[Wikipedia-l] Timezone based on UTC? (was: New e-mail

[lcrocker at nupedia.com]

>On the other hand I'm very practical and say: Use the
>local time, but follow common Unix practice. This problem
>is not new. Unix systems keep track of local time and
>universal time and it's not too hard to get any kind
>of time out of a Unix system.

That's true, except that the PHP language does not have a
gmtime() function.   That's the main reason the code was
written the way it is now.  I could work around it getting
local time and converting myself, with the local timezone
set somewhere, but that's not very Unix-like.  I'll probably
just take the easy way out and set the server to GMT.

>What are you saying? Are you unaware that Unix systems
>count the time in seconds since 1970 and derive all
>other further knowledge of date and time from that?
>
>(Of course then the next question is: does the system
>keep time in seconds since 1970-01-01 UTC or any other
>local time...?)

Either, or neither, depending on the whim of the OS vendor.