As far as I know, it's only the US that uses AM/PM-clock as a standard nowadays. I think the default clock applet on the panel should default to 24h-clock format, as it is probably what most users want. At the very least, it should honor the locale settings in that aspect (LC_TIME), that has a setting for AM/PM use.
hp - maybe we should communicate this concern to our overseas offices - obviously most of our shipments are going to US customers
If the US market is the most important, don't change the default then - but _please_ patch the clock applet so that it honors the locale AM/PM setting, so that foreign customers, with the correct locale settings, won't get US-ified AM/PM clocks on their otherwise localized default desktops.
Sent upstream as http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57153, closing on RH level