Fixing Time and Date Values in E-Mail
"When e-mails originate around the globe on servers from Basra to the Bronx, they seem to travel back in time. Replies precede by hours the messages they answer. Such is the discontinuity between the languorous rotation of the earth and the near light speed of e-mail transmission. A message sent from Baghdad at dinner arrives in Austin, Texas, before lunch. E-mail client applications dutifully -- some might say stupidly -- report the time of origin. The confusion grows when receiving machines apply different time zone and daylight savings time biases. It gets even more fouled up when a user in Iraq sends mail via a stateside server. In the end, it's tough to figure out who said what when."
