For the first time in over 20 years, many US clocks have had to come up to speed on new DST rules. More importantly, computer applications (esp. those dependent on timestamps) have had to be made aware of these changes. Java is one such product. Clocks in the US (and related) timezones fall back on Nov 4th 2007. A revamped timezone page has been made available at http://java.sun.com/javase/timezones/ .

If you took steps to cater for the new US DST changes prior to March this year then no changes should be necessary. Minimum JRE versions that support the new US DST rules are :

• 6 FCS
• 5.0u6
• 1.4.2_11
• 1.3.1_18

Some new (US releated)changes have occurred since these new rules came in. Java users should check http://java.sun.com/javase/timezones/tzdata_versions.html to determine whether they need to upgrade to a newer version of Java.