[LEAPSECS] Microsoft won't resolve leap seconds

[Steve Allen]

Our newest telescope comes from a vendor which relies on Microsoft for
the control systems.  Its intended application demands precise timing
of the exposure sequence in order to compute the barycentric velocity
of the telescope.  While investigating the performance of the system
clock I ran into the following:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939322

In short, Windows XP comes with an implementation of NTP which
"cannot reliably maintain sync time to the range of 1 to 2 seconds.
Such tolerances are outside the design specification of the W32Time
service."

Obviously if they can't keep the system clock accurate to within 1
second, then they don't have to deal with leap seconds, and the
point that I make with my epoch time page
http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/epochtime.html
is utterly moot.

If I'm not mistaken that was the same presumption made by the folks
who instituted leap seconds in the first place.

--
Steve Allen                 <sla at ucolick.org>                WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick Observatory        Natural Sciences II, Room 165    Lat  +36.99855
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