[LEAPSECS] operational time -- What's in a name?

[Steve Allen]

On Fri 2008-03-28T06:28:27 -0600, M. Warner Losh hath writ:

> although naive math is, well, naive, more code exists that assumes,

> for example, that midnight it time_t % 86400 == 0 than you want to

> believe.  Changing this is really bad karma.


Except that the current POSIX standard is also bad karma.
It asserts that leap seconds do not exist in what it calls UTC.

And the ITU-R's UTC does have leap seconds.

Both of these things cannot be true, and it is my assertion
that the one which is wrong is POSIX.

The thing currently stored in POSIX time_t is not UTC.
It is a "proliferated" time scale of dubious accuracy and
inconsistent implementation.  It is a mis-named fantasy.
It is exactly what the Time Lords who started this whole thing
in 1999 have repeatedly said they want to make go away.

But if we call POSIX time_t by a new name (say TI) which has
international status and properties which match the specified
characteristics of time_t then what we have is enlightenment.

We have learned something as a civilization.  We have realized that
our cognition was incomplete in a problematic way, and by changing the
name we admit that we were always really trying to use TI for counting
uniformly, and zoneinfo for civilly desirable things like telling
people when to open and close their shops.

After the change I propose, yes, there would be systems still
producing TI and calling it UTC, but that's just a name for one
international standard vs.  another.  It would not be the first time a
name is misapplied due to a change in cognition, and the underlying
operational system would be more rigorously correct.

Speaking of the wheel of karma, by the way, I suspect I understand
why it was not until the 33rd CGSIC meeting in 1999-03 that Dr.
Klepczynski suggested abandoning leap seconds:
http://ad.usno.navy.mil/wds/history/markowitz.html

--
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