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

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <20080328153341.GA25300 at ucolick.org>, Steve Allen writes:

>On Fri 2008-03-28T15:28:53 +0000, Tony Finch hath writ:

>> The POSIX standard guarantees that what Warner wrote is correct.

>

>The POSIX standard is in denial about leap seconds with respect to

>UTC.  I don't know about international standards, but in people I'm

>sure that's not a good sign, and I try to avoid such.


I have long maintained that POSIX was one of the biggest and most
costly mistakes in international standards.

All the trouble with POSIX can be traced back to the fact that it
standardized backwards instead of forwards, or in other words: a
"rubberstamp standard" instead of a "roadmap standard".

But just like leapseconds, POSIX is a mistake that is with us here
today, and we will have to resolve the inconsistencies somehow.

But our problems with POSIX may pale soon, when the politically
ram-rodded, 7000 pages long OOXML standard for "office and business
documents gets ratified by ISO as a "rubberstamp" standard.

As far as I know that standard gets none of leap years, timezones
much less leap seconds right.

Behold the power of computers in the hand of the unwashed masses.

Poul-Henning

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