[thriqon]

While I agree with your points when storing timing of (happened in the past) events, but I disagree when storing display preferences for the user. As a user, I do not want to change my timezone settings just because my country went into Daylight Saving.

[Xorlev]

Came here to make the same point. Named timezones like America/Los Angeles are still important because they refer to both the timezone offset as well as the DST rules that govern that particular political zone.

That being said, the gist of the post (time normalization) is obviously good. Stored time should always be UTC and converted for display later.