the Big Moment

David dfrankiswork at netscape.net
Mon Jun 9 21:02:43 UTC 2003


Ladi lyndi wrote:

> Yep, The Hague is a whole hour ahead of BST,
> maybe they're going to wait until 1 am to sell
> the books but I doubt that as they are closing at
> 1 am.  Then again, if it was all based on BST,
> the stores in the US wouldn't be waiting for
> midnight on the 21st to sell the book but would
> be able to sell it on the 20th, at 7 pm EST. 
> Just think, those in Europe will be able to read
> the book for at least 5 hours before those in the
> US even glimpse it.  It does make me wonder about
> Australia though - do they have to wait until
> midnight BST or just midnight on the 21st? 
> Inquiring minds and all of that.

I think the way it is is that the Eastern Hemisphere waits until 
midnight BST.  The Western hemisphere has to wait for Midnight local 
time.  So the algorithm is whichever is the later of midnight BST 
and local midnight.

However, in practice that's complicated by local plans for bookshop 
opening.  In the far east of Australia, for example, it will be 9am, 
so it's not much of a stretch for any bookshop to sell from the word 
go.  In the UK, I imagine only the major centres of population will 
open at midnight, so many of us will also have to wait for Saturday 
morning - many hours after Australia.

Thus the sequence around the world will be quite complicated in 
practice.

David 





More information about the HPFGU-OTChatter archive