After noticing that the "time left to enter" countdown turns over a new day at midnight my time, I had a look at the page source. I didn't expect this kind of WTF:

				    var endDate = new Date('5/14/2007 11:59:59 PM');
				    var now;
				    var countdownSpan = document.getElementById('jsCountdown');
				    var differenceText;
				    var workingTicks, seconds, minutes, hours, days;
                    				    
				    function UpdateCountdown()
				    {
				        now = new Date(Date());
                        if (now >= endDate)
                        {
                            // Negative infinity.  Just for kicks.
                            countdownSpan.innerHTML = -(1 / 0);
                            return;
                        }
				        // Some hacky stuff to get around no DateDiff()...
				        workingTicks = Math.floor((endDate - now) / 1000); // Disregard milliseconds
				        seconds = (workingTicks % 60);
				        if (seconds < 10) { seconds = '0' + seconds; }
				        workingTicks = Math.floor(workingTicks / 60);
				        minutes = (workingTicks % 60);
				        workingTicks = Math.floor(workingTicks / 60);
				        hours = (workingTicks % 24);
				        workingTicks = Math.floor(workingTicks / 24);
				        days = workingTicks;
				        differenceText = 
				            days + '&nbsp;day(s), ' +
				            hours + '&nbsp;hour(s), ' +
				            minutes + '&nbsp;minute(s) and ' +
				            seconds + '&nbsp;second(s)'
				        countdownSpan.innerHTML = differenceText;
				        // Let's see if someone spots this and submits it as a WTF
				        setTimeout('UpdateCountdown()', 850);
				    }

				    UpdateCountdown();

 Took me a while to work out the WTF about the second underlined part, but if you watch the countdown intensely, you will notice it doesn't tick at a constant rate, freezing up slightly sometimes due to a new second not occurring in the 850 milliseconds between refreshing the counter. I'm guessing this was put in to mess with the minds of those who would look at the countdown and swear their eyes were playing tricks on them.

nice catch.

The real WTF is that you lost time for that :)

The Real WTF is that it's using a date with no time zone on it.  The contest rules say it ends at 5/14/2007 11:59:59 PM EST.  I'm sure there are places, but I don't know of any that are still on EST, almost all having switched to EDT a while back.  Of course, JavaScript could do some magic, or always assume standard time, but that'd be another class of WTFery.

The real WTF is that you can argue for days about which is the last hour to submit your calculator (or any other project, for that matter)

 Just submit it a day early...
 

Ehm...did you guys notice something odd? I've been checking the countdown throughout the day (dunno why, though), and here's what I've seen:

9h 40m left
6h 30m left
5h 30m left
2h 30m left
6h 11m left

WTF?!

 

I just watched Deja Vu, so I'm kinda paranoid at the moment... I didn't go back in time or anything, did I?
 

-Infinity seconds left to go!

freelancer:

Ehm...did you guys notice something odd? I've been checking the countdown throughout the day (dunno why, though), and here's what I've seen:

9h 40m left
6h 30m left
5h 30m left
2h 30m left
6h 11m left

WTF?!

 

I just watched Deja Vu, so I'm kinda paranoid at the moment... I didn't go back in time or anything, did I?
 

 

Time zones where accounted for sometime between the times you accessed it 

EDIT: I think 

I've already submitted, but I'm locked out from submitting now. According to the faq, the deadline is "May 14, 2007, 11:59 PM EST.", which means I should have about 10 more minutes. If he really meant EDT, I should have 1 hour 10 minutes left. Maybe he meant CST?

poochner:

The Real WTF is that it's using a date with no time zone on it.  The contest rules say it ends at 5/14/2007 11:59:59 PM EST.  I'm sure there are places, but I don't know of any that are still on EST, almost all having switched to EDT a while back. 

I was going to say parts of Indiana, but apparently as of last year the whole state observes DST.  Too bad, the whole three-times-in-two-time-zones-in-one-state thing was a neat little WTF unto itself.

 

cconroy:

poochner:

The Real WTF is that it's using a date with no time zone on it.  The contest rules say it ends at 5/14/2007 11:59:59 PM EST.  I'm sure there are places, but I don't know of any that are still on EST, almost all having switched to EDT a while back. 

I was going to say parts of Indiana, but apparently as of last year the whole state observes DST.  Too bad, the whole three-times-in-two-time-zones-in-one-state thing was a neat little WTF unto itself.

 

Of course, look at the big picture - switching time zones for some western counties at the same time now means that for programs wanting to have historically correct data back to 1970 (as the tz database tries to), there are now no less than NINE zones applying to the state. (shame that it only goes back to 1970 - some of the real WTFery happened in the 60s from what i've read - with the time zone line slowly creeping westward over the course of the decade) 

Random832:

cconroy:

poochner:

The Real WTF is that it's using a date with no time zone on it.  The contest rules say it ends at 5/14/2007 11:59:59 PM EST.  I'm sure there are places, but I don't know of any that are still on EST, almost all having switched to EDT a while back. 

I was going to say parts of Indiana, but apparently as of last year the whole state observes DST.  Too bad, the whole three-times-in-two-time-zones-in-one-state thing was a neat little WTF unto itself.

Of course, look at the big picture - switching time zones for some western counties at the same time now means that for programs wanting to have historically correct data back to 1970 (as the tz database tries to), there are now no less than NINE zones applying to the state. (shame that it only goes back to 1970 - some of the real WTFery happened in the 60s from what i've read - with the time zone line slowly creeping westward over the course of the decade) 

And observe that a piece of software which needs to compute what time it was "X hours before Y" has to use *all* of them, and imagine just how horrible that code must be.