聽無止境：夏令時帶來的困擾
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Time To 'Spring Forward'
Daylight-saving time will come three weeks early this year and it could cause problems in computers and other gadgets throughout the country. Alexis Christoforous has more details.
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Springing forward for Daylight Saving Time is an annual chore at the world's biggest watch store. But this year it could be a real headache for anyone dependent on computers, like these cardiology nurses in New Jersey.
"We have a team of that 16 people right now that are working on it， pretty much nonstop."
The culprit is the Daylight Saving Time bug and it's bitten Tom Pacek. He is in charge of adjusting more than 14,000 windows-based gizmos programmed to wait until April to move forward.
"It’s just the volume of devices that we have to touch, manually touch, all interventions we have to have with servers to, to get this under control."
Few expect tomorrow's clock confusion to crash computers. But over the next three weeks, the DST bug could foul up appointments and business transactions for anyone neglecting to download software patches for their PCs, PDAs, even cellphones.
"It lends new meaning to the phrase March Madness."
Pin this on Congress and a law of unintended consequences. Back in 2005, it voted to add more daylight hours in hopes of slashing electricity costs. But nobody thought about the impact on electronics.
"Well, that kind of happens often, doesn't it? "
David Millman owns a 24/7 computer repair business already talking panicked customers through the problems. One estimate figures it'll cost about a billion dollars in tech support to straighten things out.
“Even though you have the best-laid plans, there's always going to be that one thing like daylight savings time that people don't think about.”
Apple and Microsoft have both made software fixes available on the web. But Microsoft warns, (quote) "users should view any appointments as suspect". Not very comforting.
One way around the problem in older versions of Windows is to manually change the clock in your computer control panel yourself. Of course you have to remember to change it again in November when the clocks fall back. In the meantime, if you're late for anything, just blame the government.
Alexis Christoforous, CBS News, New York.
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