[LEAPSECS] Schedule for success

[Nero Imhard]

Late reaction. Was still in my outbox. The current discussions are  
sufficiently annoying to send it anyway:

On 2008-12-23, at 09:43, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

>

> The rest of us have no trouble with a tolerance of up to (at least)

> one hour, because that's what is already the reality for 99.9..%

> of the population.



> I'm still looking for the "poster boy" reason for your 1sec tolerance

> claim.


You don't need such a reason. It's up to the people (ITU?) who want to  
change an existing definition to make their case. "Although we hear  
protests, we don't see any objection we deem valid" doesn't quite cut  
it, does it?

I still don't get why you are insisting that UTC could be changed. To  
get rid of leap seconds in broadcast time scales, switching to  
something like TI would buy you your solution AND will not upset  
anyone using UTC. As for civil time, it's up to *legislators* to  
decide what civil time should be. Most have chosen (a derivative of)  
UTC, quite probably because it follows UT. Overriding such a decision  
by changing the reference frame is foul play.

What keeps bothering me is that the prospect of *changing a  
definition* (of UTC) doesn't seem to make you (phk) blink at all. A  
stated property of UTC is that it follows UT to within one second, and  
changing UTC in this respect is an insult to its users. It is  
betrayal, and undermines the timescale's authority.

If leap seconds are bugging you, then change you choice of time scale.

N
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