[LEAPSECS] 2008-12-31T23:59:60Z

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On 23 Dec 2008 at 21:58, Steve Allen wrote:


> On Tue 2008-12-23T20:08:06 -0800, Brian Garrett hath writ:

> > examples of how the leap second

> > to be thrust upon us next week is affecting list members' current

> > projects.

> 

> On-campus we have just suffered a backplane failure in the main disk

> array server, followed by a complete shutdown of power to the building

> last weekend, to be followed by a transfer from the grid to the local

> generator next weekend.  We're nowhere near at the .99999999 level

> of reliability that we need to notice a leap second, there are a lot

> of bigger issues, and we expect everything to be robust.


Running a script querying the system time on various servers used 
where I work, all of which periodically sync their time to a remote 
time server, this is what I get:

Wed Dec 24 14:45:05 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:05 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:02 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:04 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:04 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:06 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:04 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:04 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:01 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:01 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:01 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:03 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:02 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:02 EST 2008
Wed Dec 24 14:45:05 EST 2008 

Clearly, the leap second will be lost in the noise when a subsequent 
re-syncing takes it into account.

As for my personal life, the clocks scattered all over my house have 
a variety of times with multiple minutes of difference, despite my 
best efforts to get them all synced to the second twice a year when I 
go around springing forward or falling back.  A few of them actually 
do some kind of auto-sync from radio or Internet signals, so they'll 
take the leap second into account fairly soon afterward (if they 
manage to connect... sometimes they can go weeks without succeeding). 
 The rest will have to wait until I do my next manual resetting.


>From these examples, regarding time-based systems I'm involved with 

(and I seem to care more about attempting precise setting of 
timepieces than the great majority of other people I know who, even 
when they are in the process of manually setting a clock, only try to 
get it within a couple of minutes at best), leap seconds are likely 
to be a non-issue to at least 99% of the public.

-- 
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/