As many of you may know, The United States and parts of Canada have changed the rules on the changeover between Standard Time and Daylight Saving Time.  This year, for instance, the switch to Daylight Saving Time will happen on March 11 instead of April 1, and will switch back to Standard Time on November 4 instead of October 28.

Many embedded devices and operating systems are affected by this change.  For instance, about two weeks ago, Apple released an update that fixes the problem for Mac OSX.  Microsoft has issued patches for Windows XP and Windows Vista, but is apparently not going to provide any official support for Windows 2000 and earlier.   Most of the Linux distros have been patched.

Embedded systems represent a challenge, however.  You may find that your routers, VCRs, DVRs, microwave ovens, car radios, etc may report the wrong time, and many of these devices are difficult if not impossible to update.

In Linux, the rules for the switchover are in "timezone" files.  The chumby uses newer timezone files that know about the change, so the underlying Linux operating system on the chumby should do the "right" thing on the "right" dates.

However, the FlashLite player, as we've implemented it, will not notice the changes unless it's restarted.  This is because computing the local timezone offset can be a computationally expensive operation, so on the chumby, this calculation is done only once when the player starts up.

This means that you'll need to reboot the chumby at the changeover.  We're working on a software fix for this in the long run, but we will very likely *not* be releasing an update before the March 11, 2007 switchover.

Sorry for the inconvenience.