[LEAPSECS] choose the form

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <20080815060952.GA23990 at ucolick.org>, Steve Allen writes:


>I am willing to agree that the underlying time scales of broadcast

>signals and computer systems need to be free of leap seconds.


Thanks, a much needed conversion :-)


>I am not willing to agree that civil time can drift from the sun.


I doubt they will, but fiddling with it in hour-size bits every
few hundred years is much more likely to work than one second bits
ever other year, so that would be my preference.



>I also maintain that the "right" forms of the zoneinfo files already

>are proof of concept.  They demonstrate that computers can have an

uniform underlying time scale while still providing a civil time scale

>that has leap seconds.  The technical issues are basically solved.


Well, you havn't by any stretch of the imagination solved the problem
of how to get the zoneinfo files onto the computers.

Just this last week, a DG Ecclipse/8000 system was powerd off, it
has been doing ATC radar stiching for the last 20 years or so.

Do I need to tell you when they last got a software patch for their
operating system ? :-)


>Inspired by Seidelmann and Fukushima's pictorial form, I have been

>working on these

>http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/deltat.html

>I'm not done with details and decorations, but the basic ideas are

>there now.


Cool work, do I spot another disciple of the cult of Tufte ? (otherwise
buy his books (www.tufte.com), you will love them :-)

Poul-Henning

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