I think also UTC and GMT for a lot imprecise purposes are practically identical too - so much so that in the UK they still call it GMT.

I'm half German and your intolerance I've seen over the past several months makes me hate part of myself.

A lot of Americans are ignorant, it's true, but you acting like you're superior to us at every opportunity just makes you look like an ignorant ass, yourself.

read above to find the difference they are not the same thing GMT is based on astronomical measurements UTC is based on atomic timing they are different enough to move everything 150ish metres east if you use UTC

No I know that, but for most people and a lot everyday applications such a difference isn't important. :) That's all I was saying. Obviously for air traffic, syncing over computer networks - things that require precision - such a difference is crucial.

UTC is a freaking odd compromise tbh the main clock is in CERN, the average of the clocks is calculated at Greenwich and the readings for leap seconds are done in Paris.

And Paris are STILL bitching that the Prime Meridian was not through Paris...150 years later.

Pretty much how they're bitching that the Financial Services are in London still, and not Paris.

French : Can't live with them. Can't nuke them from orbit....

Most people think the difference doesn't matter to them, but in reality it matters a great deal to computers, all those little devices in your pocket, home, and at work don't work right without close to exact time. Servers typically synch to a time server that reads from an atomic clock for this reason (the quartz in the computers aren't exact enough).

All those .NET framwork and Java updates, yeah a good portion of those are simply because some po-dunk nowhere place changed how when they shift for daylight savings time or something like that, so updated lists of how to translate times get pushed out all over the world.

Ye, I was just about to but managed to stop myself.

Seriously people, the world doesn't revolve around America. GMT/UMT (which are the same thing, in case people weren't joking about that) are the international standard, and current time GMT can be looked up in a matter of seconds.

It's harder for those of us who live in countries that don't put the clocks forward/backward, as it means our time difference from GMT varies depending on the time of the year.

Also, the offer was good for 48 hours, so if the OP was truely waiting for it for a week, the time zones shouldn't have made any difference.

I love that one reason UTC isn't exactly the same as GMT is that the US made a mistake when they set their first radio guidance system up (something like 2 nanoseconds off i think it is) because everyone used it at the time they literally moved the UTC to match it not GMT then when GPS sats were first launched rather than fix it all so that the meridian was in the right place they kept the altered UTC...
no we weren't and no they aren't theres a few nano seconds difference most of the time (upto 1 second just before a leap second)

The bigger issue with UTC is that for timestamps for events prior to 1970 the time goes backwards and quite frankly that's just confusing.

Um. In context, they are the same thing. There will be nano seconds in difference between GMT and the server clocks on gog too, so saying the sale ends at xGMT is the same as it ending at xUTC.Calling them different time zones because they are nano seconds apart makes no sense. They are the same time zone, with measurements taken in a slightly different way. The result is still the same.

I wish this was true in practice. Also, get rid of that stupid daylight savings time. :(

Try using the internet to do anything if the computers involved are confused about the difference.

Yes, people should start saying UTC, GMT is deprecated for all intents and purposes.

Don't be so sensitive. It's all in good fun.

The USA is a giant in decline. It's still easy to take many things for granted. From the outside, pointing out such things must be as frustrating/ annoying as it is amusing.