I think the whole daylight savings thing is worldwide, but I'm not sure about when they set the times. IIRC some places remove their daylight savings earlier than the US.
I work with environmental data-loggers. So when the time changes, the data gets off-set. I normally spend the day of time change updating the clocks on all of our data-loggers so I don't accidentally let one slip out with the wrong time.
I never liked the fact that it got darker sooner in the winter. I always found myself wanting to go to bed really early. The fact that it was dark outside just made me tired.