Redux - Getting the Date and Time From the Internet

[Mark Wieder]

Gregory-

Thursday, August 18, 2011, 2:42:22 PM, you wrote:

> After playing with it, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only
> correct, or most nearly correct, system-independent timestamp is the

No, it's *absolutely* correct, by definition. It's off by the fraction
of a second it takes the signal to get from NIST's servers to your
computer, and you even get the correction factor if you want to apply
it.

> seconds as converted from a time server such as NIST.  However, even
> that won’t display correctly in any other date-time format on a
> local machine if the time zone is set incorrectly.  That means that
> the only display format that is sure to be correct is NIST’s GMT,
> uncontaminated by local time zone settings.

NIST's time is UTC, not GMT. You originally said (wading my way back
through the posts here) you wanted an absolute timestamp irrespective
of the client machines. Here you have to different implementation of
that timestamp: the julian date and the UTC date/time. Is there
something more you're looking for?

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwieder at ahsoftware.net