[LEAPSECS] (no subject)

[Rob Seaman]

Dude, I'm not representing your position at all.  Assertions are  
made.  I respond.  The "current system" for instance, is simply the  
mechanics of the solar system.  It will remain the underlying system  
whatever the ITU decides.  What is your position on the solar system?   
I don't know.  (Personally, I'm all for it.)

On the other hand, you've spent the last few messages taking offense  
at insults I've never uttered and misrepresenting PHK's jocular  
comment as my own.

Leap seconds principally take time and money because people have  
selected UTC for some purpose requiring an interval timescale.  The  
advice seems pretty obvious - don't use UTC.  There is no "one size  
fits all" timescale.  Attempts to create one will fail.

If you think it is a silly discussion, why keep returning to it?  On  
the other hand, my observatory has just undergone a round of  
downsizing due to the poor economy.  If the ITU succeeds in their (far  
more silly) exercise of removing leap seconds from UTC, it will cost  
the astronomical community millions of dollars worldwide - perhaps  
many millions of dollars.  (When you mention remote untended systems,  
few are more so than space-based telescopes.)  Those millions of  
dollars will inevitably result in many more layoffs since not once has  
any suggestion been made of compensating astronomers for the cost of  
such a change to the standard.  Thus I continue my part in what seems  
rather more a threatening, than a silly, discussion.

Rob
---

On Dec 20, 2008, at 11:55 AM, M. Warner Losh wrote:


> In message: <490A82A4-A8B3-485E-8DED-F9C8ADC894F7 at noao.edu>

>            Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu> writes:

> : M. Warner Losh wrote:

> :

> : > Leap-seconds, as implement, are unworkable.

> :

> : If so, there are worlds of possibilities short of the vain attempt  

> to

> : eradicate them entirely.

>

> Dude, stop misrepresenting my position.

>

> Either we kill them entirely, since they are going away eventually

> anyway, or we put them on a regular schedule like leap years.  The

> current system sucks too bad to be allowed to continue.

>

> Like this silly discussion, leap seconds take a hugely

> disproportionate amount of time and money in the implementation of

> timing systems that I've been involved in.

>

> All the rest is polemics..

>

> Warner