[LEAPSECS] The relation between calendars and leap seconds.

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <20081111230211.GJ5886 at pedantic.org>, Michael Thorpe writes:


>On 2008-11-11 22:03:44, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

>>I don't care how many new timescales you want to invent for people

>>with Phd after their names, the only timescale that matters to

>>99.9999...% of this planets population is UTC, and that is the one

>>we have to find a workable solution for leapseconds in.

>

>I must respectfully disagree.  The timescale used by 99.9999% of this

>planet's population is, for lack of a better term, most akin to "sloppy

>GMT". 


These people are bound by national laws that say "UTC"[1], even
if they are not very good at implementing it.

But more importantly, they put their lives, unaware of this fact,
in hands of automatic systems, which work on the mistaken POSIX
interpretation of the UTC timescale.

Furthermore, most of these systems are coded by people who couldn't
tell a time scale from a postal scale without the aid of a picture.

The fact that people are sloppy with their implementation of UTC,
is only relevant as far as leap seconds has become a problem because
the implementations have gotten increasingly better at it.

Poul-Henning


[1] Or more or less confused versions thereof, such as "GMT".

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.