

Originally Posted by djheydt

Because the British established the Greenwich Meridian 'way back when, and because there was a long time during which the sun never set on the British Empire, GMT has become the standard, default, Planet Earth time.

I quote Gerald Weinberg quoting what he calls Boulding's Backward Basis: "Things are the way they are beause they got to be that way."

If only it were that simple. There was an international meridian conference sometime in the late 1800s in some very British place called Washington DC where it was decided to use GMT as the basis of world time. Later (1960s or 1970s) when there was a scientific need to define time at a more precise level UTC came into being which was essentially GMT, but was decided later to use this as the basis of network (Internet) time.

Originally Posted by Woodbiner

Actually, uk is BST not GMT

Actually the UK Timezone is GMT, all year round. For half the year local time isBritish Summer Time, being GMT+1, for the other half of the year GMT and local time are the same. Most countries have a daylight saving time switch at some point in the year, and it's part of the reason for having timezones and a universal standard as regions switch to daylight saving time at different (locally decided) dates.

Long before I was born, there was briefly something called double summer time where a second time change was made and the UK was on GMT+2 for some of the year.

With half the world being in the southern hemisphere, and different change dates, the differences in local times between two locations can vary by upto 3 hours, hence the preference to always provide UTC/GMT when giving international times.

Originally Posted by Tarmas_Eldar

I don't think anyone quite fulfils those criteria.

Vigdis Finnbogadottir (yes, I had to look up the spelling!) was elected President of Iceland in 1980, but that's not Western Europe. Mary Robinson was elected President of Ireland in 1990, but that's not the 1980s. Malta had a female President in 1982, but she wasn't elected. And Margaret Thatcher wasn't a Head of State.

Iceland counts as "part of Western Europe"--just as Britain is--so yes, you found the right person (Vigdis).

Thatcher was not, as you note, head of state, but rather head of government. Queen Elizabeth (another common guess) is head of state, but not elected.

Most Americans have problems with the question (besides figuring out that Iceland is part of Western Europe) because the US combines head of state and head of government in one person--the US president.

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer

Originally Posted by whheydt

Most Americans have problems with the question (besides figuring out that Iceland is part of Western Europe) because the US combines head of state and head of government in one person--the US president.

And some would say that that is where everything goes wrong. You have to be free to ber disrespectful of poiticians without being disrespectful of the country itself. Conflating the 2 roles never seems like a good idea.

I put it all down to the Big Mistake of 1776.

If you want an amusing take on how things might have worked out differently, I would recommend The Two Georges by Richard Dreyfuss and Harry Turtledove.

Originally Posted by Kheld_GB

Being a Brit myself id like to point out to you rebellious colonials that we were the greatest.

If only we COULD turn the clock back......

It would be cool for you Brits. It would be not so cool for the various locals who were under British rule whether they liked it or not. (I could make a whole 'nother post about why it was not so cool for us American colonials being under British rule, but I won't.)

I've been toying with the idea of a story (or stories) set in a society, still sitting all nebulous on the back burner of my mind, which is very like the British Empire at its height, but no subjugated locals, no poverty-stricken East Enders either. I have not yet figured out what kind of social/technological/etcetera change would bring that about. Population reduction maybe, plus a workforce consisting of robots or something with a better AI than ... say ... your basic LotRO NPC, but not enough to make them sophonts and entitled to civil rights. There were many wonderful things about the Empire ... if you were British and a member of the upper classes.

Oh yes, and the women of that ideal society would know enough not to wear corsets.

This link is to a painting called "The Private View" (1881), showing a large number of late-nineteenth-century Englishmen and -women attending an exhibition of paintings. According to most commentary, it was intended to make fun of the people who wore "aesthetic," rather than fashionable, dress.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ivate_View.jpg

The women seated on a banquette in the center are wearing fashionable dress, corsets and all. The people to the left and the right are wearing aesthetic dress, and the tall man with the top hat and the lily in his buttonhole is Oscar Wilde.* With the hindsight of more than a century, I think the aesthetic dress is more attractive than the fashionable -- to say nothing of a lot more comfortable.

But, as I said, the intent was supposedly to make fun of the people who wore aesthetic dress. But take another look at the painting. The women on the banquette in the center are talking to their friends. The people to left and right are looking at the paintings.

_____
*He, as you'll recall, was the one who said, "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

Originally Posted by djheydt

Oh yes, and the women of that ideal society would know enough not to wear corsets.

There are corsets and then there are corsets lol... Before the penchant for the handspan waist, corsets had a very different function. They supported whole the upper torso and actually *enabled* longer periods of work than the later items of clothing. I'm told by a Physiotherapist friend that the shape of my favourite corset supports my spine in the correct curve and that's probably why I find it so comfortable to wear for hours on end. Before you wonder why on earth I wear a corset for long hours sometimes, I'll explain.

I'm a re-enactor. My period is the reign of George III (aka the Napoleonic period, the Regency).

Despite the comfort in Regency 'small clothes', there were satirical comments aplenty in George III's time about the fashionably raised bustline of the Regency and the various 'falsies' that both men and women resorted to (eg false calf pads for men who didn't have muscular calves) in order to up the ante in the dating game... but that's what fashion always boils down to really

Red