by Tanu Bhandari

Created on: March 05, 2009

Time zones

The planet Earth is divided into twenty- four time zones. It is a known fact that rotation of earth causes day and night. The mathematical concept behind twenty-four time zones is that earth rotates three hundred and sixty degrees on its axis at the rate of fifteen degrees per hour.

Earth is a sphere which is divided into three hundred and sixty degree longitude. A longitude is an imaginary line running from North pole to south pole. The Prime meridian is zero degrees longitude which passes through Greenwich, England and is the standardization for all time zones. There are twelve time zones to the west and twelve to the east of prime meridian. The 180 degrees longitude; GMT-12(Greenwich Mean Time) is the International Date Line.

Computer Operating System

Operating system is an interface between the computer hardware and all application softwares. Computers are being extensively used across the world in different time zones. Especially for executing real time applications, time zone plays an important role in operating system coding.

During the installation of any operating system it asks to select the local time zone.In Linux Operating system there are two system files zoneinfo and localtime to set the time and time zones.The time is utmost important as computer professionals are working across several time zones and interacting as well.

Date and time can be set manually after selecting the time zone. While selecting the time zone do check the option "automatically adjust the clock for daylight saving changes" in windows operating system.

A network computer takes the correct time from the server. In most operating system there is an option to sync system time with Internet time so that your computer updates system clock from the time server online.Sometimes it is unable to synchronize when the computer clock shows more than fifteen hour time difference with the current time zone. So in this case it is better to set time manually.

Time zone settings of the computer play a pivotal role in online meeting where the attendees are joining from different time zones. To avoid chaos, it is mandatory for all to have correct system time with daylight saving option enabled and correct time zone selected.

Time zone is also useful in handling time stamping in the database. The helium website also makes good use of time stamping as writers are contributing articles from different time zones. Time stamping helps in deciding the empty title bonus as well as article submission deadline for various contests and awards.

The computer operating system needs to have infallible time zone coding as most applications take the system date and time whenever and wherever required.

Learn more about this author, Tanu Bhandari.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.