137 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
137 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
[[!meta title="Simple Universal Time (SUT)"]]
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## Introduction
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This article describes a simple solution to the
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problem of having to care about time zones,
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clock adjusting due to summer and winter time
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changes. It also addresses the problematic to
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of non-metric conversion when used with other
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units.
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**Simple Universal Time (SUT)**
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is suited for instant implementation and does
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not interfer with any current time system.
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## Motivation
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The life of individuals becomes more and more
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global:
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* Communication takes place covering several time zones
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* Travelling accross multiple time zones has become normal
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Due to this change, people are more and more confronted to
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think about the time in different time zones.
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To place a call, you have to find out
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* in which time zone the target person is
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* how much offset to UTC this particular time zone has
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* remember the delta from my time zone to UTC
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* create the delta from both time zones
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* find a good time for a call
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This is quite cumbersome and wastes a lot of energy
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world wide, every day.
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Furthermore, changes from summer time to winter time zone
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make this process even harder: If you remember the offset
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for a particular location, the time zone may have changed
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due to summer time changes...
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There is another problem with the current time scheme:
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that is being non-metric. Having scientific
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calculations with all metric units is usually broken up
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due to the non-metric behaviour of time. This is simply
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unecessary and can be easily fixed as the following
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proposal will show.
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## Proposal
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To simplify this time disaster, the following two changes
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are proposed for change:
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* Convert the time of day to a metric system
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* Drop all time zones and only use SUT
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### Conversion to metric
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For a simple start, assume there is no time definition and
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that we can start from scratch. Assume:
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* A day has 10 hours
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* An hour has 100 minutes
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* A minutes has 100 seconds
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This would create a day that has
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**10 * 100 * 100 = 100000*** seconds.
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The old scheme used to have 24 hours, 60 minutes per hour
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and 60 seconds per minute, which resulted in
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**24 * 60 * 60 = 86400** seconds.
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Let us prefix the new definition with the word
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**simple** to be able to distinguish between the two schemes and
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let us convert them into another:
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100000 simple seconds = 86400 seconds # divide by 100000
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1 simple second = 0.864 seconds
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Or the other way around:
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86400 seconds = 100000 simple seconds # divide by 86400
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1 second = 1.157407 (periodical, rounded)
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### Drop all time zones
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To be able to have one global time that everybody can use
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without the need of calculations, there won't be any time
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zones defined for use with **SUT**. Instead, SUT is based
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on UTC.
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### Time format
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As SUT only includes 10 hours, you can display time of the
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day using the following format:
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H:MM:SS
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where **H** is in the range of **0-9**, **MM** in the range of
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**00-99** and **SS** in the range of **00-99**.
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## Implications for Society
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When changing to SUT, societies productivity will
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improve pretty fast.
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If a particular society wants to keep the
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unclear advantage of summe time, it can even do so by using
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SUT:
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Instead of changing the time, this society can announce that
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all shops open up earlier in summer and open up later in
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winter time. Beware: An actual advantage of using summer time
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for a society using **summer time** of one that doesn't
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**has not been proven**.
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## Using SUT
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You can start right away to use SUT in your daily work.
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SKMP created a javascript implementation of SUT, so you
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can easily see the current time:
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[[!inline pages="sut.js" raw="yes" rss="no" atom="no"l]]
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The source is available
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[at github](https://github.com/telmich/sut).
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## Future Work
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As societies are adopting more and supporting utilities
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will be created. You are advised to open source them
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and add them to the [sut git repository](https://github.com/telmich/sut).
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SUT may become
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[a new standard](http://xkcd.com/927/) to replace
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all existing timezones zone.
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