Ok, so you did mean IP, not ISP. I do understand what it is and by your definition, host ID and location addressing, it has nothing to do with the time shown on your computer.

That (fodors) time server had everything to do with displaying it wrong here on a slow day in So Cal (no baseball).

Well, the utility of whole time thing eludes me, but I now have 50 posts showing on my first page. Yea! And the loading time was fine.

My head just exploded reading this thread. #-O

I can't tell if there are still questions/issues. Just let me know and I'll pass them on to more knowledgeable folks here on the topic.

I just woke up and realized Hanuman might be right.

The question is why does fodors webpage show that this post was made at 8:43AM when local time is 09:43?

And is the time determined by doing an IP address lookup or is it from my browser/computer time as you mentioned in your OP?

I have checked in with our developer for some guidance. He has written me a few responses for some of the questions posted here. I would try to write them in my own words but I'd probably muddy the waters a bit.

For simpsonc510-
No, it will show the time on the computer, so it'll be the same timezone at the bottom of his/her computer. It doesn't know s/he's in Thailand.

For hanuman-
We don't care what time they set. We care when we receive it. We store it in GMT, and their browser displays it in their own local time.

For mrwunfrl-
The time conversions are not happening on our servers, they are happening on the users browser itself. So, we transmit GMT to the browser, and the browser is displaying it in whatever timezone the computer thinks it's in. It really doesn't even care what time their computer thinks it is, only the time zone the computer thinks it is.

IP is Internet Protocol, and ISP is Internet Service Provider, but neither is relevant, because we don't care about either for converting times.

I don't know the answer to why we display a post as being made at 8:43AM when local time is 09:43. We received his post at 12:43 EDT (16:43 GMT). We don't do any date manipulations on our end. We sent 16:43GMT to his browser, and it interpreted that as 8:43AM on his computer.

The question would be does his computer think it's in the right time zone? Is it possible that his timezone is wrong, and he has simply set the time to be an hour ... off. (ahead or behind). Like, if someone's computer in New York, had it's time zone set to California, but had the time set three hours ahead of california time. Then, it would show New York time, but think it's in California. Make sense? If that were the case, a post from that computer would always show up as ... three hours in the past. (Because their computer in GMT is actually three hours in the future.)

mrwunfl, yep. Like Katie says, I think they're just using javascript to ask your browser to convert the time. The code looks like this:
var d = new Date(1256748226000);
lti.innerHTML = d.format("mmm d, yy 'at' h:MMtt");
lti.setAttribute("title",d.format("yyyy-mm-dd'T'HH:MM:ss"));
The number in the Date() is a unix timestamp. I wonder if there's something online that will convert from unix timestamps to a localtime... Yep! http://www.epochconverter.com/ So, you paste the number in there, (after chopping off the last three digits... Probably microseconds) and see what time it says for you. My bet is it'll be the same as what fodors says it is. If that's the case, the browser (and likely your computer) think they're in the wrong time zone, like Katie mentions. (I put in 1256748226, and got
GMT: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:43:46 GMT
Your timezone: Wed 28 Oct 2009 12:43:46 PM EST
from http://www.epochconverter.com/ )

Yes, that is what I thought. I did view the page source and saw that code with unites of thousands of seconds.

So it is not based on the IP address.

While I can't even begin to understand all that info about the time, I do know I like it! Much easier to figure out when people posted an item.