You are missing the point. My point is that that particular datetime is parsed as<p>2013-02-03 19:54:00 +0000 PST<p>on some machines, and<p>2013-02-03 19:54:00 -0800 PST<p>on others. This is means that the timezone offset IS different and the absolute time IS different. One is 8 hours ahead of another even though the original string is the same.