Well, if we think about it a little more, why should the server report west coast USA time if the user’s location is unknown?
Certainly an assumption will need to be made but if it is assumed that the user is anywhere in the world then why not report world time, UTC (GMT)?
In our user control panel we set our time offset to UTC not west coast USA. It would appear then that, when logged in, our time is calculated from server time +/- server daylight saving time and server offset to UTC and our offset to UTC +/- our daylight saving time.
When not logged in, the only people who benefit from the currently displayed time are those who live in the same time zone as the server. But this is a world wide site so why not show world wide time to all?
I would be surprised if the vBulletin software did not have its own UTC offset to set the displayed time away from the server time and back to UTC time.
Chris.