full-disclosure - (offtopic) datestamp formats and timezones

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Message-ID: <20030610192611.GB17220@dreams.soze.net>
From: justin-fulldisclosure at soze.net (Justin)
Subject: (offtopic) datestamp formats and timezones

Steven M. Christey (2003-06-10 17:00Z) wrote:

> >> Vendor has been contacted on 01/06/2003 and fix is available from cvs at
> >> http://www.mnogosearch.org.
> > 5 months...  This is full disclosure?
> 
> Maybe that date is really June 1, 2003, since many countries list the
> month second, not first.
> 
> By the way, these DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY formats often make it
> difficult to quantify how much notice a vendor really had before the
> issue was published.  This has affected the accuracy of my past
> aborted attempts to figure out how long vendors *really* take to fix
> issues, and it may hamper any future attempts.
> 
> Using formats like YYYY/MM/DD or "Month DD, YYYY" generally seems to
> address the confusion.

The former is open to confusion.  There is an ISO standard.  Use it or
write datestamps in long date/time formats (like the second example)
that are not open to incorrect interpretation.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html

BNF of ISO 8601 is here:
http://www.opengroup.org/austin/mailarchives/austin-group-l/msg00441.html

And then there's the "my timezone is famous, I don't even have to
specify it" syndrome.  No, we really don't know what timezone you're in
(or think you're in) unless the message is about an event at a
particular location.  And does someone in South Africa really want to
look up the semantics of the U.S. MDT timezone?  Use <+|->xx[:xx] and
avoid the confusion.

-- 
Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit
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wonderful things.   --Rumsfeld, 2003-04-11