EST and PST

[Force Flow]

What's the time difference between the east coast and California?

[bigpuma]

3 hours

[Force Flow]

I feel kind of stupid asking this, but 3 hours earlier or later than EST?

[reboot]

If it's noon in NewYork, it's 9 am in Calif.

[Force Flow]

Ah.

Thanks guys!

[David_Jones]

We should just change to GMT.

It is the only sensible time to use for modern communications.

Of course, I am as far off GMT as you can get, but still it would be more sensible that something that no-one knows.

David.

[Eaglefeather]

I have often thought that myself David, but the real problem would be with the AMs and PMs. For it to work we would have to go to the 24 hour clock, the same as the Military Uses.

The only real difference people would see is that 2400 hrs might be middle of the day in some parts of the world and 1200 hrs might be middle of the night in others. It would take some getting used to, but it makes more sense then everyone having their own time zones.

However I don't think we will ever see it happen in our lifetimes.

[reboot]

Whenever I have serious communication with someone from a different time zone, I always quote my GMT (if needed), so if they're smart enough, they know what time I'm at. This is especially good for international phone calls, which you don't want to get at 3am.
The theory of time zones, and how to see what time zone anyone is in, at any given time of day, is a fairly simple idea, and it amazes me that so many people have so much trouble with it.
Anyone with a globe can figure it out, and you don't need a calculator.
With that said, the biggest downfall is that some places use daylight saving time, others do not, but even then, you're only going to be out by one hour either way.

BTW, I'm at GMT-8

[David_Jones]

Have to admit that I rarely see AM and PM here now.

Just about everything is stated in 24 hours format, and it is definately becoming more common to see 'standard date format' (YYYYMMDD-HHmm) too.

I'd guess about 80% for 24 hour clock (in the general community), but perhaps only 10% for dates.

Most people still use the 'backwards' format of DDMMYYYY, but I guess the influence of the IT world is spreading putting the most significant information up front.

That is definately something that ought to be fixed on this site. The date format (MMDDYYYY) is truly loopy!

I can understand DDMMYYYY, although it really isn't sensible, and YYYYMMDD makes a lot of sense, but MMDDYYYY ???? Who on Earth set it up like that?

David.

[WJWheels]

MMDDYY or MMDDYYYY is the absolute standard for the U.S.

[David_Jones]

Fair enough, but I guess we should really move away from the provincial notations to a more global system.

It'll happen over time anyway as everyone becomes more inter-connected.

I'm gonna make a stand for GMT and standard dates ;->

[piasabird]

It is YYYYMMDD on my mainframe. However, on reports we still display it as MM/DD/YYYY. In a computer, YYYYMMDD just makes more sense. Good for sorting, good for comparison. If you are into Object Oriented Languages then the day month and year are all individual objects, and can be displayed in any format you can imagine or dream up.