From: black.hole.4.spam{at}gmail.com (Don Hills)

In article , "Geo."
 wrote:
>
>I never claimed the PC was the largest computer in the world.

You claimed there were more of them than any other type. I wasn't arguing
that, just questioning the logic that makes this the deciding factor in
whether the clocks should be set to local time or GMT.

Something I posted here back in 2003: Many years ago, Air New Zealand found
itself in a bind when its MVS (IBM) mainframe couldn't be adjusted to the
just-introduced NZ Summer time. The system used a GMT clock and a local
offset to give local time. NZST is GMT +13 hours. It turned out that the
offset could not be set to more than +-12 hours. The MVS developers were
originally perplexed- "why can't you set the clock ahead one day and
back 11 hours?"- until we pointed out that the same system had to
coordinate timetables for both local and international flights. The problem
proved to be a basic design flaw in MVS, the designers had assumed that
no-one would want more than 12 hours of offset. A significant amount of OS
code had to be rewritten to allow larger offsets. It took almost a year.

--
Don Hills    (dmhills at attglobaldotnet)     Wellington, New Zealand
"New interface closely resembles Presentation Manager,
 preparing you for the wonders of OS/2!"
    -- Advertisement on the box for Microsoft Windows 2.11 for 286

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