Most things that happen in the 'real world' happen at the same local time regardless of government meddling with timezones. Microsoft had a really hard time fixing everyone's meeting times the other year, when the US decided to move the DST switchover date by a few weeks; if Exchange had stored symbolic timezones rather than numeric then nothing need have changed.
If something's scheduled for the future, either it should be scheduled absolutely (with direct reference to UTC) or with reference to its location (with a symbolic timezone). Numerical timezones are dangerous, because they look like they provide enough information but they don't.
Incidentally, please use Olson-style location-based TZ symbols, rather than three-letter zone names. The three-letter names aren't nearly as helpful when resolving DST changes.
Comments
Most things that happen in the 'real world' happen at the same local time regardless of government meddling with timezones. Microsoft had a really hard time fixing everyone's meeting times the other year, when the US decided to move the DST switchover date by a few weeks; if Exchange had stored symbolic timezones rather than numeric then nothing need have changed.
If something's scheduled for the future, either it should be scheduled absolutely (with direct reference to UTC) or with reference to its location (with a symbolic timezone). Numerical timezones are dangerous, because they look like they provide enough information but they don't.
Incidentally, please use Olson-style location-based TZ symbols, rather than three-letter zone names. The three-letter names aren't nearly as helpful when resolving DST changes.