2.) It is equally ignorant/offensive to assume that someone should use GMT or UTC simply because x number of people believe it is the most-common point of reference.
While UTC is the only Universally Coordinated Time, it is true that there are numerous other possible and asinine assumptions one could have made. But either (1) you assumed without question that your own timezone rather than at least 24 other possibilities was the official definitive zone, or (2) you believed that there would be at least 24 different potential sets of rules subject to each individual player's location. Please, which delusion seduced you, or is there some third assumption?
Tell me, since it was not specifically articulated: did you assume that $4 represented four US dollars?
Why is that? Because you live in the United States? What about Canadians? Could they have assumed Canadian dollars without question? Mexicans might have assumed four pesos, as they too use the $ sign. I'm sure our Australian, central American, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwanese friends were equally baffled.
Please tell me why I, a U.S. citizen, who because of having ready internet access should be one of the most likely people to know what UTC means, had never even heard of UTC until this game? What's more ridiculous is that people keep shrieking on about "UTC! You should have assumed UTC!" when the game itself didn't even assume UTC, even after the rule change.
In reponse to your point (1), actually, I assumed all time zones because I assumed that each guess was made according to whatever timezone the player uses. This leads to addressing your 2nd point (2) because it means that there is only 1 set of rules. A good rule structure both (1) distributes evenly to all players and (2) takes into account individual circumstance. The laws of the universe certainly act this way (gravity and light, anyone?). According to my assumption, each person makes a guess according to their individual timezone, but the forum itself serves as an objective reference point to determine who guessed first (you can simply view the order in which the guesses were posted). So, in the event that any 2 people guessed correctly according to their time zone as was the case between me and Goat, all you have to do is see whose post appeared first in the thread. That was me. Hence I won. I'm not even going to explain again why the rule change completely affected the statistical nature of the game, which is a separate issue. In any case, neither of your 2 points represent any "delusion" that "seduced" me.
Yes, I assumed $4 represented 4 US dollars. Didn't many people? Isn't $ the symbol for the US dollar? I didn't know $ was used to denote yen or some other currency.
But, your point is good. In fact, I'm sure many of the people who played the game assumed the same thing, but flamed me anyway for my assumption of local time zone (which is MUCH different from assuming US central time).
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