The daylight savings scare...

Interesting article in today's Washington Post that suggests while Trick or Treaters may be happy that it does not appear the technical aspect was taken into consideration when the decision was made to extend Daylight Savings time:

It's another for a security system to log the wrong time of crucial events, for pilots to misunderstand their takeoff times or international communications components to stop synchronizing. But such scenarios are possible without the fix to vast numbers of the nation's technical systems .

As IBM notes on its Web site: "Any time-sensitive functions could be impacted by this change. . . . It is important for users to assess their environments and develop appropriate plans for applying the necessary changes."

The challenge carries faint echoes of the Y2K scare, when governments and corporations feared computer systems would go berserk the instant that 1999 flipped to 2000. But it has received nothing near the same level of attention. In fact, large swaths of private and corporate America seem oblivious to the approaching change, according to analysts and technicians who track Web sites and swap information with colleagues nationwide.

"After building bunkers in the desert for Y2K, we're not even talking about this, and it's happening in less than two months," said Matthew Kozak, an information technology specialist at Rutgers University who monitors numerous sites and discussion groups.

Even in the banking industry, where ATMs time-stamp every customer transaction, awareness of the March 11 change is limited.

Let's hope this gets resolved and rather quickly without the hype and fear of Y2K where I knew people that were convinced they needed to stock up on food and water and other survival type gear...