Re: Brown draft feedback on time stamping and on criticality flags

Phill,

This doesn't make any sense to me.  If you're presented with a GMT time,
you can always determine the corresponding time in whatever locale you
care about (and even configure your SW to do it for you if you're
lucky).  Thus you know the GMT offset for London, NY, or even onboard
you yacht.  If you're saying that you find the fact that the computer on
which I originated the signature happened to be configured for a
timezone 5 hrs off GMT as important (or even if you knew it was
somewhere in a time zone 5 hrs off GMT - although anywhere in either
hemisphere), I think you're stretching.  Your examples all seem to be
about knowing where it took place more specifically than (more or less)
in which 15 degrees of longitude.

Dave

Phillip M Hallam-Baker wrote:
> 
> > I think you and Tom (et al.) are indicating that there is a place for a
> > different attribute which describes other properties of the signature.
> > I think defining such an attribute is fine, although outside of the core
> > syntax.
> 
> Well that would not be my first choice...
> 
> But I do think that it is intellectually defensible to insist that all
> times be in GMT (something the server needs to know if time is going
> to have any relevance) and that the local time zone information be
> stated as an offset.
> 
> IE if the contract is signed in Cambridge MA the time splodge has
> format:  <XYZ time="Fri, 30 Jul 1999 09:07:44" local="-500">
> If it is signed in Mountain View it has the format
> <XYZ time="Fri, 30 Jul 1999 09:07:44" local="-800">
> 
> And of course "local" would be optional since GMT is the only proper
> time to use anyway. [cue music: Elgar vgariations, Nimrod, flags of
> all nations (but mostly British) are unfurlled]
> 
> Seriously, I find nothing quite so disorienting as Web surfing when
> every random site feels the need to tell you the time of day in the
> wrong context.
> 
> What I want is to be able to buy shares on the London market, sell
> them on the NYSE and be given the transaction times of both in local
> time for my private island in the Caribean where I have parked the yatch.
> 
> But at some later time I may need to know the precise local time
> the trade went through because I need to reconcile the trade with
> some paper documentation I got sent relating to the trade.
> 
>                 Phill

Received on Friday, 30 July 1999 14:31:39 UTC