[joshstrange]

Couldn't disagree more, I have done extensive work with timezones and UTC where I work and reporting annoyance is a terrible reason for considering something other than UTC. Your front end (be it a browser, cli, or gui) should be responsible for translating dates from the back end to your prefered TZ. Also you indicate that consistency is what matters, I agree which is why I use UTC. Your are completely skipping over DST and how it can mess up other things.

[_callcc]

No, consistency is what matters. If you can get away with working with localtime then there's no reason to opt for the faux-universality of using UTC instead.