Swatch created what is known as Internet Time. If you're interested in Internet Time, check out the link. Here's a quick little script to calculate Internet Time for you. Be sure to have your clock and time zone setup correctly. 
#!/usr/bin/perl
$biel = int((time + 3600) % 86400 / 86.4);
print "\@$biel\n";

[download]
Submitted at @929

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Internet Time
by John M. Dlugosz (Monsignor) on Aug 05, 2002 at 19:41 UTC
    Does anybody use that system? It sounds like hype to me: eliminating timezones. They are referencing their own zone, instead of UTC/GMT. Big deal.

    I see how your code works, but it assumes the format for what time returns. The docs say "... and 00:00:00 UTC, January 1, 1970 for most other systems" and since you're not interested in the day, simply knowin that it's in UTC is enough. But "that's 00:00:00, January 1, 1904 for MacOS" sounds like it's using local time, so it won't work on the Mac.

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      No, you're wrong, it will still work. The trick is in 

      (time + 3600) % 86400

      [download]

      It doesn't matter what year it starts, as long as the number returned by this little piece of code, is the number of seconds since midnight from the BMT (Biel Mean Time), which is similar to GMT+1. The date is not important. Rememeber, the time function gives the number of seconds since midnight, different date for different systems, but still at GMT/UTC. Doing the % 86400 simply calculates the number of seconds since midnight, regardless of the date.

      To answer your question, the system probably won't get a lot of appeal. I suggest you read the article on Swatch's website to get more info.

      Funny enough, I returned from Switserland yesterday evening, and I was doing a lot of thinking on the Internet Time idea. It is good if you want to arrange meetings and stuff with people across different time zones, but it does not consider people travelling. Example, you get used to getting up at a specific time, now you travel to the other side of the world, where internet time is identical to your time, you'll permanently have jetlag!

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[d/l]

        In purticular, since 86400 is the number of seconds in a day, this will work for any system where the epoch (that is, the time when time() returns 0) is at midnight GMT. As far as I know, all systems in existance fit that criterion. It wouldn't work for the Julian Date (where 0 is noon, IIRC), but I don't think there are any systems that use JD (MJD, the Modified Julian Date, does start at midnight, but I don't think there are any systems around that use MJD for time() either.).

        Confession: It does an Immortal Body good.

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        You misunderstand my point.

        I agree that it works regardless of the base date.

        Rather, the documentation doesn't say "...UTC" for the Mac, implying that's it is based on the local time zone.

        I agree with you that it requires "the time function gives the number of seconds since midnight, different date for different systems, but still at GMT/UTC", but disagree that the specification of this function guarantees this.

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Re: Internet Time
by strfry() (Monk) on Aug 05, 2002 at 16:50 UTC
    that's pretty cool. just curious though, is there any particular purpose for the '@' symbol ?

    strfry()
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      The @ symbol is Swatch's way of showing that it's internet time.
[reply]
        great. i wish they'd picked a doowad that you didn't have to backslash, like '!' ):

        strfry(reality)
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