Re: make standard If-Modified-Since headers

[Robert J. Chassell]

    %Z seems to give an empty string here (Windows XP), but that is probably 
    a bug.

It is a bug.  On my Debian GNU/Linux system, %Z has for years matched
its documentation

    %Z is the time zone name

Using %Z is safer than using UTC or an equivalent since some computers
are configured to provide Central European Time, others Pacific
Standard Time, and so on.

For me, the current date and time (from a function I keep in my .emacs
file):

    Thu, 2008 Feb 28  01:58 UTC

(GMT went away in the 1970s; I remember it from my youth.  There are a
variety of ephemeric and atomic clock times.  UTC is the French
abbreviation for Universal Coordinated Time which is used in making
time zones around the planet, for weather reports, and that sort of
thing.  It is also known as `Zulu time' so you will see an
abbreviation such as 00Z in a weather discussion, meaning 7pm EST or
8pm EDT.)

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                          GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
    address@hidden                         address@hidden
    http://www.rattlesnake.com                  http://www.teak.cc