[mertd]

How would you know if it is appropriate to call someone in some other part of the globe? One way or another you have to do a lookup.

A) Everyone uses UTC. Now you have to know the business hours in Tokyo because it is not universally 8-6 anymore.

B) Everyone uses local time. Now you have to know their local time.

[0xEA]

As an example:

I don't know where you are, you don't know where I am. I tell you I am available from @300-@800 if you want to Skype today. Let me know which time is good for you.

[mertd]

Which would be scenario A. You just did the lookup of finding that 0xEA's business hours are from @300 to @800.

[0xEA]

Sure, you would have to know that. But you have to look up if the business you want to contact is open on Sunday anyway, even if they are local. Or what time they close today.

Or you have to try to figure out the whole no work on Friday thing in the middle east and Monday being part of the weekend. You always have to look it up.

What made this dream cool in the digital age is I could just have hours that I'm available and if I wanted to work late at night, I could. I considered myself a 'hardcore hacker' in '98 and what appealed was how well this lined up with my natural inclination to hack on code from 10pm to 5am every day, despite being in high school.

I didn't care or need to know where my IRC friends were. We could collaborate none the less.