You may have noticed your PC can't do everything right. For some odd reason, keeping time is pretty difficult for most computers. They eventually start trailing behind usually, maybe by a minute at first which progresses into five minutes, ten minutes, etc. This usually isn't problematic, however, if you work in the IT industry it can be, especially if you're working for an answering service. For example, one of our operators takes a call at 5:32:06. The call is then transfered to another operator who ends it. Her system is three minutes slower than the original agents, so the end time of the call comes in at 5:30:47. Considering this is a business that bills on call time, this is very problematic.
Here's an article that explains better than I can exactly why PCs are so bad at keeping time and things that can be done to circumvent this issue. If you don't feel like skimming through it, here's some highlights:
"One way to "fix" a skewed PC clock, at least one that's connec... Read more
"IP addresses, a string of numbers that identifies a computer, should generally be regarded as personal information, the head of the European Union's group of data privacy regulators said Monday. Germany's data protection commissioner Peter Scharr leads the EU group currently preparing a report on how well the privacy policies of Internet search engines operated by Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others comply with existing EU privacy law.
He told a European Parliament hearing on online data protection that when someone was identified by an IP, or Internet protocol, address "then it has to be regarded as personal data." His view differs from Google which insists that an IP address merely identifies the location of a computer, not who the individual user is , something strictly true but which does not recognize that many people regularly use the same computer terminal and IP address."
