Automate time zone selection (Was: RFE: use nasa worldwind...)

[Martin Sourada]

On Fri, 2007-06-01 at 20:35 +0200, Robert Relyea wrote:
> Nils Philippsen wrote:
> >
> > IMO, to make setting this automatically sensible and reliable, you'd
> > have to have some things first:
> >
> > - a freely available mapping between "position on earth" and the
> > corresponding timezone that's kept up to date
> > - an attached GPS receiver that can be read from Linux
> >   
> No need for a gps. If the network is configured...
> 
> http://www.networldmap.com/TryIt.htm
don't find my location

> 
> Google for 'ip location' for a whole slew of them (each varies in 
> quality, none got my location, but most were accurate enough to get my 
> time zone). If it's even 90% correct it will greatly reduce the number 
> of people who have to manually adjust their timezone).
> 
> The question is can we find/create an freely available database so we 
> can put up our own server.
> 
> bob
> 
> > Just the first one makes this a no-go, I haven't been able to dig up
> > something like this. I couldn't even find a freely available,
> > machine-readable coarse map of timezones.
> >
> > Nils
> >   
> 
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but this on get it precisely and even adds latitude/longitude and map to
it: http://www.ip-adress.com/
As you noted, if it worked for 90% of people it would make great
difference, and maybe we would be first to implement it ;-) So the idea
is:
1. from IP get your location on Earth (or somewhere else? :-D), no need
for precision, if time zone is OK, than location is precise enough.
Dunno, whether some server which is open source is providing this, but
if not, one could be started if there is want and will ;-)
2. if you have location, than timezone is only matter of finding in
which area are you in (say you have a ball divided into twenty four
pieces and you select a point on the ball. Which piece it is on? This is
IMHO simple process...)

Well, and about languages... well, if you are English you probably won't
need it, but if you are from Europe there are maybe tens of languages
spoken only in one country - and Europe has only three timezones or so,
so it would be very precise (excluding English )...

Martin
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