Winter time causes the Rise of the Machines in Russia

The notorious Y2K problem did not cause any problems as the world was celebrating the beginning of the new millennium. A similar problem occurred on October 30 2011 in Russia. The problem turned into the rise of the machines as they simultaneously switched to winter time in spite of the fact that Russia currently lives in summer time only.

In the morning of October 30, Russia woke up in two time flows. The first one of them was official. It corresponded to the summer time, in which the whole country lives now. The other one was not official because it was one hour later.

In February of this year, President Medvedev announced the decision not to switch to winter time beginning with the autumn of 2011. However, a considerable part of electronic appliances and gadgets automatically changed their time in Russia on October 30. As a result, many Russians came one hour late for work on Sunday because of their phones and alarm devices.

Many people found themselves in very unpleasant situations. Many of them were late for their trains and planes. "My iPhone shows 1:00 p.m., but it was already 2 o'clock. My computer switched to winter time as well," messages like this are now plentiful on the Russian Internet.

"Take a look at what time your iPhone, iPad, computer and other gadgets show. If you are not an advanced user, you may be living in the wrong time," Russian bloggers wrote.

One of Russia's federal channels was broadcasting the wrong time on Sunday morning. Many cell phones and tablet computers, which receive time data from cellular operators, also showed the wrong time. This apparently means that certain data centers of cellular operators changed their time too.

It is not clear whether the automatic switch to winter time affects the work of payment systems, billing departments  online stores, etc. Fortunately, the time was switched on Sunday, when business activity in the country is low.

Dmitry Lyskov

Pravda.Ru

Read the original in Russian