For what it's worth, I too had the same question about the deadline, and
certainly didn't want to make a costly mistake.  I asked several people
about the exact meaning of "midnight October 15 2004, Australian Eastern
Standard Time" as stated in the rules -- and got conflicting responses from
them.  So I looked at several dictionaries, which didn't help: one site
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Midnight even says, "each day thus has two
midnights, one at the start and one at the end" in its definition of
"midnight"!  I then contacted the competition organizers for clarification.
 They replied that due to apparent confusion, the deadline had been
extended.
I like the suggestion of using the ISO 8601 standard and eliminating the
word "midnight".

Perhaps it is not to you, but it is for some of us. I think it is sad to 
infer that people have bad intentions instead of giving them the benefit 
of the doubt and understand that there is an actual confusion.

The other day some friends and I were buying some online tickets for an 
event that began at "midnight". We were not sure if we should buy them 
for that day or the next one exactly because of this ambiguity in the 
system.
We were not trying to exploit anything. We had an honest question and 
didn't want to possibly waste our money because of this uncertainty.

Fernando



Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> The word "midnight" is not ambiguous at all.  It is well defined in every 
> English dictionary.
> 
> Personally I am really disappointed that a few people here try to infer bad
> intentions by default and challenge even the most basic and common terms of
> every day life.  IMHO this is not only inappropriate but also uncalled for.
> 
>     Thorsten
> 
> ____________________________________________________
> Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
> e-mail: tho### [at] trfde
> 
> Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org