zulu time on some MS Windows [was Re: Manipulating file dates]

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>

| Yes localtime clock sucks.  Microsoft is very stupid for that choice.

What I recently learned:

The initial versions of Windows NT (on MIPS hardware) used UTC in the
hardware clock that runs while the machine is off.

This feature was left in, but broken.  It was recently fixed!
  <http://weblogs.asp.net/dfindley/archive/2006/06/20/set-hardware-clock-to-utc-on-windows-_2800_or-how-to-make-the-clock-work-on-a-mac-book-pro_2900_.aspx>
  <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/mswish/ut-rtc.html>
It seems that Vista SP2 fixes this.

Windows NT (which includes XP, Vista, 7, 2000, 2003, etc. but not 9x or 
me) internally keeps the clock in UTC.  I don't know if this observable.
  <http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/09/02/224672.aspx>
Ray Chen's blog is often interesting to me even though I don't use MS
Windows. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Chen>

| They are even more stupid for not having changed it to allow users
| the choice.

In recent versions you can chose sanity!  The secret incantation
(registry entry):
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation]
"RealTimeIsUniversal"=dword:00000001


|  It would simplify their handling of daylights savings time
| so much.  They keep having bugs in that after all.

MS Windows DST handling works fine until you dual-boot.  Perhaps
Microsoft likes it that way.
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