Greg Wooledge wrote: > This is completely inaccurate. Time zones were not devised by drawing > equally-spaced meridian lines along the globe. They were invented > by political entities. They aren't static, either -- they change > from time to time, as political regimes change. > > Time zones are not tied to the geography of the earth, nor even to > political boundaries. There are places that have two competing time > zones, one time zone for some of the people living there, and another > for the rest of the people living there. > > Time zones aren't guaranteed to deviate from UTC by an integral number > of hours. There are some that are off by a fraction of an hour. > > There are time zones pairings that differ from each other part of the > year, and concide with each other the rest of the year. > > Try to think of the strangest, most obtuse, most ridiculous rules you > can -- real time zones are WORSE than that.
It is a total mess - if it wasn't those files, it were be chaos. In fact I admire people 3000y ago could manage time better than we do.
