Word: daylight
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...freaked out because your computer might hiccup this weekend as it copes with the premature arrival of Daylight Saving Time? Be thankful you weren't screaming across the Pacific Ocean in the U.S. Air Force's newest jet, the $330-million F-22 Raptor. Six of the jets - that's $2 billion worth of air power - had taken off from Hawaii en route to Japan when several of their computer systems went haywire and literally could not tell what...
...Force pilots were flummoxed by the time-space continuum. In the pilots' case, the problem was fixed within 48 hours when Lockmart developed a software patch. It's not much different from the one you've recently received so your computer can adapt to the earlier arrival of Daylight Saving Time...
...annoyance comes with a price tag. Jeffrey Hammond, senior analyst at Forrester Research, estimates the daylight saving time (DST) switch will cost the average company $50,000 in time and labor expenses - a conservative figure that doesn't take into account missed airline flights or forgotten appointments. That's a total of $350 million for the 7,000 publicly traded companies in the U.S. "In the aggregate it will probably be worth it, but right now it's an unfair tax on corporate America and even businesses worldwide that I don't think Congress thought about," says Hammond. Since most...
...some find these calculations a bit too sunny. Michael Downing, Tufts University professor and author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, says: "Congress has been studying this for 100 years and has yet to come up with reliable energy savings." Daylight saving does affect people's habits: studies from the the last DST extension in 1986 show that we shop, head outside, play sports, fire up the barbecue, and drive more often once daylight saving kicks in. (Conversely, Nielsen ratings for prime-time TV traditionally fall.) But many of these activities, especially increased leisure driving, offset...
...Even the Department of Energy (DOE) isn't convinced changing the clocks will make a dent in energy consumption. "The jury on the potential national energy-savings of extending daylight saving time is still out," Craig Stevens, press secretary for the Department of Energy, wrote to TIME in e-mail. "Our preliminary report, based on decades-old information, indicates a very small amount of energy savings." The DOE will keep tabs on energy consumption during the next nine months and calculate exact savings at the end. If it finds that America isn't getting any greener, Congress has an escape...