[EAS] Strict Time

[Eric Howland]

As the saying goes, the nice thing about standards is that we have so many of them.  

Even though it is not as old, there is an International Standards Organization standard that is much more widely adopted, particularly in the computer domain, than the military time system.  

This is ISO 8601 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601).  

ISO 8601 is already part of the CAP protocol. See section 3.4.1.4 and 3.4.1.5 in http://www.eas-cap.org/ECIG-CAP-to-EAS_Implementation_Guide-V1-0.pdf.  So the EAS units already use this format. 

 As the Wikipedia article describes this is a rich standard including such items as standard week designations and duration measurements. Other standards adopt a subset of this standard. 

Your date would be:
2014-10-11T08:45Z

On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 8:40 AM, ray at electronicstheory.com <ray at electronicstheory.com> wrote:
>Moving forward -
>It is clear that the system is broken.
>It is clear that not enough forward thinking was involved in the creation of the
>system.  It is also clear that we do not learn from history.

>So let me make one more thing clear:
>For over 30 years that I know of, the Federal Government has had a method of
>determining time.  That method has been used in federal/government/military
>communications for years.  It is called DTG (Date-Time-Group)

>Can someone explain to me why DTG can not be used for EAS?

>DTG was designed so that we could do coordinated attacks with other nations at
>precise times - with no question about the time the attack starts.
>It includes the 4 digit 24 hour time, followed by the time zone designator, the
>date, month, and year.

>0845Z11OCT14

>If seconds count - the 4 digit time could be modified to be 6 digit time, and
>the century could also be added.

>084500Z11OCT2014

>This method has worked for years for missile/rocket launches.  Why don't we
>submit to the FCC to have a change made in the system to accomodate this - so we
>never have a repeat of the 9th?  Sure it would take a firmware/software update
>to the various EAS boxes.  Not a complete re-write, but a minor modification. Is
>that too high a price to pay to keep from having to deal with FCC fines and
>false, outdated alerts?

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