Nixon Switch [was: Linux "date" command ignores leap-seconds?]

[Russell Reiter]

I think any interest earned by Nixon would have been a matter of "plausible
deniability" in accordance with the legacy of his office. ;-)

Russell

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 1:20 AM, Bob Jonkman <bjonkman-w5ExpX8uLjYAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> I think that might have been double daylight saving time.  I remember
> standing at the schoolbus stop at 8:00am in pitch blackness...  And I
> see that Dennis Ritchie mentions that as the driver for abandoning DDST.
>
> I wonder if Nixon earned any interest on the daylight he saved.
>
> --Bob.
>
>
>  On 13-01-20 02:35 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> > | To: tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org
> >
> > | On 13-01-17 04:26 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> > | > Of course POSIX says the Epock starts in
> > | > Nixon's reign.  (Who remembers the Nixon Switch in UNIX?)
> > |
> > | This has been intriguing me for days, and my Google-fu is inadequate to
> > | the task. What was the Nixon Switch in UNIX?
> >
> > <
> http://tukg.org/doc/unix/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v5/v5man.pdf
> >
> >
> > If you look in the 5th edition manual under ctime(III), you will see
> >
> >       The external variable nixonflg if non-zero supersedes daylight
> >       and causes daylight time all year round.
> >
> > That's because Nixon changed Daylight Savings Time rules for 1974 and
> > 1975 in response to the 1973 oil crisis.  I think that he made it
> > all-year round.
> >
> > I no longer remember how one would set this external variable.
> >
> > <
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.folklore.computers/jH6BAi5W1Vo/ZSszNv7NS98J
> >
> > <
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.folklore.computers/jH6BAi5W1Vo/Npotf09TXnAJ
> >
> >
> > It sounds as if the setting were compiled into the library.
> > --
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>
>
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