[R-SIG-Finance] Data (Was: TZs)

[Gabor Grothendieck]

2011/10/19 Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org>:
>
> On 19 October 2011 at 13:00, Daniel Cegiełka wrote:
> | ICANN takes control of Internet Internet Time Zone Database
> |
> | http://www.icann.org/en/news/releases/release-14oct11-en.pdf
> |
> | The problem with TZ probably can be considered as solved :)
>
> Not so fast. While this is undoubtedly excellent news which presumably solves
> the _database_ issue after the tireless work of Olson and Eggert came under
> patent troll attack, it does not magically give us the pony to fix all broken
> Windows installations.
>
> Remember that the whole reason R ships with TZ data (and the Olson library)
> is that a certain popular operating system fails to provide this natively.
>
> But I nitpick. We all have an option or two when it comes to OSs and many of
> us even exercise these ;)
>

I am not sure specifically what you are referring to here but Windows
does support time zones.  Here is a list of the ones supported by
Windows Vista:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749073(WS.10).aspx

and here is an example of querying the current timezone info from the
Windows console (omit the brief argument for additional info):

C:\tmp2>wmic timezone list brief
Bias  Caption                                 SettingID
-300  (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)





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