Static data only gives you reproducibility, not correctness. If you use a static timestamp for testing, and manage to get the DST changes out of the way (or in the past and thus at fixed dates), you will get consistent errors or successes in your test suite. This does not buy you correctness in the live program as the timestamps of the future and conditions on the production machines might well differ.

Obviously, your client doesn't have a firm grip on the identical setup of test and production machines either as the (supposed) differences in timezones between test and production environment show, but maybe you still can get a VMWare image (or Xen, or Parallels or whatever the VM container du jour is) to run your tests in an environment as close to production as possible before approaching your client for installation.

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